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Zeldi Reviews Legend of The Guardians Owls of Gahool

Zeldi Reviews:Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hool


[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Legendoftheguardians.jpg[/img]

This little gem was brought to us by Zack Snyder and the Studio that brought us happy feet. For those of you who don't know Snyder's last film was 300. You know, the movie that spawned a thousand memes. So is Ga'Hool 300 with Owls. Kind of.
Picture your standard fantasy movie, in which a young lad grows up hearing legends of mystical guardians of justice battling evil. Only to be kidnapped away by the same evil in those legends, and upon his escape learning the guardians are real as well. Eventually becoming one of those heroes and growing up to vanquish the evil. Throw in some owls and you have The Legend of the Guards: The Owls of Ga'Hool.(Rolls off the tongue doesn't it?)

Despite working from a commonly used fantasy plot structure LoGOoG, Lofowlg, LOG (how would you abbreviate that?) pulls it off rather well. Soren is a dreamer in direct contrast with his brother Kludd who is much more grounded in reality.(No you don't get a cookie for guessing who turns evil). Soren's favorite story is the Legend of the Guardian Owls of Ga'Hool, who defeated metalbeak and saved the owl kingdoms from the grips of the pure ones. The two young brothers have yet to learn how to fly, but Soren's skill in branch hopping causes his brother to grow jealous. The resulting fight knocks both out of the tree, and into a whole new adventure. The plot is underwhelming and predictable, I only remembered half of the character names and their was a feeling of familiarity throughout the entire movie.

However if their is one thing the movie does right, it's tone. Just because this is a children's movie, don't assume it will be romanticized. There is one point in the movie where young Soren after receiving a dose of Guardian training believes he is ready to go off to war. His mentor does not stop him, in stead he encourages him to come along and die as talon fodder. Wow, I thought, this movie is actually trying to deliver a message. Yes, war is hell has been said a thousand times, but it does not detract from the reality of the message. The action scenes rarely hold anything back, owls are seen killing eachother, bloodless of course but their obviously dead. Violence does not make a movie mature, per say, but the violence is not excessive or over the top like in 300, it just works with Owls. The writing is good as well, if you can stand Owls delivering these Lords of the Rings-esque lines. The movie can be really dramatic when it wants to be, and constantly flips back and forth from light to dark toned. The humor is done well. The comedy relief are a hyperactive burrowing owl and a warrior poet duo, and they never get annoying. Other jokes are mostly lampshades, including a prophecy spouting echidna naming off the members of a five man band.

Now let's move to my favorite part of every story, the antagonist. Despite it's dark tone, Owls is pretty black and white. The closest it ever comes to gray is in the counter development of Soren and Kludd occurs. The Pure Ones are a group of warrior owls who believe in survival of the strong against all else, and are brainwashing those they deem weak to do their dirty work as they build a trap for the Guardians. They are led by Metal Beak, a vengeful tyrant who wants nothing more than to bring down the Guardians and allow the strong to rule. On the other hand The Guardians are a society of peace and love, who believe in protecting the weak and all that jazz. Soren and Kludd throw their lots in with opposite sides and eventually face off because of it. The movie could have done better to match the ideology and the tone, but it still works.

Strangely enough, my favorite character of the entire movie was Kludd. Yes, he turned into an evil bastard, but he's also the one I can relate to. The two brothers are the most developed of all the characters, and their different views collide in a final conflict. Really though, I found it easier to relate to Kludd. We all wish we could be dreamers like Soren, but most of us turn out cynics. Kludd realized that he was not as strong as his brother, that infuriated him. When darkness offered him the chance to get stronger, he took it. I half expected him to realize the error of his ways and try to find some sort of redemption. But no, burn in a fire it is. Now I've never read the books these movies were adapted off of, but I'm guessing that Kludd will return as a major antagonist in the future. On that hand I will race to the theatre for the sequel, because he makes a much more compelling antagonist then metal head, beak, Vader, whatever. My major problem with the villains was the flecks. What were they? Pieces of metal. Why would rats be chewing on metal? How did they paralyze the owls. Magnetism? Magic? It's probably explained in the books isn't it?

The movie itself adapted off of the first three books of [i]The Legend of the Guardians[/i] series. Now I've never read the book, but this movie has made me interested. I can see why compressing three two-hundredish paged books into a 90 minute movie would be difficult, but the film does not suffer too much for it. It never felt compressed, the entire film flows very nicely. I have been waiting until now to talk about the animation, because this is the part of the review where I throw off my critic cap and start gushing. The animation was beautiful. As good as, or even better than most pixar works. Feathers flowed in the wind, fight scenes were epically shot, fire, rain, claws were all explicitly detailed. Of course this being a Zack Snyder film it's full to the brim with Slow-Mo. It never gets annoying, but it's definitely noticeable. The voice acting is amazing, not a bad performance in the bunch. It helps to convey the mood of a film when the trader is being dragged away screaming having outlived his usefulness and you forget for a moment these are owls taking. The score is great done by. . . (Wikipedia)David Hirschfelder (born 18 November 1960) is an Australian film score composer and performer. Cool.

In the end Owls is an epically animated, epically scored, well-written film that is only held down by a lack-luster story. It's like the plot to a pokemon game, recycled a dozen times but there's still something special about it. I recommend you go see this, it's a great experience. My biggest complaint about the movie is that my mom kept bugging to explain minor plot-points throughout. I personally, am hoping on a sequel, but until then I suppose we can just read the books. Those things are supposed to be better than movies, or so I've heard.

[color=red]The name is Zeldi, with an I instead of an A because I am sooo creative. This was my first review, some feedback would be great. If you like me, I'll be back next week with Nowhere Boy. Yes I am a huge beetles fan, but aren't we all. [/color]