Rise of the Guardians
Rise of the Guardians is a 2012 American animated fantasy action-adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by Peter Ramsey (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on the book series The Guardians of Childhood and the short film The Man in the Moon by William Joyce. It stars the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Isla Fisher, and Hugh Jackman. The film tells a story about Guardians Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman, who enlist Jack Frost to stop the evil Pitch Black from engulfing the world in darkness in a fight of dreams.
This article is about the film. For the video game based on the film, see Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game. For the soundtrack, see Rise of the Guardians (soundtrack).Rise of the Guardians
The Guardians of Childhood and The Man in the Moon
by William Joyce
Christina Steinberg
Nancy Bernstein
Joyce Arrastia
- October 10, 2012 (Mill Valley Film Festival)[2]
- November 21, 2012 (United States)
97 minutes[3]
United States
English
$145 million[4]
$306.9 million[5]
Rise of the Guardians was released in the United States on November 21, 2012. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, but despite grossing $306.9 million worldwide against a budget of $145 million, it was a disappointment at the box-office and lost the studio an estimated $87 million due to marketing and distribution costs.[6][7] It was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.[8]
It was the last DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by Paramount Pictures. Starting with The Croods in 2013, 20th Century Fox would distribute DreamWorks' films until Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie in 2017. Until the release of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken in 2023, Rise of the Guardians was previously DreamWorks Animation's biggest box-office bomb.
Plot[edit]
Jack Frost awakens from a frozen pond with amnesia and realizes that no one can see or hear him. So it remains until 300 years later in present day, when the Man in the Moon warns Nicholas St. North that the evil spirit Pitch Black has returned, threatening children with his nightmares. North summons E. Aster Bunnymund, the Sandman, and Toothiana to arms, and they are informed that Jack has been chosen to join them as a new Guardian. They haphazardly bring him to the North Pole, where North asks what Jack's center is: every Guardian has a center that they are the Guardian of. North's center is wonder, which he protects in children. Jack, however, does not know, and is unwilling to be a Guardian.
Visiting Tooth's palace, Jack learns that every baby tooth contains the childhood memories of its owner, his teeth included, as every Guardian was human before they became a Guardian. Shocked, he wishes to find his tooth to recover his memories; however, Pitch kidnaps Tooth's subordinate fairies and steals all the teeth. This reduces children's belief in Tooth and weakens her. To thwart Pitch's plan, the group collects children's teeth themselves in place of the fairies. One of the children they visit includes Jamie Bennett, who wakes up from the noise. Since he still believes, he can see everybody except for Jack. Pitch's Nightmares attack the Guardians and Pitch kills Sandy.
As Easter approaches, the Guardians travel to Bunny's home next, determined not to let Pitch ruin Easter. Jack is lured to Pitch's lair, where he finds his teeth. Pitch distracts him long enough for the Nightmares to destroy Bunny's eggs, ruining Easter and causing children to stop believing in Bunny. With the Guardians' trust in him lost, Jack flees to Antarctica. Pitch breaks his magic staff and throws him down a chasm. Unlocking the memories inside his teeth, Jack learns that he was once a human who drowned trying to save his younger sister. Inspired, he repairs his staff and rescues the kidnapped fairies.
Due to Pitch, every child in the world has stopped believing except Jamie, drastically weakening the Guardians. Finding Jamie's belief wavering, Jack makes it snow in his room, causing Jamie to be the first person to believe in him. Jack realizes that his center is fun and uses it to gather Jamie's friends, play, and diminish their fear, leading to renewed belief that bolsters the Guardians and resurrects Sandy. The children's dreams prove stronger than the Nightmares, who turn on Pitch and drag him to the underworld. Jack finally accepts his place as the Guardian of Fun.
Production[edit]
In 2005, William Joyce and Reel FX launched a joint venture, Aimesworth Amusements,[16] to produce CG-animated feature films,[17] one of which was set to be The Guardians of Childhood, based on Joyce's idea.[18] The film was not realized, but they did create a short animated film, The Man in the Moon, directed by Joyce, which introduced the Guardians idea,[18] and served as an inspiration for the film.[3]
Early in 2008, Joyce sold the film rights to DreamWorks Animation,[19] after the studio assured him it would respect his vision for the characters and that he would be involved with the creative process.[20] In November 2009, it was revealed that DreamWorks had hired Peter Ramsey to make his feature debut as director of what was then titled The Guardians, and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire to write the script, Lindsay-Abaire previously co-wrote the screenplay for Robots, which Joyce previously produced.[21] The next month, Leonardo DiCaprio was announced to make his animated feature film debut as the lead character of the film—tentatively titled The Guardians—Jack Frost.[22] Joyce acted as a co-director for the first few years, but left this position after the death of his daughter Mary Katherine,[19] who died from complications relating to her brain cancer positive diagnosis in May 2010.[20] Joyce continued to work on the film only as an executive producer, while Ramsey took the helm solo as a full-time director, making him the first African American to direct a big-budget CG animated film as well as making it one of the first DreamWorks films to have only one director instead of two and not have a co-director.[23] As with some previous DreamWorks films, Guillermo del Toro came on board to join Joyce as an executive producer. Present almost from the beginning,[24] he was able to help shape the story, character design, theme and structure of the film.[25] He said he was proud that the filmmakers were making parts of the film "dark and moody and poetic," and expressed hope this might "set a different tone for family movies, for entertainment movies."[24] The final title, Rise of the Guardians was announced in early 2011, along with the first cast.[9]
Roger Deakins, the cinematographer who had already worked on the previous DreamWorks' film, How to Train Your Dragon, advised on the lighting to achieve its real look. He selected photographic references for color keys, and during the production gave notes on contrast, saturation, depth of field and light intensity.[26] The film contains a lot of special effects, particularly the volumetric particles for depicting Sandman and Pitch.[27] For this, DreamWorks Animation developed OpenVDB, a more efficient tool and format for manipulating and storing volume data, like smoke and other amorphous materials. OpenVDB had been already used on Puss in Boots and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, and was released in August 2012 for free as an open-source project with a hope to become an industry standard.[28]
Although the film is based on Joyce's book series, it contains differences from the books. The book series, begun in 2011, explains the origins of the characters, while the film takes place about 300 years after the books, and shows how the characters function in present time. Joyce explained, "Because I don't want people to read the book and then go see the movie and go, 'Oh, I like the book better,' and I also didn't want them to know what happens in the movie. And I also knew that during the progress of film production, a lot of things can change. So I wanted to have a sort of distance, so we were able to invoke the books and use them to help us figure out the world of the movie, but I didn't want them to be openly competitive to each other."[19] The idea for the Guardians came from Joyce's daughter, who asked him "if he thought Santa Claus had ever met the Easter Bunny." The film includes a dedication to her,[20] as well a song, "Still Dream," sung over the end credits.[29]
Originally, the film was set to be released on November 2, 2012, but DreamWorks Animation pushed the film to November 21, 2012, to avoid competition with Pixar's upcoming film Monsters University, which in turn had been pushed to November 2, 2012, to avoid competition with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.[30] Monsters University was then pushed to June 21, 2013, with Disney's Wreck-It Ralph taking its place.[31]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74% based on 160 reviews, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A sort of Avengers for the elementary school set, Rise of the Guardians is wonderfully animated and briskly paced, but it's only so-so in the storytelling department."[46] Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 58 based on 37 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".[47] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an excellent grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[48]
Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film three and a half stars out of four and found that the film's characters have "a primal familiarity, as though they were developed by a tag team of Maurice Sendak and Walt Disney."[49] Olly Richards of Empire wrote, "It's gorgeously designed, deftly written and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. For child or adult, this is a fantasy to get lost in."[50] The Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan also gave the film a positive review and said, "Thoughts become things. That's the message of Rise of the Guardians, a charming if slightly dark and cobwebbed animated feature about how believing in something makes it real, or real enough."[51] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and wrote in his review, "There's an audience for this film. It's not me. I gather younger children will like the breakneck action, the magical ability to fly and the young hero who has tired of only being a name." Though he did say, "Their parents and older siblings may find the 89-minute running time quite long enough."[52]
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a lively but derivative 3D storybook spree for some unlikely action heroes."[3] Conversely, Justin Chang in Variety said, "Even tots may emerge feeling slightly browbeaten by this colorful, strenuous and hyperactive fantasy, which has moments of charm and beauty but often resembles an exploding toy factory rather than a work of honest enchantment."[53] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal found that the film "lacks a resonant center," and that the script, "seems to have been written by committee, with members lobbying for each major character, and the action, set in vast environments all over the map, spreads itself so thin that a surfeit of motion vitiates emotion."[54]
Box office[edit]
Rise of the Guardians grossed $103.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $203.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $306.9 million.[5]
In North America, the film opened to $32.3 million over its extended five-day weekend, and with $23.8 million over the three-day weekend, it reached fourth place behind The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Skyfall, and Lincoln. The film's opening was the lowest debut for a DreamWorks Animation film since Flushed Away.[48] While the film did gross more than double of its $145 million budget, it still did not turn a profit for DreamWorks Animation due to its high distribution and marketing costs, forcing the studio to take an $87 million write-down.[6] This marked the first time that the studio had lost money on an animated film since Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.[6][7] As a result of this combined with other factors, in February 2013, the studio announced it was laying off 350 employees as part of a company-wide restructuring.[7]
Additionally, the studio was heavily dependent on the success of Rise of the Guardians to fund other studio projects, most notably, the ill-fated Me and My Shadow project. But due to the failure to gain a stable box office response, it heavily affected the studio's ability to release original movies.
Possible sequel[edit]
After the release of the film, the creators of Rise of the Guardians expressed hope that the strong average grade of "A" given to the film by audiences surveyed by CinemaScore and an enthusiastic word-of-mouth would gather support for the "chance to make a sequel or two."[96] Author and co-producer of the series, William Joyce, also mentioned in March 2013 that he was still in talks about a sequel with DreamWorks Animation: "There is something that we are proposing that we hope they will want to do."[97]