{"id":1582,"date":"2012-11-30T02:13:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T06:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2015-07-11T05:23:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T09:23:39","slug":"thoughts-on-rise-of-the-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=1582","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Rise of the Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw the latest animated feature from DreamWorks recently, Rise of the Guardians<\/em>, and I had the theater to myself, woohoo!\u00a0 Here are my thoughts.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re spoiler free.\u00a0 I can\u2019t promise, though.<\/p>\n

The movie tells the tale of the mythical Jack Frost, who is summoned to become a \u201cGuardian\u201d to protect the children of the world from forces of fear and hopelessness, personified by the guy with the British accent, Pitch, aka the Boogie Man.<\/p>\n

The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

I loved the visual look and feel of the film.\u00a0 They really captured the mystery, wonder, storybook-ish magical-ness, and grandeur of the characters and their worlds.\u00a0 It was visually fantastic.\u00a0 DreamWorks can really nail it with their fantasy-oriented features.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the . . . what is it?\u00a0 Symbolism?\u00a0 The idea of the moon as God.\u00a0 If all the story ideas I have were published books, you\u2019d see that I very much enjoy the idea of moons symbolizing powerful mysterious forces beyond human understanding.\u00a0 There\u2019s something very natural about it, something very primal about being awed by a moon.\u00a0 It is a definite theme in my current novel-in-progress, Moonrise Ink<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I liked the idea of the main character, Jack Frost, having lost memories.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give anything away, but that\u2019s another story element I tend to enjoy, mysterious forgotten memories, at least when the characters still have personalities without them.<\/p>\n

Finally, there was some good humor.\u00a0 Overall, it was kind of hit or miss, but I did laugh out loud quite a few times, more than I did in Wreck-It Ralph<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Not So Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of my pet peeves is characters talking to themselves for the sake of exposition.\u00a0 It is such lazy writing.\u00a0 In this film, the villain especially loved to speak his intentions to no one.<\/p>\n

There were so many moments in the film that could\u2019ve been aided with some epic musical thematic scoring, but all we get are rinky-tink sprinkles of orchestration.\u00a0 Come on, gimme a melody!\u00a0 (Ah, sure… I know… it\u2019s not that kind of show…)\u00a0 I prefer a John Powell How to Train Your Dragon<\/em> sort of score.<\/p>\n

Another thing that annoyed me was the whole idea of children needing to \u201cbelieve.\u201d\u00a0 The problem with belief being a force of good in and of itself is that it\u2019s too vague.\u00a0 Belief in what?\u00a0 Belief in Santa Clause?\u00a0 Belief in wonder?\u00a0 It’s too vague for anything primal to be at stake.\u00a0 Fear is set up as the opposing force, but belief and fear are not opposites.\u00a0 You have to believe in something to fear it, after all.\u00a0 What is the opposite of fear?\u00a0 That<\/em> should have been the force of good.\u00a0 (Of course, fear is also a rather vague force.\u00a0 Fear of what?)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a little girl in the movie with disgusting messed up hair.\u00a0 Is that supposed to be cute?\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s gross.\u00a0 Take a shower and brush your hair.<\/p>\n

Overall, many scenes felt far too rushed.\u00a0 I really wanted to see some slower contemplative moments, with perhaps characters casually playing around with or using their powers or something.\u00a0 I wanted to get a feeling for what these characters and their worlds were like in their off-time.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to feel a world with the little things.\u00a0 Being constantly over the top seems to be an American habit.\u00a0 But when everything is over the top, nothing is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw the latest animated feature from DreamWorks recently, Rise of the Guardians, and I had the theater to myself, woohoo!\u00a0 Here are my thoughts.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re spoiler free.\u00a0 I can\u2019t promise, though. The movie tells the tale of the mythical Jack Frost, who is summoned to become a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[99],"tags":[473],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-pw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1895,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}