Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
Of all people, this is a film that my cousin has recommended to me. Her tastes and mine typically don’t match (and it makes me actually wonder about what my other cousins like), but this was the first time she actually talked about a movie, and I was intrigued. More than anything, I liked the looks of the owls. They really are amazingly cute, especially since I normally don’t like anthropomorphic characters. But here, I am amazed at their cuteness.
The visuals are definitely the film’s main appeal – the designs are absolutely wonderful, the flights look so beautiful that you don’t mind that they might be a bit stretched out and the landscapes in the film are more beautiful than Ghibli’s. Anime needs a budget like this, for real. Except for the fact that the owls’s mouths are a little weird, I’d say that the film is doing everything in the department of looks. I am deeply impressed.
Coming to the story, I also don’t agree with the general critical opinion, saying that it’s too dark for little children to watch, and too predictable and stupid for older children. Maybe the film is actually for adults who are into small, cute things – like me. I don’t mind a predictable story; in fact, most stories are predictable. This movie is no more and no less predictable than, say, “Alice in Wonderland” was. Now you might say that “Alice in Wonderland” had better characters, but this film had its charming characters too. Plus, think of 50 years of Disney movies – how many great characters were there? Really, in terms of storytelling, direction, creativity and design, I don’t think any of those common criticisms apply to this film. I have no idea what it is that made people dislike this film, or give it a bad review, because my own problem with the film has never been mentioned at all.
I guess what I did not particularly like about the film was indeed how it portrayed the two forces, and its hypocritic idealism. This movie is just as ‘bland’ as “V for Vendetta” was, with this strangely communist system as the “good system” and the nazis (along with their uberowls and unterowls) are the “bad ones”. Curiously enough, the motto “Aid the weak against the strong” – well that is precisely what fascism did too – applies to both of them, if you dig just a little bit deeper into the story. Incidentally, Kludd was the weak one who felt finally accepted by… the nazis. Also, in the supposedly good world, we have a leader couple and the population is divided into workforces doing different things. Just like with the nazis, the best ones are allowed to be fighters. How belligerent is that? I was so pissed off when the hero of the story starts talking about how war is not heroic or glorious (very good!), but then goes onto saying “being a hero means to do the right thing”. Who says it’s the right thing? For quotes like this I truly think that the movie bringing children onto a bad moral path in which they believe the world is black and white. When it comes to that, “How to train your dragon” is the way to go here.
Personally, I liked the film a lot. I found it extremely beautiful, the characters were charming and, at times, very funny, and everything about the film was awfully well-made. I just hated its social system and the rotten morals that come with it. Educational this is not.