DreamWorks Animation assembled a team of legends for Rise of the Guardians. The 2012 film pulls Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman into one story, then hands it to Jack Frost, a newcomer with no memory and no believers. It is a lot of mythology to fit into 97 minutes, and the film spends much of that time explaining its own rules.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
Peter Ramsey Builds a Team of Legends
Peter Ramsey directed Rise of the Guardians, and David Lindsay-Abaire wrote the screenplay, working from William Joyce’s book series The Guardians of Childhood and his short film The Man in the Moon. The premise is a war over belief. Pitch Black, voiced by Jude Law, wants to engulf the world in darkness by turning children’s dreams into nightmares. North rallies his fellow Guardians to stop him.
The cast is stacked. Alec Baldwin voices North. Isla Fisher voices Tooth. Hugh Jackman voices Bunny. Chris Pine voices Jack Frost, the recruit at the center of it all.
The film premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 10, 2012, and Paramount Pictures released it in the United States on November 21.
Jack Frost Starts With Nothing
Jack emerges from a frozen pond with amnesia. He is invisible to the mortal realm. The Man in the Moon changed him but will not say why. Three centuries pass before North learns Pitch has returned, and the Guardians discover Jack has been chosen to join them.
Bunny kidnaps Jack and drags him to the North Pole. There, North explains that every Guardian has a “center,” something they foster in children. Jack does not know his own center and resists the call.
That resistance is the film’s best idea. A hero who does not want the job is more interesting than one who does, and Pine plays the doubt without whining about it.
Pitch Black Strikes Tooth’s Palace
North gets word from Toothiana that her palace is under attack. The Guardians and Jack drive Pitch off, but not before he kidnaps Tooth’s subordinate fairies and steals every tooth. Children’s belief in Tooth weakens.
Jack learns that each baby tooth holds the childhood memories of its owner. That could tell him who he was. The revelation gives him a reason to help Toothiana, and the Guardians set out to collect teeth from children themselves.
Pitch’s plan is simple and effective: cut off the belief that feeds each Guardian. The film understands that its villains win by subtraction, not by force.
Jamie Bennett Sees What Matters
On the tooth run, the Guardians visit Jamie Bennett, a boy still clinging to belief. He sees all of them except Jack. The scene sets up the film’s emotional payoff without overselling it.
Then the Nightmares attack on the way back to the North Pole. Sandy is killed. It is the one moment in Rise of the Guardians that lands with real weight, because the film has spent its first half making the Guardians look untouchable.
With Easter approaching, the team travels to Bunny’s Warren to help color eggs. A mysterious voice lures Jack into Pitch’s lair, where he finds his teeth. Pitch keeps him talking long enough for the Nightmares to destroy every Easter egg.
A 97-Minute Film With Too Many Errands
The structure starts to strain here. Rise of the Guardians has to introduce five Guardians, a villain, a mortal boy and a memory mystery inside 97 minutes, and it does so by running errands: the palace, the tooth run, the Warren, the lair.
- North, the Guardian who leads and keeps a center of wonder
- Tooth, the Guardian who collects teeth and the memories inside them
- Bunny, the Easter Bunny, whose eggs are the target of Pitch’s worst attack
- Sandy, the Sandman, killed by the Nightmares
- Jack Frost, the recruit with no center and no believers
Each one gets a scene and a function. None gets much room to breathe.
The Voice Cast Carries the Load
Baldwin gives North a bellow and a Russian accent. Jackman plays Bunny as a scrapper. Law makes Pitch silky and patient, which is the right read for a villain who works by waiting. Fisher’s Tooth talks fast and cares faster.
Pine has the hardest job. Jack is the audience’s way in, and he spends most of the film being told things he did not ask to know. Pine keeps him likable anyway.
“You better believe.”
That tagline is the whole thesis. The film is about belief as fuel, and it says so out loud more than once.
$306.9 Million Was Not Enough
Rise of the Guardians grossed $306.9 million worldwide against a budget of $145 million. The film was deemed a box-office failure, with an estimated $87 million loss reported after marketing and distribution costs. Reviews were mixed-to-positive. It was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.
The commercial story is the strangest part. A film with this cast, this premise and a November release should have done better, and the reported loss is the number that sits behind the film’s reputation as a disappointment.
Our Verdict on Rise of the Guardians
Rise of the Guardians is a good film that keeps tripping over its own ambition. The animation is clean, the voice work is strong, and the idea of belief as a resource that can be stolen is sharper than most family films bother to be. What holds it back is the pace. It races from set piece to set piece and never lets Jamie Bennett, or Jack’s amnesia, sit long enough to hurt.
The Sandman’s death is the proof. It is the best scene in the movie, and it works because the film finally slows down.
This is a 7.5 of 10. Worth watching, especially in November, and worth remembering that a $306.9 million gross can still be a loss.
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