Like Owls? Like Owls In Helmets? Like Australian Owls in Helmets? No? Well that's probably for the best.
Legends of the Guardians has one serious problem, it’s trying to do way too much at once. Imagine if Peter Jackson had attempted to cram all three Lord of the Rings books into one film and the mess that would have been the result. Well that’s pretty much what has been attempted in Legends of the Guardians, The Owls of Ga’Hoole, and it certainly shows.
Legends of the Guardians, follows Soren, a fledgling Owl, who, along with his brother Klud, are kidnapped by the 'pure ones', an old enemy once defeated by the mystical ‘Owls of Ga’hoole. They are soon are separated and Soren is forced to work while his brother is inculcated into a Hilter youth-esque scheme to become a ‘pure one’ himself. Soon enough, Soren escapes the pure ones and is instructed to warn to owls of Ga’hoole of the growing danger. After finding them, not all that difficultly for a mystical tribe of Owls, he warns them of the oncoming ‘pure one’ menace;Owl themed conflict ensues. There is obviously more to the story, and though I don’t want to ruin anything, there’s nothing here that will surprise you.
Issues always arise when making a film from a novel. Generally, there is just too much story stuff that cannot be portrayed effectively through the short length of films (compared to novels at least), and as a result, some things inevitably get the chop. With Legends of the Guardians, Zack Snyder (Director) takes this problem much further, attempting to cram three books into one feature length film. The result is a story that has so many plot points to get through, and so many characters to introduce, that everything feels rushed, and the characters have little time to propagate. This is most notably seen in the owl’s ‘long’ journey as they search for the legendary Owls of Ga’hoole. This part, though ostensibly an ‘epic’ journey, because of the restrictions of time, is actually over very quickly, and there is little feeling of excitement or achievement as Soren and his friends seem to have gone through little trial to find the magical helmet-wearing owls of Ga’hoole. In the end this section is neither interesting nor exciting.
Once Soren and his friends arrive at the ‘Great Tree’ where the Owls of Ga’Hoole live, similar issues arise. There seems like there is almost no time given to establish the characters here, and much of Soren’s actions are played out through montages over incredibly terrible music (like much of the soundtrack). It’s as if they shot plenty of scenes around the great tree, with Soren and his friends learning about it and being introduced and beginning to train in the ‘different trades’ of the tree, and then they decided that they didn’t have enough time for all that so they cut it all up into bits and just threw it together into long boring montages which helps the story progress, though in a really lazy way. This is no better than those parts from the Last Airbender where huge reams of the story were explained away with brief narration.
Hence, this leaves no time to become attached to any the Ga’hoole Owls and in consequence, in latter periods when these owls are in danger, I felt almost no connection to them because I only vaguely knew who they were. These sections are also incredibly dull and stilt the action.
Overall, the story just felt horribly rushed and by the end I felt neither an attachment to the characters, interested in the story, or felt that anything had developed at all.
Though you could probably place the blame for the failure of the characters upon those voicing them, I felt that there was nothing aggressively bad with any of the voice acting, apart from Soren’s snake babysitter(?), Mrs P, who was just plain annoying. Really, there was little chance of these actors and actresses overcoming the restrictions of the plot layout.
Obviously the one saving grace is the animation, which looks fantastic. The Owl Models are incredibly detailed, as well as the environments, and the fast passed action always looks great, when it comes, especially with the 300esque slow motion that Zack Snyder seems so taken by. In the end though, great visuals can never overwrite such crucial plot deficiencies as those in Legends of the Guardians.
In the end, it seems as if, if done right, this novel adaptation could have been a lot better. It seemed to have all the right ingredients, a interesting premise (Owls in helmets?), a plot from a popular and acclaimed young adult series, and great visuals. Perhaps if those making it had attempted to push the story over a sequence of films rather than just one, many of the above issues may have been solved. I guess they did not have the confidence to trilogize a new, lesser known property, not wanting three failures instead of just one, which seems sensible, but also rather fatalistic. Overall, there are so many other, better, animated films out there at the moment that there isn't really any reason to give this a look, unless you really do have a pressing love for helmet wearing Owls.
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