Forget everything you were told about Santa, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Jack Frost, and the Sand man. They’re not cute. They’re not cuddly. They’re not jolly. They are tatted up, weapon bearing, masters of martial arts and they’re here to kick ass! Oh, and they’re also your guardians. 
Three years in the making, this 3D DreamWorks visualgasim oozes with striking chromatic settings and packs enough action to rival Marvel’s “The Avenger’s.” But “Rise of the Guardians” delivers more than retina stimulation. The film holds a profound message that will seep into your mind unlocking a room that even Freud would lack the keys to.
All bearing sides that we have yet to see from these childhood heroes, the character’s imperfections and humanization make it easy for us to place ourselves in the film. This could not have been attained without the convincing voice-overs of such stars as Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Alec Baldwin and Chris Pine.
Wielding two large samurai like swords, muscled forearms inked with the words “Naughty” and “Nice,” and a thunderous Russian accent is Santa Claus. He goes by the name North and leads this star studded pack of childhood heroes into battle against the malicious villain and architect of fear, Pitch Black. Easter egg bombs, time portal Christmas globes, and sand whips are among the weapons used to fight Black’s army of black demonic stallions.
Jude Law lends indubitable and quite frankly chilling life to his character Black who has infested the world with fear, causing children to lose hope in all things good. For viewers, this fear is all too real. With the unchanging threat and presence of terrorism across the world today, both domestically and abroad, we cannot help but be gripped by this.
“Fear is a real thing in the world. You can run from it and say it doesn’t exist but it is something that you have to deal with,” said “Rise of the Guardians” director Peter Ramsey.
Doodling faces on a torn piece of paper with a number too pencil and a childlike gleam about his eyes, it wasn’t hard to see why Ramsey was the optimal director for this film.
“I have kids…they all really believed,” Ramsey shared, “but then as they get older they start to get suspicious.” It is in this absence of belief that he said grants access to fear. But Ramsey, the first African American director with DreamWorks, ceases to give up on future generations and uses the Guardians, the first to have held our belief as children, to remind us of how hopes, dreams, and wonders “keeps us from falling prey [to fear].”
Proceeding innovative films like “Shrek,” “Monsters vs Aliens” and “Madagascar,” “Rise of the Guardians” joins the DreamWorks family of films that beautifully enshroud universal messages with innovative, visual phenomena.
