Rise of the Guardians

Release Date: November 21, 2012 (USA)
Director: Peter Ramsey
Screenplay: David Lindsay-Abaire, William Joyce
Cast: Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher, Jude Law, Dakota Goyo

So DreamWorks dishes out another good movie that doesn’t rely on pop culture references. Good for them!

Rise of the Guardians is based on The Guardians of Childhood book series, written by William Joyce. As the name of the book series implies, it’s about these magical creatures of childhood myth: North a.k.a Santa Claus (Baldwin), Bunnymund a.k.a. Easter Bunny (Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Fisher), and the Sandman; and they have to fight against Pitch a.k.a. The Boogeyman (Law). But they cannot do it by themselves, so the Man on the Moon tells them to recruit an initially reluctant Jack Frost (Pine) to be a Guardian and fight this Nightmare King and protect the children’s dreams.

So yeah, those people saying that Rise of the Guardians is like The Avengers for little kids… they are kinda right.

The story itself is quite simple, and you can clearly see this is a children’s movie; in fact, there were a couple of things that were resolved too easily. Rise of the Guardians also has more adventure and fantasy than comedy, and whatever comedy there is, it is also aimed at children. But that doesn’t mean an adult cannot enjoy it, especially because it’s so freaking magical and pretty.

As I see it, Rise of the Guardians gets a full extra star for its animation and design department. All the characters have interesting personalities and unique qualities, but they were extra awesome because of the way they were created. The designs of every Guardian, their domains, their helpers, they way their powers manifested; it was all a visual delight. And we have to give kudos to the animators in charge of Sandman. He was a very good character and he didn’t even talk, and it was also thanks to the way sand moved with him and how he controlled it. The 3D also looked fantastic, once again thanks to the sand, but also because of Jack Frost’s and Pitch’s powers, which made their battle scenes fascinating to watch.

Anyway, I’m glad to add Rise of the Guardians to all the good animated movies we had this year.

Just one issue though: that whole Man on the Moon business, being the Guardians’ god or whatever… I get he is a canon character but, considering Jack Frost replaced the kid in the DreamWorks’ logo at the beginning of the movie, is the Man on the Moon supposed to be Spielberg? Sorry, I couldn’t help but think about it.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

mirella

YAM Magazine geek resident. Cloud Cuckoolander. Seldom web developer. Graphic designer.

3 Responses

  1. amy says:

    I liked the film alright, especially the guardians (Baldwin and Jackman were perfect), Isla Fisher was okay though I didn’t recognized her voice and there wasn’t anything particularly memorable about it. I thought Chris Pine’s voice was John Cusack’s! LOL Having said that, I thought his voice was a little bit too old xD

    Jude Law was also perfection.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.