fbpx

Rise of the Guardians

When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.
<%%item_is_not_adult%%

Credits: TheMovieDb.

Film Cast:

  • Jack Frost (voice): Chris Pine
  • North (voice): Alec Baldwin
  • Pitch (voice): Jude Law
  • Tooth (voice): Isla Fisher
  • E. Aster Bunnymund (voice): Hugh Jackman
  • Jamie (voice): Dakota Goyo
  • British Girl (voice): Isabella Blake-Thomas
  • Monty (voice): Jacob Bertrand
  • Caleb (voice): Khamani Griffin
  • Claude (voice): Kamil McFadden
  • Sophie Bennett (voice): Georgie Grieve
  • Jamie’s Mom / Jack’s Mother (voice): Emily Nordwind
  • Pippa / Jack’s Sister (voice): Olivia Mattingly
  • Cupcake (voice): Dominique Grund
  • Burgess Pedestrian (voice): April Lawrence
  • Burgess Dog Walker (voice): Ryan Crego
  • Child (voice): George Anthony Anisimow
  • Burgess Pedestrian #2 (voice): Peter Ramsey
  • British Boy (voice): Stuart Allan
  • Yeti (voice): Rich Dietl

Film Crew:

  • Orchestrator: Alexandre Desplat
  • Casting: Leslee Feldman
  • Executive Producer: Guillermo del Toro
  • Sound Effects Editor: Roland N. Thai
  • Screenplay: David Lindsay-Abaire
  • Producer: Christina Steinberg
  • Executive Producer: Michael Siegel
  • Orchestrator: Conrad Pope
  • Associate Producer: Cameron Stevning
  • CG Supervisor: David C. Lawson
  • Animation: Kevin Andrus
  • Animation: Chris Bancroft
  • Associate Editor: C.K. Horness
  • Novel: William Joyce
  • Editor: Joyce Arrastia
  • Thanks: Dale Carman
  • Executive In Charge Of Post Production: James Beshears
  • Director: Peter Ramsey
  • ADR Voice Casting: Liza de Weerd
  • ADR Voice Casting: Barbara Harris
  • Original Music Composer: Michael Allen
  • Producer: Nancy Bernstein
  • Production Coordinator: Samantha Finkler
  • Production Supervisor: Spencer Filichia
  • Foley: John Roesch
  • Animation: Tim Watts
  • Lead Animator: Pierre Perifel
  • Animation: Julien Bocabeille
  • First Assistant Editor: Vivek ‘Vic’ Sharma
  • Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Andy Nelson
  • Sound Effects Editor: Paul Berolzheimer
  • Supervising Sound Editor: Richard King
  • Production Supervisor: April Lawrence
  • Casting: Christi Soper
  • VFX Artist: Markus Burki
  • Music Editor: Joe E. Rand
  • Foley: Alyson Dee Moore
  • Color Timer: Harry Muller
  • Dialogue Editor: Jessica Gallavan
  • Sound Re-Recording Mixer: James Bolt
  • Visual Effects Supervisor: David Prescott
  • Associate Producer: Arin Finger
  • Animation: Julie Nelson
  • Foley: Kyle Rochlin
  • ADR & Dubbing: Tighe Sheldon
  • Animation: Jean-Francois Rey
  • Art Department Manager: Simon Rodgers
  • Layout: Kendra Vander Vliet
  • First Assistant Sound Editor: Andrew Bock
  • First Assistant Sound Editor: Linda Yeaney
  • Visual Development: Shane Prigmore
  • Art Department Manager: Chris Appelhans
  • Sound Recordist: Tom Lalley
  • Animation: Peer Lemmers
  • Foley: Mary Jo Lang
  • Animation: Eric Lees
  • Animation: Laurent Caneiro
  • VFX Artist: Ty Thomson
  • Character Designer: Takao Noguchi
  • Lighting Supervisor: Betsy Nofsinger
  • Production Manager: Ryan Harris
  • Animation: Mariko Hoshi
  • Animation Department Coordinator: Ashima Taneja Arora
  • Additional Editing: Michael Andrews
  • Additional Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Blake Collins
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Scott Chapin
  • Lighting Artist: Clint Colver
  • Software Engineer: Brendan Duncan
  • Conceptual Design: Christian Scheurer
  • Lighting Artist: Matthieu Grospiron
  • Executive In Charge Of Production: Bonnie Lemon
  • Production Supervisor: Camille Leganza
  • Lead Animator: David Paté
  • VFX Artist: Mark Theriault
  • Assistant Editor: David M. Poole
  • Art Department Coordinator: Brandon Holmes
  • Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Jules Woods
  • Animation: Jason Anastas
  • Animation: Joe Bowers
  • Lead Animator: Bob Davies
  • Animation: Irene Parkins
  • Animation: Theodore Anthony Lee Ty
  • Lighting Supervisor: Annmarie Koenig
  • Animation: Benjamin Willis
  • Casting Assistant: Mollie Gamo
  • ADR & Dubbing: Diego Ruiz
  • ADR & Dubbing: Carlos Sotolongo
  • Creature Technical Director: Andrew Anderson
  • Associate Producer: Tom Jacomb
  • Animation Supervisor: Brendan O’Connor
  • Visual Effects: Ji Hyun Yoon
  • Production Supervisor: Debbie G. Yu
  • Animation: Manuel Aparicio
  • Animation: Kenny Chung
  • Creature Technical Director: Kevin Rodgers
  • Executive In Charge Of Production: Beth Hofer
  • Lighting Supervisor: Susan Hayden
  • Systems Administrators & Support: John O’Sullivan
  • Animation: Mike Stern
  • Animation: Joe Sandstrom
  • Production Coordinator: Steph Gortz
  • Lighting Artist: Jonathan Fletcher Moore
  • VFX Artist: Zubin Wadia
  • Animation: David Torres
  • Lighting Artist: Dorien Gunnels
  • Lighting Artist: Linhan Li
  • Animation: Patrick Bonneau
  • ADR & Dubbing: Roy Latham
  • Thanks: Kevin Althans
  • Thanks: Frank Pittenger
  • Thanks: Mike Roy
  • Production Design: Patrick Marc Hanenberger
  • Art Direction: Max Boas
  • Production Accountant: Betty Tom
  • Lead Animator: Steven Hornby
  • Lead Animator: Philippe Le Brun
  • Lead Animator: Antony Gray
  • Animation: Manuel Almela
  • Animation: Adam Dotson
  • Animation: W. Jacob Gardner
  • Animation: Steven Pierre Gordon
  • Animation: Tomoyuki Harashima
  • Animation: Martin P. Hopkins
  • Animation: Rodrigo Huerta
  • Animation: Leif Jeffers
  • Animation: Tommie Lofqvist
  • Animation: Tyler Phillips
  • Animation: Antonin Plante
  • Animation: Ron Pucherelli
  • Animation: Marco Regina
  • Animation: Jalil Sadool
  • Animation: Henry G. Sanchez
  • Animation: Juan Pablo Sans
  • Animation: Tal Shwarzman
  • Animation: Ares Deveaux
  • Animation: Andrew Harkins
  • Art Department Coordinator: Jake Isaacs
  • Assistant Editor: Christine Lojko Haslett
  • Casting Assistant: Brittany Cope
  • Creature Technical Director: Alena Bejenarou
  • Creature Technical Director: Stephen Candell
  • Creature Technical Director: Martin Costello
  • Creature Technical Director: David Drell
  • Creature Technical Director: Valentina Ercolani
  • Creature Technical Director: Li-Lian Ku
  • Creature Technical Director: Wade Ryer
  • Creature Technical Director: Gaurav Shenai
  • Creature Technical Director: Javier Solsona
  • Creature Technical Director: Igor Stefanovic
  • Creature Technical Director: Michael Leon Ware
  • Creature Technical Director: Won Young Byun
  • Creature Technical Director: Yukinori Inagaki
  • Creature Technical Director: Davide La Sala
  • Concept Artist: Daniel McGraw
  • Visual Development: Rachel Tiep-Daniels
  • Digital Compositors: Nishok Alagesan
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Balaji Alahari
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Glenn Lamb
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Daniel Rich
  • Finance: Vicki Hunter
  • Finance: Ariga Parseghian
  • Finance: Terri Anderson
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Jemson Montefalcon
  • Lead Animator: Alexis Wanneroy
  • Lighting Artist: Aneel Ramanath
  • Lighting Artist: Ashin Ashroff
  • Lighting Artist: Javed Iqbal Shaikh
  • Lighting Artist: Sharanya Viswamani
  • Lighting Artist: Adarsh Abraham
  • Lighting Artist: Kirsten Drummond
  • Lighting Artist: Kevin Edwards
  • Lighting Artist: Julien Forest
  • Lighting Artist: Oth Khotsimeuang
  • Lighting Artist: Matthew Kiefer
  • Lighting Artist: Soo Kyung Kim
  • Lighting Artist: Jennifer Leigh King
  • Lighting Artist: Nitin Punchail
  • Lighting Artist: Afonso Salcedo
  • Lighting Artist: Hannah Sherman
  • Lighting Artist: Jung Jin Song
  • Lighting Artist: Amy Rebecca Tucker
  • Lighting Artist: Emily Yi
  • Lighting Artist: Dennis Recchia
  • Lighting Supervisor: Sonja Burchard
  • Lighting Supervisor: Archie Donato
  • Mix Technician: Tom Burns
  • Modeling: Ki Jong Hong
  • Modeling: Vaibhav Shah
  • Score Engineer: Andrew Dudman
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Shawn Bohonos
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Dave Dinsmore
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Dj Downey
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Alireza Estakhrian
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Othieno Okong’o
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Julio C. Talavera
  • Post Production Assistant: Alex Cardullo
  • Post Production Assistant: Chris Hewitt
  • Post Production Supervisor: David Farley
  • Production Accountant: Jacquelyn Robbins
  • Editorial Production Assistant: Gustav Lindquist
  • Production Coordinator: Swetha Madhavan
  • VFX Production Coordinator: Rafael Garrido
  • Production Coordinator: Nandhini Giri
  • Production Coordinator: Loni J. Albertson
  • Production Coordinator: Lauren Blackshear
  • Production Coordinator: Alyson Blume
  • Production Coordinator: Deepak Kumar
  • Production Coordinator: Tim Kwan
  • Production Coordinator: Andrew Marshel
  • Production Coordinator: Kristen Murtha
  • Production Coordinator: Kelvin J. Padfield
  • Production Coordinator: Renae Radford
  • Production Coordinator: Lynelle Saunders
  • Production Coordinator: Cathy Sitzes
  • Production Coordinator: Joanna Lynne Smith
  • Production Coordinator: Susan Thampi
  • Production Coordinator: Curtis W. Thompson
  • Production Supervisor: Alex Loots
  • Production Supervisor: Kelly Matthews
  • Production Supervisor: Peter McCown
  • Production Supervisor: Mary M. Quinn
  • Production Supervisor: Rachnatp
  • Production Supervisor: Cindy Azada Whitman
  • Production Supervisor: Sean Cole
  • Production Supervisor: Kara Oropallo
  • Production Supervisor: Laura Hofmann
  • Animation Supervisor: Melissa Beery
  • Publicist: David Hail
  • Software Engineer: Malik Coates
  • Software Engineer: Morgwn McCarty
  • Software Engineer: Jennifer Smith
  • Software Engineer: Brent Villalobos
  • Software Engineer: Margaret A. Decker
  • Visual Development: Darren Webb
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Rain Angeles
  • Systems Administrators & Support: Greg Gibson
  • Title Designer: Ariandy Chandra
  • Visual Development: Zhaoping Wei
  • Visual Effects: Scott Cegielski
  • Visual Effects: Zach Glynn
  • Visual Effects: Shaun Graham
  • Visual Effects: Kyle Maxwell
  • Visual Effects: Devank Patel
  • Visual Effects: Jason Rickwald
  • Visual Effects: Ben Sutherland
  • VFX Artist: Evrim Akyilmaz
  • VFX Artist: Benjamin Andersen
  • VFX Artist: Dustin Anderson
  • VFX Artist: Shinsaku Arima
  • VFX Artist: Greg Beckman
  • VFX Artist: N. Joseph Burnette
  • VFX Artist: Wes Chilton
  • VFX Artist: Stephen Timothy Cooney
  • VFX Artist: Tyson Erze
  • VFX Artist: Terry Kaleas
  • VFX Artist: Robert Kopinsky
  • VFX Artist: Jaemin Lee
  • VFX Artist: Mark Newport
  • VFX Artist: Heribert Raab
  • VFX Artist: Lana Chen Sun
  • VFX Artist: Baptiste Van Opstal
  • VFX Artist: Brian Walters
  • VFX Artist: Katie Van Maanen
  • Visual Effects Technical Director: Alessandro Pepe
  • Cinematography: Damon O’Beirne

Movie Reviews:

  • Andres Gomez: Enjoying story inspired in 4 of the major “legends” for kids in the anglosaxon culture.

    Great animation and development of characters for a simple and clean story with the needed touches of humor and action.

  • Matt Golden: The Sandman. The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy. Santa Claus. You know their names. But did you know that they were secretly the guardians of childhood, brought together by the Man in the Moon as a sort of folkloric Avengers? Well, now you do.

    They don’t seem to have a lot to do however (aside from their respective day jobs, of course), until their long-vanquished nemesis The Bogeyman returns to threaten the world. To shore up their ranks, the Moon summons forth another figure of legend: the plucky winter sprite Jack Frost. Jack and the Bogeyman share a common problem: they’re not believed in anymore, and have faded from public view. But Bogey has found a way to regain his power, and this spells doom for the other Guardians (and, presumably, childhood innocence).

    It’s a decidedly high-concept start, as most CGI fare tends to be, based on an in-progress series of books by writer and filmmaker William Joyce (who wrote and directed the utterly charming, Academy Award-winning short animation The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which I can’t recommend highly enough; bring tissues). There’s some mucking-about with the established tropes: each of the Guardians have different names (North, Bunnymund, Toothiana, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Pitch Black), and visits to each of their strongholds reveal Yetis do the day-to-day work at the North Pole (elves are instead well-meaning but useless idiots) and Easter eggs are grown like flowers, among other revelations. I’m sure you can discern how everything turns out in the end. Surprises aren’t legion in films of this type; like any fairy tale, it’s all in the telling.

    There are a few issues with the film, and they’re mostly structural: normally I’m not one to carp about world-building (and this is clearly a film with eyes set on a sequel), but the first half seemed to drag on a bit too long for me. These are archetypal characters; one of the reasons they’re used is so that we get the idea at the merest glance. The second is that the villain of the piece, Pitch, feels like a missed opportunity. He’s a mite over-exposed and a bit too solid. This is, after all, the Bogeyman. Employing a bit more of the Jaws principle and amping up the menace and threat that he poses may have instilled more fear in the youngest audience members, but how many of us were forever traumatized by the flying monkeys of Oz, or Willy Wonka’s psychedelic tunnel ride? Kids today have it easy.

    Quibbles with the building blocks aside, the execution of what’s there is sterling. Character designs are unique and witty, from the Australian warrior rabbit (Hugh Jackman) to the silent, squishy Sandman to the tattooed, inexplicably Russian Father Christmas. Jack Frost, whose design seems informed by the classic Rankin & Bass stop-motion film, is well-voiced by latter-day Star Trek captain Chris Pine, and Alec Baldwin brings his gravelly voice to bear with a hearty bombast on the sword-wielding Cyrillic Santa. Jude Law is seductively mischievous with his turn as Pitch, and Isla Fisher is a bundle of nervous energy as the flighty, OCD Tooth Fairy.

    The film itself is gorgeous, with cinematographer extraordinaire Roger Deakins serving as visual consultant (other animated films for which he’s performed this role are Rango, How to Train Your Dragon, and Wall-E; I think that’s enough to say if you’re making an animated film, bring him on). I can’t speak for the depth of the 3D-ification, but rather than suffer through a dim, dull image, you’d be better served to witness the full, gorgeous colors of each of the Guardians’ realms.

    Guardians is a cut above most animated fare, but with a bit more tweaking (and perhaps more involvement from executive producers Joyce and Guillermo del Toro, each of whom have immaculate fairy-tale credentials), it could have been a classic. The film we have, though, is an enjoyable ride, even if it doesn’t have the staying power of its legendary characters.

  • Erin Taylor: A delightful movie for children and families. Interesting twists on some of the figures of childhood, however, they are very likable characters. The Story is well thought out and pulls you in, I actually felt concerned that good would not triumph over evil. Great ending, but it kinda leaves you wanting more. Another Dreamworks hit, sure to entertain the family.
  • Gimly: Where were the owls again?

    _Final rating:★★ – Definitely not for me, but I sort of get the appeal._

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Movie Reviews. TV Coverage. Trailers. Film Festivals.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading