"Children and animals are the most difficult to cooperate" is the common understanding of filmmakers. At the same time, "Don't try to compete with children and animals" is also recognized by filmmakers. The implication is that once cute children and animals appear in the film, the audience's attention will often focus on them. Obviously, almost all movies featuring children and animals are difficult to make people care about its story. This is this kind of movie. What's more, it is the first time that the movie takes the owl as the protagonist. Excellent animation technology makes this fierce owl very beautiful in reality, especially the pink beak is very attractive. The dream situation created by modern film technology is extremely aggressive psychologically, which can overturn people's inherent views on certain things at will.
In the movies with animals as the main characters, the personification of the story and the adult role have always been the magic weapon for this kind of movies to defeat the enemy. This kind of film can break through the time and space limitation of story creation unparalleled, and can create a more fantastic movie situation than real-life movies, but it completely takes the thoughts and behaviors of the human world as a template to create vivid characters and stories. In fact, the story of "The Kingdom of Owls: The Legend of the Guardian" is nothing new, except that an owl gained self-recognition and affirmation by fighting against evil forces. However, such a story will never be out of date, because the spiritual strength it carries has always been the basis of human self-motivation, and it will become more vivid if it is interpreted by owls. And what is worthy of recognition is that although this is an anthropomorphic animal movie, it is realistic in some places. For example, the owl's habit of spitting "eating balls" has become an indispensable part of the story, and the sibling cannibalism of Xilin brothers actually coincides with the real habit of owls to some extent. Some owl chicks do have a strong behavior of eating the weak, which is obviously an instinct evolved to compete for more survival rights. When this animal instinct is transplanted into literary works intentionally or unintentionally, it becomes the dark side of human genetic behavior, and Zach Snyder adds a surreal style to this story.
Although Zach Snyder, who advocates violence and blood, can't show his tough style too much in this kind of movies, the rigidity of action design is obvious, which can be clearly felt in several important fighting scenes, and Zach's signature slow-motion close-up further strengthens this style. The story prototype of the owl kingdom has a certain dark color. In addition, the same roots between brothers, the betrayal of guardians and the conspiracy of the pure owl group are all concrete manifestations of this story style. Zach and his team deal with these scenes with dark and mysterious style features, so this is not just a child's story.
3D technology is the icing on the cake of this film. Even without 3D technology, there is a great market for such films. Moreover, Zach Snyder's consistent narrative style makes the film very compact, and the whole film has no extra details. At this point, it is even uncomfortable. From two brothers falling to being taken away, from Celine being a conscientious owl to being discovered, there is almost no emotional and psychological room for manoeuvre, which is rare in other movies. All these details have been carefully processed to create this animated film. 3D technology certainly makes the picture of The Legend of the Guardian more layered and visually impactful, but I think Zach Snyder's sense of overall situation is the most essential thing of this film, that is, the magnificent epic temperament. This style can be seen in Three Hundred Warriors, The Catcher and even dawn of the dead, which is the soul of this film, and 3D only provides this spirit from the side.
The battle of owls continues. The original story itself is a legendary story. Director Zach Snyder's strong personal style and advanced 3D technology make the film's sense of time and space very three-dimensional, and The Lord of the Rings in the owl world is also very interesting.