Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

The first time I saw the trailer for this movie I was totally blown away. This is an effect that loses its potency the more you see it. So by the time I actually saw the movie it had worn off, but I will try and recapture that feeling. First off, those owls are insane looking. They don’t look like cartoon owls, they look like real fucking owls. Of course like any movie the best bits are in the trailer, so when you see these real looking owls soaring around gloriously it’s incredible. It’s too bizarre because the owls do talk, but they look real so it’s really uncanny and so weird that you have to assume the filmmakers were high when they pitched it to the studios. So I don’t know what I was expecting, but here’s the movie in a nutshell.

When “Legend of the Guardians” starts, there is absolutely no context for what’s going on. There is no explanation of what you are about to see or what this universe you’re in is. It’s kind of like they just throw you into a pool without teaching you how to swim. And everything in the beginning happens so fast that you barely understand who the characters are before you’re already on an adventure with them. At the beginning it also becomes very apparent that you are watching a kid’s movie. This is not Pixar fare; there is no attempt to make this a movie that works on multiple levels. However the level that’s there for the adults to appreciate is the artistry of the landscapes and the owls themselves. Its is a beautiful movie to watch, and the flying and battle sequences are a thousand times better than “Avatar,” a movie that only gets worse with time. The story holds to the hero’s journey formula pretty tightly and is fairly simple. It has Shakespearian elements, but unfortunately not every character dies in the end. You can definitely see Zach Snyder’s influence on the battle scenes. Sometimes I felt like I was watching an owl recreation of “300,” which is not a bad thing; it’s actually kind of cool looking. The film is also incredibly dark. There is a procedure which doesn’t really make sense at all, that the evil owls use to enslave others. The evil owls’ philosophy is all about pure breeding and eugenics. I felt like I was watching a movie about Hitler, if Hitler was an owl.

I generally liked this movie, although I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be. But for a kids movie it was kind of cool and interesting and looked great. So if you feel like spending an unreasonable amount of money taking your whole family to the cinema, this movie is better than a lot of the kid’s movies that usually come out. This is my theory for why no one went to see it but me, because it’s too expensive to take your family to the damn movies these days. Wise up theater owners of America! No one wants to pay $8.00 for popcorn! Also this movie has a weird name and looks pretty weird, and rightly so, which may have scared people off. Anyway, if it looks at all interesting to you then you might as well see it, right?