Legend of the Guardians trailer

The first teaser trailer for Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians (recently renamed from Guardians of Ga’Hoole – a sensible move, probably) was released today. You can watch it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8bM9qf4keM

HD versions are available from Yahoo here.

The Ga’Hoole series, written by Kathryn Lasky, is about a barn owl and his friends who flee “St. Aggie’s,” a training / brainwashing facility for turning owls into soldiers (yes). The young escapees arrive at the island of Ga’Hoole, and go on to fight St. Aggie’s army alongside the island’s inhabitants.

Legend of the Guardians is a CGI adaptation, based on the first three books – and judging from the trailer…it doesn’t look that exciting. The imagery’s good and all, but as with most of these types of films, I can just imagine it having a horribly generic plot. I’m not familiar with the books, but that’s the “vibe” this initial trailer is giving off. A young boy becoming a hero, uninspired stereotypical villains, the kinda thing where you know what’s going to happen before it actually does. Although obviously, I’d like it if the movie turned out not doing that.

Unsurprisingly for any animated film nowadays, the cast features some famous names – including Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren, and Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin. They might add some character to…the characters. I’m not quite sure why Zack Snyder is such a celebrated director – he did some great visuals for 300 and Watchmen, but both those films seemed pretty empty outside of the aesthetics. Maybe he’ll do a better job here? I’m much more interested to see Sucker Punch, which he should be getting to work on after taking time to do this family film.