Rise of the Guardians | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Peter Ramsey |
Produced by | Christina Steinberg Nancy Bernstein |
Screenplay by | David Lindsay-Abaire |
Story by | William Joyce |
Starring | Chris Pine Alec Baldwin Hugh Jackman Isla Fisher Jude Law |
Music by | Alexandre Desplat[1] |
Editing by | Joyce Arrastia[2] |
Studio | DreamWorks Animation |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 97 minutes[2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $145 million[4] |
Box office | $48,947,253[5] |
Rise of the Guardians is a 2012 American 3D computer-animated fantasy-adventure film based on William Joyce's The Guardians of Childhood book series and The Man in the Moon short film by Joyce and Reel FX. Peter Ramsey directed the film, while Joyce and Guillermo del Toro were executive producers. Produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it was released on November 21, 2012 to mixed and positive critical reception.
Set about 200 years after the book series, the film tells a story about the Guardians (North or Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Bunnymund or the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman), who enlist Jack Frost to stop Pitch from engulfing the world in darkness. It features the voices of Chris Pine (Jack Frost), Alec Baldwin (Santa Claus), Hugh Jackman (The Easter Bunny), Isla Fisher (The Tooth Fairy) and Jude Law (Pitch).
The spirit of winter, Jack Frost, describes how he came to be hundreds of years ago, and how he wishes to know of his past life. In the present, he creates a snow day for the children of a small town. At the North Pole, North, better known as Santa Claus, is alerted that Pitch Black, the Bogeyman, has returned and is threatening childhood with fear. After summoning fellow Guardians the Tooth Fairy (Tooth), the Easter Bunny (Bunnymund) and the Sandman (Sandy), North learns from the Man in the Moon that they are to induct Jack as their new member. The Easter Bunny, although reluctant to include this mischievous trickster, dutifully brings Jack to North's headquarters and they attempt to swear him in. Jack, frustrated by centuries of isolation caused by children's disbelief in him, declines to join. Regardless, North persuades him to cooperate for now by explaining their mission and the looming threat of Pitch.
When the team travels to Tooth's lair, they find it being raided by Pitch's minions, who have taken all the children's teeth, and the childhood memories stored in them, and all but one of Tooth's baby fairies. Pitch declares his intention to destroy children's faith in the Guardians in revenge for his own disbelieved-in state, beginning with Tooth. To avert this, the Guardians perform her teeth-collection themselves for the interim, with a promise to find Jack's teeth to recover his previous life's memories. While the collection proves successful, a young boy named Jamie discovers them in his room, although Jack is still invisible. Pitch learns of the Guardians' resistance and moves to stop them. He attacks Jack and the Sandman when they are alone, and despite Jack's efforts to support his comrade, the Sandman is overwhelmed and seemingly destroyed.
The dejected Guardians rally by helping Bunnymund prepare his eggs for Easter. Although slightly complicated by the intrusion of Jamie's toddler sister, Sophie, in Bunnymund's domain, the operation goes smoothly through to the distribution stage. Jack volunteers to take Sophie home, and discovers the entrance to Pitch's headquarters, where Tooth's baby fairies and the teeth are being held. Pitch urges him to step aside as a neutral party with the promise of his teeth's memories. Jack refuses, and Pitch's machinations ruin the Easter-egg distribution, shattering children's faith in the Easter Bunny.
The Guardians' team spirit broken, a despondent Jack departs in disgrace to Antarctica. There, Pitch tempts him to join forces in an alliance of cold and fear, but Jack again refuses, as he wants to be loved, not feared. In response, Pitch reveals he has Tooth's last free baby fairy, Baby-Tooth, and threatens to kill her unless Jack relinquishes the source of his power, his staff. Jack submits, but Pitch reneges and the resulting fight leaves Jack trapped in a crevasse with Baby-Tooth while Pitch breaks his staff. To counter Jack's despair, Baby-Tooth unlocks Jack's memories, which reveal he was a mortal boy who died saving his sister, and was changed into a winter spirit by the Man in the Moon because of that heroism.
Inspired at this revelation, Jack is able to restore his staff and his power and return to North's besieged workshop, where the Guardians and Pitch learn there is only one believing child left in the world: Jamie. Jack races to the boy and not only confirms Jamie's faith in the Guardians, but also instills a belief in Jack Frost, enabling Jamie to finally see him. The diminished Guardians arrive to join him as they confront Pitch, while Jamie gathers his friends to support them. Pitch's seemingly overwhelming power of nightmare proves no match against the children's faith, which restores the Guardians' full power to battle the villain. Sandman is resurrected by this belief, and joins the fight, leaving Pitch defeated and children's faith restored in the world, as well as in Jack Frost. Later, they encounter Pitch, but he is taken down by his own nightmares because of his own fear as he is forced back into his lair, never to return.
At this victory, Jack is finally sworn in as a Guardian and resolves to protect the world's children with his new friends.
In 2005, William Joyce and Reel FX launched a joint venture, Aimesworth Amusements,[13] to produce CG-animated feature films,[14] one of which was set to be The Guardians of Childhood, based on the Joyce's idea.[15] 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,[15] and served as an inspiration for the film.[2]
Early in 2008, Joyce sold the film rights to DreamWorks Animation,[16] after the studio assured him it would respect his vision for the characters and that he would be involved with the creative process.[17] 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 script.[18] Joyce acted as a co-director for the first few years, but left this position after the death of his daughter Mary Katherine,[16] who died of brain tumor.[17] Joyce continued to assist as an executive producer, while Ramsey took over full directing, making him the first African American to direct a big-budget CG animated film.[19] As with some previous DreamWorks films, Guillermo del Toro came on board as an executive producer. Present almost from the beginning,[20] he was able to help shape the story, character design, theme and structure of the film.[21] 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."[20] The final title, Rise of the Guardians was announced in early 2011, along with the first cast.[6]
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.[22] The film contains a lot of special effects, particularly the volumetric particles for depicting Sandman and Pitch.[23] 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, and was released in August 2012 for free as an open source project with a hope to become an industry standard.[24]
Although the film is based on the 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 200 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."[16] 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,[17] as well a song, "Still Dream," sung over the end credits.[25]
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.[26] Monsters University was then pushed to June 21, 2013, with Wreck-It Ralph taking its place.[27]
French composer Alexandre Desplat composed the original music for the film, which was released on November 13, 2012 by Var?se Sarabande. The score was recorded in London at Abbey Road Studios and Air Studios, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, with a choral contribution by London Voices. David Lindsay-Abaire wrote the lyrics for the end-credit song, "Still Dream," which was performed by soprano Ren?e Fleming.[28]
Rise of the Guardians | ||||
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Film score by Alexandre Desplat | ||||
Released | November 13, 2012 | |||
Recorded | 2012 | |||
Genre | Score | |||
Length | 67:47 | |||
Label | Var?se Sarabande | |||
Producer | Alexandre Desplat | |||
Alexandre Desplat film scores chronology | ||||
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Track listing:[29] | ||||||||||
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No. | Title | Length | ||||||||
1. | "Still Dream" (performed by Ren?e Fleming) | 3:12 | ||||||||
2. | "Calling the Guardians" | 2:06 | ||||||||
3. | "Alone in the World" | 2:04 | ||||||||
4. | "Fanfare of the Elves" | 0:53 | ||||||||
5. | "Wind Take Me Home!" | 1:28 | ||||||||
6. | "Dreamsand" | 2:03 | ||||||||
7. | "Pitch on the Globe" | 0:57 | ||||||||
8. | "The Moon" | 1:32 | ||||||||
9. | "Snowballs" | 1:31 | ||||||||
10. | "Busy Workshop" | 1:33 | ||||||||
11. | "Sleigh Launch" | 1:45 | ||||||||
12. | "Nightmares Attack" | 7:17 | ||||||||
13. | "Tooth Collection" | 2:22 | ||||||||
14. | "Jamie's Bedroom" | 2:31 | ||||||||
15. | "Jack Sandman" | 4:18 | ||||||||
16. | "Memorial" | 1:21 | ||||||||
17. | "Guardians Regroup" | 0:58 | ||||||||
18. | "Easter" | 3:39 | ||||||||
19. | "Jack Betrays" | 3:20 | ||||||||
20. | "Kids Stop Believing" | 2:35 | ||||||||
21. | "Jack's Memories" | 2:24 | ||||||||
22. | "Pitch at North Pole" | 2:00 | ||||||||
23. | "Jamie Believes" | 3:01 | ||||||||
24. | "Jack's Center" | 4:52 | ||||||||
25. | "Sandman Returns" | 2:36 | ||||||||
26. | "Dreamsand Miracles" | 2:18 | ||||||||
27. | "Oath of the Guardians" | 3:11 | ||||||||
Total length:
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67:47 |
Rise of the Guardians had its premiere on October 10, 2012, at the The Mill Valley Film Festival in Mill Valley, California,[3] followed by the international premiere at The International Rome Film Festival on November 13, 2012.[30][31] Under distribution by Paramount Pictures, the film was released on November 21, 2012, in American theaters.[26] Digitally re-mastered into IMAX 3D, it was shown in limited international and domestic IMAX theaters.[32] It was the second film released in the firm Barco's Auro 11.1 3D audio format, after Red Tails.[33] The film was also shown in Dolby Atmos, a surround sound technology introduced in 2012.[34] Rise of the Guardians was the last DreamWorks Animation film distributed by Paramount, as DreamWorks has signed a five-year distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, starting in 2013.[35]
Rise of the Guardians received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Based on 95 reviews, the film holds a rating of 76% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The site'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."[36] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 57 based on 34 reviews, or "Mixed or average."[37]
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a lively and derivative 3D storybook spree for some unlikely action heroes."[2] 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."[38]
As of November 26, 2012, Rise of the Guardians has grossed $33,181,310 in North America, and $13,500,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $46,681,310.[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 2006's Flushed Away.[39]
The Rome Film Fes?ti?val and Vanity Fair magazine will award the new Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence in November 2012 to Rise of the Guardians.[30] The film also received the Hollywood Ani?ma?tion Award at the 16th Annual Hollywood Film Festival, held on October 22, 2012.[40]
Award | Category | Recipients | Result |
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Hollywood Film Festival[40] | Best Animated | Won | |
Mill Valley Film Festival[41] | Audience Favorite Children's Film |
A video game based on the film was released by D3 Publisher on November 20, 2012 in North America,[42] and released on November 23, 2012 in Europe.[43] It allows gamers to lead the Guardians in their battle against Pitch.[44] It is available on the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS.[45]
Guillermo del Toro, the exec-producer of the film, commented on the possibility of the sequel: "Obviously the possibility of telling another tale is completely dependent on the studio. But Bill Joyce has written many books on the characters and we are on board to create more and more adventures for them. We've been talking about some storylines. I am eager to tell everyone the story of North."[46]
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