Director Zack Snyder gives sneak peak of 'Legend of the Guardians'

By Sarah Sluis

As I watched director Zack Snyder preview clips of the September release, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, at a press event at the Time Warner Center in New York, I was amazed at how far CG/3D animation has come. In 2010, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me have enchanted audiences, including me, with their complex CG worlds. The original Toy Story 15 years ago could only render rounded, plasticized figures, and favored harsher shadows. Toy Story 3 not only had 3D, it was bathed in a soft, diffused light and introduced a furry character (fur is notoriously difficult to computer-generate).

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole pays similar attention to the visual details. The owl's feathers look soft, textured, and ruffled, something Snyder revealed took a lot of work. The lighting is dark, shadowy, and moody, bringing to mind How to Train Your Dragon's focus on candlelit Viking settings. The owls are not anthromorphic caricatures. They have a level of photorealism that's unprecedented for an animated film. Therein lies the problem.

I had a very hard time seeing the characters' expressions, or even attaching a mouth to the dialogue. Perhaps it's the years of seeing artificially noticeable mouth movements in those live-action/CG hybrids with talking dogs, but the slight movements in the owls' beaks just weren't doing it for me, and they also seemed slightly out of sync at times. Several different breeds of owls share space on the screen. While the snow-white owl had contrasting features and easily readable expressions, the chameleon-like fur on other owls obfuscated their eyes and beaks, making it difficult to parse out meaning from their faces. Did I mention all the creatures speak in Australian accents? And are constantly referring to fantasy-fueled proper nouns, like Ga'Hoole, the Pure Ones, Soren, Kludd, Ezylryb, Noctus, and Grimble?

Zack Snyder favors a fast-paced cutting style, but leaves in confusing cuts. At times, I lost the spatial

relationship of the owls when he cut from one perspective to another. I had to remind myself that I don't hate action sequences, I hate action sequences when they channel chaos over clearly articulated action. The only way that Snyder seems to be able to clarify his action is through slow motion, which he uses with some frequency--a neat addition to a kids' movie, but unfortunate in that the slow motion provides basic information that he can't seem to do at a regular pace. Watchmen was similarly confusing to view, and it doesn't seem that Snyder has improved. I have a message for Snyder: Watch Avatar. James Cameron managed to offer clear spatial relations in the flying fight scenes, and watching an action scene has never been better.

With its complicated mythology and dark setting, Legend of the Guardian bears some comparison to Lord of the Rings. Among those that have read the book, as well as fans of fantasy, Guardians will surely offer appeal. But if the finished product is as incoherent as the collection of clips I viewed, I predict a more dire future, especially among casual viewers.

What's interesting about the footage I saw was the disconnect between the style and the narrative: What made the owls so striking visually detracted from readability as characters. I'd like to see a CG film that has photorealistic characters but still manages to make the animals readable and understandable to audiences. It's also possible that I'm wrong--that audiences simply need to get used to non-cartoon like animals. A carrot: As the clips wore on, I found it easier to read the characters' expressions, and one sequence with a particularly furry character managed to come across clearly thanks to movements not only in the eyes and beak, but also the eyebrows and body stance.

Snyder's "crazy owl movie," as he calls it, has promising visuals but a confusing narrative. Watch the (less impressive) 2D trailer and decide for yourself here.