Peter Ramsay’s animated film, 2012’s “Rise of the Guardians,” swept through that year’s holiday season, raked in a handful of money and quickly faded from public consciousness. It’s strange, because the film was perfectly fine. A whimsical, action-based reinterpretation of the Santa Claus myth, the film featured an impressive cast of voice actors including Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher and Jude Law. Regardless, it hasn’t become a norm for the holidays, and it appears that few households have “Rise of the Guardians” on regular rotation in their homes during the winter holidays.
“Rise of the Guardians” came out the same year as “The Avengers,” and it adopted a similar “team of champions” mentality. But instead of superheroes, it was the much-loved folkloric characters of Santa Claus (Baldwin), Jack Frost (Pine), the Easter Bunny (Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Fisher), and the Sandman (who doesn’t speak). They had to team up to stop the evil machinations of the Boogeyman (Law), who went by the fearsome name Pitch Black. It turned out that Pitch wanted to shake the foundations of the children’s faith, because magical beings need children to believe in them to continue to exist. Jack Frost was the ultra cool person of the group, never having had the same kind of pleasant childhood associations as characters like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Indeed, Jack is said to have no memory of his life prior to 300 years (he is very ancient) and is unhappy at not having his own childhood.
Along the way, the popular heroes must embark on chases, panicked quests and other missions of action and fun. “Rise of the Guardians” is a light and fun film that /Film reviewed positively at the time.
Rise of the Guardians is underrated
“Rise of the Guardians” could reasonably be described as a commercial bomb. Ultimately, the film struggled to cover its $145 million production budget plus marketing and advertising expenses. A big part of the problem was that it ended up having to go head-to-head with high-profile blockbusters like “Skyfall,” “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” at the box office. “Rise of the Guardians” was made by DreamWorks Animation, which has enjoyed great success since its inception in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the film was a huge failure for the studio and became the first film to lose money since the release of the mega-flop “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” in 2003. Ultimately, “Rise of the Guardians” was such a failure that it led to DreamWorks firing hundreds of people in its animation department.
Again, it’s a shame because, as said, the film is perfectly entertaining. The character Jack Frost sports a bright white hairstyle, a light blue hoodie, and walks barefoot in the snow. He seems like “the dangerous one” in any boy band (imbued with both coolness and a tendency to brood), and Pine plays him as such. The other Guardians are imagined just as creatively, with Santa being transformed into an overly muscular Finnish lumberjack with tattooed sleeves. Similarly, the Easter Bunny is considered an outback Australian, skilled with a boomerang and able to hide his eggs with supernatural precision. Even the Tooth Fairy gets an imaginative makeover, as she takes the form of a floating peacock woman who collects teeth for archiving. (Human teeth hold precious childhood memories, you see.)
Why did Rise of the Guardians fail?
It may be easy to understand why “Rise of the Guardians” failed. On the one hand, the premise was idiotic; little kids might not have wanted to see their beloved childhood popular heroes transformed into movie action stars. Some people may have even thought it was a bit pathetic to try to make the Easter Bunny look “cool” (even though the film’s creatives did a remarkable job). It was also too action-packed for very small children and too childish for older ones. The people who would have responded best to “Rise of the Guardians” might have been adults, as they would be able to place characters like Santa and the Tooth Fairy in a different context.
Also, the title is vague. “Rise of the Guardians” could be about anything from medieval knights to Guardians of the Galaxy. It didn’t help that two years earlier, Zack Snyder made an animated film about warrior owls called “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” which may have confused some members of the general public. On top of all this, it’s possible that the character designs aren’t broad enough; the Guardians also looked… human, without the big eyes and squash-and-stretch animation style of, say, “Shrek” or “Kung Fu Panda.” But above all else, perhaps the film’s greatest sin is simply that it cost too much money to make.
Still, there’s no reason why “Rise of the Guardians” shouldn’t become a Christmas staple now (or an Easter staple, for that matter). Hell, it might even become a Halloween staple, given that the Boogeyman is the central antagonist. “Rise of the Guardians” was built to be an annual, year-round tradition. Unfortunately, this idea was not adopted. Curious souls, however, can start the lore by streaming it on Peacock.
