Legend of the Guardians: The Owl of Ga'Hoole is a new movie from Warner Brothers, from the creators of Happy Feet, it is also a bird movie and based on books by the Gaurdians of Ga'Hoole. I wanted to see the movie because it looked beautiful and it indeed is beautiful, it is immaculate. It is directed by Zack Snyder, best known for 300 and Watchmen, and he does a decent job, sometimes the camera work gets a lot live-actiony than an animated tale and sometimes they do that freeze-frame Matrix thingy he did in 300 and Watchmen. It tells the story of Soren, a young owl and his brother, are kidnapped by bigger owls and are made slaves. Owlets are hypnotized, 'moon blinked' by the moon and are forced to collect metal fragments from other owls' regurgitated pellets. Soren's brother Kludd (True Blood's Ryan Kwanten) separates himself from him and ends up betraying him and committing some pretty unforgivable things. Soren goes on a journey to look for the Guardians and they help save the day against the 'pure ones' and Metal Beak.This movie is not for young children, there are moments that are kinda scary for them. I love that they kept Australian and English actors for the voices, it gives it authenticity. But the strange names are hard to hear and grasp and the movie needs you to pay attention, which is hard to do with a lot of kids talking through it. Also, the pace is way too fast, I didn't read the books but you could tell they were squeezing a lot into it. I did research and in fact, it is 3 books squeezed into one. Helen Miren plays the villainess, wife to the main villain Metal Beak and she does a great job, there is even some tension between her and Kludd. The movie is deliciously dark, it reminds me of The Secret of Nhim, which was about mice, and had to deal with magic, societies and alchemy.
Spoilers:
In fact, the main villain Metal Beak in the movie is actually Kludd in the books. Bascially the character of Kludd has been split into two characters for the movie. So they moved a lot of things and re-purposed things and got rid of some characters. But there are lovable characters and understandable stuff. But even without reading the book, I felt they could have trimmed some things. And it turns out they did. wow.
