With all the fairytales, folklore, fantasy related stuff out there, it only seemed a matter of time until someone came along and turned some of the world’s most loved figures and created a movie where they are guarding the children and their hopes and dreams.
The best way to describe Rise of the Guardians:
The Bogeyman (aka Pitch Dark) threatens to take over the world and fill it with darkness and fear once again causing the Guardians to rise up in an attempt to stop him before it is too late. The Guardians include Santa Claus the Guardian of Wonderment, the Tooth Fairy the Guardian of Memories, the Sandman the Guardian of Dreams, and the Easter Bunny the Guardian of Hope. But according to their entity “The Man in the Moon” they need another to help them take down the Bogeyman…
After much hoping and wishing it would be the Leprechaun (Luck) or some other fable… in the end “The Man in the Moon” selects Jack Frost to join the Guardians.
Within the first five minutes of seeing Jack Frost at work in the modern century, it isn’t all that hard that he will be the one that becomes the Guardian of “Fun”… but for some reason Jack Frost is unsure what his center is when prompted by Santa.
Voiced by a stellar cast, including: Alec Baldwin (Santa Claus), Hugh Jackman (Easter Bunny), Chris Pine (Jack Frost), Isla Fisher (Tooth Fairy) and Jude Law (Bogeyman)… there was never a moment where I did not find myself engaged in the movie.
The CGI was well done, the storytelling was thorough and concise… never did I find myself looking for loopholes, because there wasn’t any.
The movie does a good job in luring the audience into the story and engaging them into wanting to learn more about Jack Frost’s backstory almost as much as Jack Frost does himself. In fact Jack Frost comes off as rather impish, but has a heart and a soft spot for children, though he himself does not know why.
We find out more about what it was about Jack’s past that “The Man in the Moon” chose him for his ultimate duty of being one of the Guardians… in fact the tie in between the past and the present and ultimately the future is so fascinating that I am personally wanting to know more about the pasts of the other Guardians
In fact there were times when the other Guardians stole the movie for me in some capacity or another. Like the Easter Bunny when he goes from the big bad tough bunny (cue Hugh Jackman as Wolverine) to a fun bunny plaything for the kids. Or when Santa was trying to explain Jack what his “center” is. The Tooth Fairy fluttering about like a little bee.
What really drew me to this movie? The fact that this was based off of a series of novels by William Joyce: The Guardians of Childhood. Also the fact that William Joyce was Executive Producer of this film boded well on the body of work as a whole and its place in the series.
Considering this is me… you can bet that I am going to be reading up the original book series to get myself up to date… and if by some insane chance that they decide to create sequels after this (though I don’t see how after the Bogeyman), I wouldn’t mind seeing how it would unfold.