Taglines: On his way to finding a legend…he will become one.
Acclaimed filmmaker Zack Snyder makes his animation debut with the fantasy family adventure “Guardians of Ga’Hoole,” based on the beloved books by Kathryn Lasky. The film follows Soren, a young owl enthralled by his father’s epic stories of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, a mythic band of winged warriors who had fought a great battle to save all of owlkind from the evil Pure Ones.
While Soren dreams of someday joining his heroes, his older brother, Kludd, scoffs at the notion, and yearns to hunt, fly and steal his father’s favor from his younger sibling. But Kludd’s jealousy has terrible consequences–causing both owlets to fall from their treetop home and right into the talons of the Pure Ones. Now it is up to Soren to make a daring escape with the help of other brave young owls.
Together they soar across the sea and through the mist to find the Great Tree, home of the legendary Guardians of Ga’Hoole–Soren’s only hope of defeating the Pure Ones and saving the owl kingdoms. Young owlet Soren embarks on a quest to follow his dreams…only to discover they’re real. Stepping into the legend that he’s faithfully followed through his father’s nest-time stories, he becomes a crucial part of the next chapter in the epic tales.
Now on a true hero’s journey of self-discovery, young Soren and his friends join their mentors in an action-packed battle against the evil Pure Ones to protect not only their freedom, but the very existence of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, who have sworn an oath to mend the broken, make strong the weak, and vanquish evil.
“Isn’t it every kid’s fantasy to become a character in his or her favorite story?” director Zack Snyder asks. “In our film, it’s a young owl who wants to find these legendary warrior owls that have been part of his personal mythology since he was born. And when the stories actually turn out to be true, it’s very powerful.”
In “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” Snyder and the gifted creative team at Animal Logic sought to open a window into a world that hasn’t been seen before, with mythic environments and expansive terrains like nothing they’d ever imagined, and owls so wonderfully realized that you almost forget they’re not real.
“Zack brings a visual language to his movies that is distinctive, and so do we at Animal Logic, so the marriage between Zack’s vision and our vision was easy right from the get-go,” says the film’s producer, Animal Logic CEO Zareh Nalbandian.
Drawing from his experience on the Academy Award®-winning “Happy Feet,” Nalbandian assembled a crew of more than 500 digital professionals, including a team of computer animation specialists, to bring “Legend of the Guardians” from the page to the screen, with the added dimension of a 3D film.
“We don’t think about our movies as animated,” he continues, “we think of them as movies; Zack didn’t come on board to make an animated movie, he came to make a great action fantasy adventure, tracking a hero’s journey, which happened to be in an animated world. It was about creating a visual feast for audiences that would be unique.”
In addition to the challenge of taking on his first entirely computer-generated project, Snyder, whose previous work includes the epic action films “300” and “Watchmen,” found that his motivation for making this particular story hit close to home. “I know it sounds cliché,” the director admits, “but my kids are always saying to me, ‘Dad, when are you gonna make a movie we can see?’ And the chance to work with the animators at Animal Logic really appealed to me; there were moments in ‘Happy Feet’ that I found artistically breathtaking. So when I saw their initial ‘Guardians’ artwork, and then read he stories of Soren and his friends on this incredible quest, I looked at it as a perfect opportunity to bring my own sensibilities to a family film.”
“Both Zack and I loved the notion of this young boy—who just happens to be an owl in an owl world—learning to believe in himself and in something bigger than himself,” executive producer Deborah Snyder says. “He has to battle the odds, and in doing so, becomes the owl kingdom’s only hope for survival. We felt it was a story we would love to bring to the screen.”
The filmmakers first came upon the tales of these heroic owls when executive producer Lionel Wigram discovered the popular Guardians of Ga’Hoole series of 15 books by American author Kathryn Lasky. Recognizing their cinematic potential, Wigram urged executive producer Donald De Line to read them.
“I found the books completely enchanting,” De Line says. “They tackle traditional themes—good versus evil, believing in your dreams and becoming anything you want to be—all while telling a great adventure story. The Guardians of Ga’Hoole reminded me of the Knights of the Round Table.”
Actress Helen Mirren, who takes a rare turn as a villain, says, “I loved the classic, archetypal personalities of the characters and the fact that the story is set in the animal kingdom. While it is highly entertaining, it isn’t sentimentalized, and still conveys a deep sense of morality.”
Wigram asserts, “We wanted to capture the feeling of the books and give the movie the same sense and tone of a grand adventure, something that would take on a life of its own. That is what Zack does in his work and what made him such an exciting choice for this picture.”
Jim Sturgess, who voices Soren, states, “Zack loves classic storytelling and is famous for putting together amazing visual sequences, so I knew from the start that this had the potential to be really stunning.”
“While some of his films may deal with dark material, Zack has a very child-like sense of wonder,” De Line observes. “He is also a real artist, and a whole different side of his talent comes through in this movie. Big action, creatures that fly through the air, huge battle scenes—combine all of those things with 3D animation in 3D and he’s a kid in a candy store.”
“In taking this adventure from the ground to the air and across the sea, there was no better way to capture the scope of this expedition than to make it in 3D, and no medium lends itself better to 3D than computer animation,” Snyder affirms.
Legend of The Guardians (2010)
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Emilie de Ravin, Helen Mirren, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Abbie Cornish, Essie Davis, Sacha Horler, Anthony LaPaglia, Miriam Margolyes, Richard Roxburgh, Deborra-Lee Furness
Screenplay by: John Orloff, John Collee, Kathryn Lasky
Production Design by: Simon Whiteley
Film Editing by: David Burrows
Art Direction by: Grant Freckelton
Music by: David Hirschfelder
MPAA Rating: PG for some sequences of scary action.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: September 24, 2010
