Sometimes, I just don't know what studio executives are thinking. When given the idea to turn a children's book series that isn't even very popular into a CG film, when exactly was it that someone said, "Hey, I know just the guy to direct this. Did you ever see 300? Zack Snyder would be perfect!" I have a feeling that these were the same executives who thought that that getting M. Night Shyamalan for this summer's atrocious The Last Airbender would be a stroke of brilliance. That all being said, Snyder was actually a very good choice for The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. I just kept waiting for Soren, the main owl, to scream "THIS! IS! GA'HOOLE!"
The reason that Zack Snyder makes for a surprisingly good director for a children's film is that Legend of the Guardians is unexpectedly dark, and not just because Snyder directed it. The Legend of the Guardians revolves around Soren, a naive young owl who gets kidnapped and taken to an orphanage/mine where "inferior" owls are brainwashed and used as slaves. Though he is of the "superior" race of owls, Soren is utterly repulsed, and he wants nothing to do with the place. He eventually escapes, befriends some unlikely misfits, and goes out in search for the legendary owls of Ga'Hoole so that they can help destroy this mine and the evil owls heading it. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done if I had to market this film. For all its cuteness (from the studio that brought you Happy Feet!), it is a tale of kidnapping, brainwashing, and enslavement. Characters die. Characters are betrayed. Scary bats make several screechy appearances. How could you possibly market this film?
Apparently, you can't. Legend of the Guardians cost an estimated $100,000,000 to produce, and as of the end of October it had only reached about $128,000,000 in total international gross. So, while it has made some money, I wouldn't expect Warner Brothers to be thinking about a sequel anytime soon (at least, not while it has the Batman and Harry Potter franchises to squeeze).
I may sound harsh on the studio executives, but I really mean it more as a compliment. I think they took a risk on this film, and for me and my wife, at the very least, it paid off. We both thought that this was a lovely movie, and to date it is the prettiest thing I've seen in 3D, making it the third film this year that I would recommend for the format (the former two being Resident Evil: Afterlife and Jackass 3D - how's that for company?). Feathers ruffle, rain drops smack against the owls with small, individual splashes, and the movement of all the animals never feels over-humanized. 3D seems to suit Snyder's stylistic approach; the surreal qualities of both mesh together into something that is, forgive the cliche, greater than the sum of its parts.
While Legend of the Guardians was incessantly pretty, its plot left something to be desired. My wife read the first book prior to the film's release and said that she only finished it because it was so short. There is nothing unusual here - boy gets kidnapped, boy meets evil empire, boy escapes with ragtag friends, boy finds rebels, boy fights evil empire - but it's almost as though the film tried to be both cute and dark at the same time, to a mixed effect. The protagonists were likeable, the antagonists detestable, but nothing really stood out that didn't have to do with the stunning visuals (the whole movie is worth seeing just for the "flying through the storm" sequence). It's little wonder that the film scored a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. Once you peel yourself away from the gorgeous visuals, you're left with a plot that is so middling, so run-of-the-mill, that you cannot help but feel the slump that inevitably follows. Hey, that sounds an awful lot like Avatar, doesn't it? Legend of the Guardians was far prettier, though, and it only cost a third of Avatar's budget, so as far as I'm concerned, the owls beat the blue kitties, hands (wings, paws, whatever) down.
There are 15-20 books in the series (depending on whether or not you count "The Lost Tales" or the "Wolves of the Beyond" trilogy), and the movie covers the first three or so, leaving the studio plenty of room for sequels if it so wishes. I have no earthly idea what they'll do, but I would not be even remotely surprised if they followed in the path of 2007's super-blah The Golden Compass and simply decided not to try for another.
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