Rise of the Guardians



Rise of the Guardians is an animated feature film based on the popular William Joyce book series titled  The Guardians of Childhood . North, aka Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), Jack Frost  (Chris Pine),  Bunnymund , aka the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), and  Sandman  must band together and stop  Pitch , aka the Boogeyman (Jude Law), from plunging the world into perpetual fear and darkness. The movie is set about 200 years after the book series. The official site describes the plot as follows:

Plot
The spirit of winter, Jack Frost, describes how he came to be hundreds of years ago, lifted from the ice by the Man in the Moon, and has been invisible ever since because people don't believe in him. At the North Pole, North, better known as Santa Claus, is alerted that  Pitch , the Bogeyman, has returned and is threatening childhood with fear. After summoning fellow Guardians the Tooth Fairy ( Tooth ), the Easter Bunny (E. Aster Bunnymund ) and the  Sandman  (Sandy), North learns from the Man in the Moon that they are to induct Jack as their new member. Jack is brought 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.

At Tooth's castle, the team discovers that Pitch has attacked, taken all the children's teeth, the childhood memories stored in them, and all but one of Tooth's mini fairies, Baby Tooth, whom Jack saves. Pitch declares his intention to destroy children's faith in the Guardians in revenge for his own disbelieved-in state, beginning with Tooth, who immediately begins weakening as children stop believing in her. 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. A young boy named Jamie  is delighted to discover them in his room, as he believes in all of them except Jack, which renders Jack still invisible. Pitch learns of the Guardians' resistance and attacks Jack and Sandy; despite Jack's great efforts to save him, Sandy is overwhelmed by Pitch and seemingly destroyed.

The dejected Guardians next rally by helping Bunnymund  prepare his eggs for Easter to keep children's belief strong. Although slightly complicated by the intrusion of Jamie's toddler sister, Sophie, the operation goes smoothly through to the distribution stage. Jack takes 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 attacks Bunnymund's domain, ruining the Easter-egg distribution and shattering children's faith in the Easter Bunny.

The Guardians' spirit broken, a despondent Jack departs in disgrace to Antarctica. There, Pitch tempts him to join forces, but Jack again refuses, as he wants to be loved, not feared. In response, Pitch reveals he has 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 convinces Jack to unlock his memories, which reveal he was a mortal boy who died saving his sister from falling through ice, and because of that heroism was changed into a winter spirit and chosen as a Guardian by the Man in the Moon. Inspired at this revelation, Jack is able to restore his staff and his power. The Guardians and Pitch learn there is only one believing child left: 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 and weakened 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, as well as in Jack Frost. Pitch is taken down by his own fear and is forced back into his lair.

At this victory, Jack is finally sworn in as a Guardian and resolves to protect the world's children with his new friends.

Production
In 2005, William Joyce  and Reel FX launched a joint venture, Aimesworth Amusements,| [4]  to produce CG-animated feature films,| [5]  one of which was set to be The Guardians of Childhood, based on the Joyce's idea.| [6]  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,| [6]  and served as an inspiration for the film.| [7]

Early in 2008, Joyce sold the film rights to DreamWorks Animation,| [8] after the studio assured him it would respect his vision for the characters and that he would be involved with the creative process.| [9]  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.| [10]  Joyce acted as a co-director for the first few years, but left this position after the death of his daughter Mary Katherine,| [8]  who died of brain tumor.| [9]  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.| [11]  As with some previous DreamWorks films, Guillermo del Toro came on board as an executive producer. Present almost from the beginning,| [12] he was able to help shape the story, character design, theme and structure of the film.| [13]  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."| [12]  The final title, Rise of the Guardians was announced in early 2011, along with the first cast.| [14]

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.| [15] The film contains a lot of special effects, particularly the volumetric particles for depicting Sandman and Pitch.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15">| [16]  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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16">| [17]

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."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-A113Animation_7-2">| [8] 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,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-THRAnalysis_8-2">| [9] as well a song, "Still Dream," sung over the end credits.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-DeadlineAFI_17-0">| [18]

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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-BOM2_18-0">| [19] Monsters University was then pushed to June 21, 2013, with Wreck-It Ralph taking its place.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-19">| [20]

Release
Rise of the Guardians had its premiere on October 10, 2012, at The Mill Valley Film Festival in Mill Valley, California,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-mill_20-0">| [21] followed by the international premiere at The International Rome Film Festival on November 13, 2012.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Rome_21-0">| [22]  <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22">| [23]  Under distribution by Paramount Pictures, the film was released on November 21, 2012, in American theaters.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-BOM2_18-1">| [19]  Digitally re-mastered into IMAX 3D, it was shown in limited international and domestic IMAX theaters.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-23">| [24]  It was the second film released in the firm Barco's Auro 11.1 3D audio format, after Red Tails.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-24">| [25]  The film was also shown in Dolby Atmos, a surround sound technology introduced in 2012.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-25">| [26]  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 with The Croods.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-20thFox_26-0">| [27]

Home media
Rise of the Guardians is scheduled to be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D on March 12, 2013.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-27">| [28]

Critical response
Rise of the Guardians received generally positive reviews from critics. Based on 140 reviews, the film holds a rating of 74% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.5/10. 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."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-28">| [29] 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."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Metacritic_29-0">| [30]  The film earned an "A" from audiences polled by CinemaScore.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-30">| [31]

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a lively but derivative 3D storybook spree for some unlikely action heroes."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-THRReview_6-1">| [7] 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."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-31">| [32]

Box office
As of January 31, 2013, Rise of the Guardians has grossed $100,260,947 in North America, and $194,500,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $294,760,947.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-32">| [33]

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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-33">| [34]

Accolades
The Rome Film Fes­ti­val and Vanity Fair magazine awarded the new Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence in November 2012 to Rise of the Guardians.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Rome_21-1">| [22] The film also received the Hollywood Ani­ma­tion Award at the 16th Annual Hollywood Film Festival, held on October 22, 2012.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-34">| [35]

Sequel
The filmmakers have stated that if the film meets their expectations, they would like to make a sequel.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-35">| [36]

Trailers


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