“Rise Of The Guardians” 2nd trailer

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New trailer, more footage. Lookin’ better and better with each glimpse…

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  • http://mediocremind.thecomicseries.com/ J. Gibbs

    I’m not going to lie, I feel like Dreamworks are finally starting to step up their game lately.

    I saw a distinct lack of “the grin” they seem determined use in every film, not to mention tackling much more sophisticated (relatively speaking) subject matter. I’m genuinely curious about seeing how they approached this concept, and it’ll tell me if How To Train Your Dragon was just a fluke, or the first step in a new path for Dreamworks.

    • Sarah J

      Same here. One thing I’ve noticed for this trailer is that it’s actually taking the movie SERIOUSLY. Dreamworks has made some serious movies in the past, but the trailers don’t show it. How To Train Your Dragon was a great movie and it had a fairly serious tone, but the trailer made it seem like it was just a silly, lighthearted comedy. It’s something I’ve been complaining about for a few years, the trailers just always lie and it’s really annoying.

  • Jenovasilver

    I’m just in love with the trailer completely, I like the tone..it looks fun and adventurous. If it’s anything like HTTYD, I’m in.

    I agree with J.Gibbs…Dreamworks is looking to step up their game and I couldn’t be happier.

  • JM WALTER

    I think so too, Looks like this Jack frost character kinda rescues the film.

  • Dan Kyder

    Russian santa is a santa I would have retained from my childhood

    (interesting how Jack Frost didn’t feature in the previous trailer at all, and now he’s basically the lead character)

    • http://www.infurnation.com Rodso64

      I wondered about that too! The last trailer actually had me questioning if the Jack Frost character had been dropped in editing or something.

    • Max

      Interesting how in the trailers for both this and Hotel Transylvania, a teenage character isn’t featured until the second trailer.

  • J. Epp

    I find it difficult to follow Jack Frosts voice as it feels to be out of sync and the deep voice sounds to mature for his character. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels as though the designs were done by separate people and lack a cohesiveness. Interesting story though.

    • HaBla

      couldn’t agree more. This looks really nice and could be a treat to watch, but like a lot of Dreamworks animated films, the voice acting is just bland actors talking in their normal bland voices.

    • Alice

      I agree completely about his strange voice and about how the character designs seemed to be done by totally different people without any unifying theme.

      But even deeper, my first impression of watching this was that Jack’s facial expressions/body language and his dialog were completely dissonant. His expressions are meek and introverted and the dialog and voice acting totally doesn’t mix.

      It’s like Jack was done by multiple people who had totally different ideas about what his personality was like. :O
      (and knowing what I know about Dreamworks… this probably was the case!)

  • http://platynews.deviantart.com Platy

    So Jack Frost IS the main character …. WHY he didn’t even appeared on the first trailer ? O.o

    Weird marketing choice …

  • James guard

    This whole thing looks great, visually looks amazing. But there’s something about the characters that doesn’t feel right, maybe it’s just the trailer.

  • Geoffrey Hayes

    While this does indeed look intriguing and technically beautiful, it seems like the same old story about a bunch of characters banding together to SAVE THE WORLD from a wicked sorcerer. “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Rings” anyone? Boy, am I sick of this plot! How many times does the world need saving? The upcoming Blue Sky film “Epic” is apparently going the same route (also based on a William Joyce book). As much as I love “Tangled” and “Brave” the recycling of elements from past films was irritating. I won’t truly applaud a new animated film until some genius comes up with an original premise.

    • JMatte

      Though I would also champion and adore a more original premise that doesn’t recycle anything, we’ll have better chance of something like that coming from a smaller studio or an independent production (and that means, usually, limited release too, auuugh!).

  • Bud

    Wow, that looks incredibly bad. And incredibly ugly–like a video game from the late ’80′s. Yet another DW cartoon for the smallest of children.

    • http://megan-ferguson.blogspot.com Megan

      Not just for children but for the SMALLEST of children? Dreamworks is really narrowing their market.

      • Bud

        Sadly, yes. Understandable, but ill advised.

    • http://monstroanimation.blogspot.com/p/animation-article-database.html Jonah Sidhom

      What video games from the late 80s were you playing?? The film looks great to me.

      • Randy

        I agree with John Sidhom’s comment to Bud….what the hell Video Games from the ’80′s is Bud playing???? I was around then, playing Video Games, and this is nothing like ANYTHING that was done then….because if you recall, EVERYTHING from the late 1980′s and early 1990′s in Gaming was either about Ninjas or a group of White kids rescuing some chick from Terrorists. Period.
        Rise of the Guardians looks awesome….and WAY better than the crap Pixar is pumping out lately.

    • optimist

      Your comments makes no sense. “Yet another DW cartoon for the smallest of audiences”-huh? What were the others? Dreamworks has always skewed their films for OLDER audiences, audiences that are meant to be teens and above. At any rate, “childhood legends” or not, this is clearly a “serious” take on those characters, not a film for toddlers.

    • http://platynews.deviantart.com Platy

      “like a video game from the late ’80’s” ?

      Perfect competition to Wreck It Ralph !

  • Alissa

    Really liking this so far. Might possibly be trying to sell ‘tough badass holiday mascots’ too hard, but still awesome.

  • Albert

    This blows away recent Pixar films in every way shape and form! Looks like Dreamworks is the new king.

  • http://megan-ferguson.blogspot.com Megan

    The only nitpick I have with it so far is theres a bit of disconnect between the voices and the characters for me- but otherwise I’m getting more and more excited to see this movie. It looks very action oriented and the dialog so far seems sincere – I do so dig trailers that don’t just focus on pop-culture/slapstick jokes. Looks like its got some heart, and hell, I give kudos to anyone making a holiday’esq’ flim that seems to be watchable any time of the year.

  • Larry

    Yeah, Jack’s voice (Chris Pine I think) REALLY doesn’t match that character design. Strange decision. Otherwise, looks intriguing.

    • Ergo

      That was the first thing that struck me too. Jack Frost’s voice is completely wrong.

  • Alê Camargo

    Looks amazing… I really like it so far.

  • Scarabim

    So Jack Frost is a sort of wintry Peter Pan. Cool idea! :D

  • http://elblogderg.blogspot.com Roberto González

    Visually it doesn’t ‘look’ good to me. The character design is ugly to me, and the backgrounds look realistic which is not bad but doesn’t excite me.

    I also thought of ‘Harry Potter’ for some reason, even if only some aspects of the plot look simmilar. I think the plot has potential to be good, even though I’m not a big fan of this ‘genre’. It’s just that it’s not my favourite type of movie, but it does look good enough. It looks like they are secure in the story and tone of this one, not a lot of bad jokes or attitude so far (even though the characters do look a little ‘badass’).

    Overall I almost think this would work better as a life action movie but I’ll say it’s a good thing that they are trying a different tone and style. This ‘fantasy’ genre with a serious tone is , like I said, more usual in life action, and even though this looks like it could work better filmed like that TO ME, I respect that they are chosing a somewhat ‘new’ genre in commercial animated movies.

  • James

    It [i]does[/i] seem like they’re trying to hard to dial up the hip/bad-ass in these characters. Also, I’m having a very difficult time getting hooked on an otherwise generic “band of misfit heroes vs. evil sorceror” premise it has going for it. It definitely seems squarely aimed at the teen market.

    The high quality animation and the humor should keep it entertaining, though. Dreamworks is a studio I have faith in, and this still could make for some decent entertainment.

  • Face

    So all super heroes are white and all the heroes of childhood are white.

    • Joe

      I was likewise very disappointed by the lack the mythical groundhog celebrated on Groundhog Day. Perhaps he is a hidden 3rd party orchestrating events from among the shadows?

    • Joe

      And where the heck are the Leprechauns from St. Patrick’s day? Anti-Irish propaganda, I tell you!

    • Ideas

      Even the toothfairy character, who didn’t NEED to have any discernible race, needed a white face. She could have just been 100% feathers… but no.

      Oh and points off for the british villain…

    • barney miller

      Actually, Sandman is golden, tooth fairy is pink and blue and Easter bunny isn’t human.

    • J. Epp

      There are many different races that are white… Irish, french, scottish to name a few. As for why they chose the characters to be “White”, perhaps that’s something that you should take up with William Joyce.

    • mj

      But I was saved by a family of white people! They do no wrong! They do none of it!

    • Someguy

      Thank you for writing that as I get tired of making the same point over and over.

      There is nothing here for non-white kids/adults, who, once again, are absent in a film about the world and major metropolitan cities.

      Feature animation is still one of the most racially-segregated areas of entertainment, followed closely by fantasy. (I mean in terms of final product, not production staff…which is often multi-racial, with at times excellent gender parity…which is ultimately never reflected in the end product). Innocence and childhood and imagination are presented as strictly white domains in North American animated productions for film and television.

      Oh wait…I forgot…Black Dynamite is coming out in July…so there’s that. Blaxploitation meets animation. I suppose I should be grateful that at the least they don’t bother hiding what it really is.

      In animation, non-whites are generally left with two options: 1. Be a stereotype 2. Be invisible

      So I take back what I said before…it could be worse..

      SG.

    • fish

      Sandman is gold, Easter bunny is … well … a bunny, and if you saw any of the artwork and paid close attention to the design, you’d see that the tooth fairy is Indian. Can’t help you with Santa though.

  • Mike

    Uninteresting story, unfunny jokes, lots of painful character design. The more I see of this, the more it looks like I’ll be passing on it.

  • http://www.sneezemeaway.com Ryan G

    The main issue I have with it, is that the Easter Bunny is supposed to be Australian, when with every Easter that passes here in Australia, the campaign to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby becomes ever stronger. The Bilby is a small native marsupial that has some visual characteristics of a rabbit, but none of the rabbits tendencies to devastate entire swaths of the Australian country and outback and cause general pain for Australian farmers. We don’t have a Rabbit Proof Fence that stretches 3253km across Australia for nothing you know.

    If this may seem like a storm in a teacup to most…then so be it.

    • James

      Now that you mention it, there is something seriously wrong with making the Easter Rabbit Australian for the reasons you just stated.

    • axolotl

      Yes…Also I assume they want to market this movie to Americans, but Russia was their enemy during the Cold War, so they shouldn’t have made Santa Russian. Not very classy to include the Sandman either, considering the horrible famines caused by desertification in Indiana or someplace like that…

    • FigmentJedi

      It’s playing up something from the character’s backstory in the books. In the world of Guardians of Childhood, the Earth was originally egg-shaped and threatened to become orbitally unstable and careen into the sun. E. Aster Bunnymund, against his own preference for eggs, saved the planet by shaving it down into a regular globe and among the landmasses he formed in the process was the continent of Australia.

  • John

    Jack Frost has the same facial rigging as Hiccup, he sorta looks Twilightish. I light the European look of this, it doesn’t have that American we bland everything down look.

    • Jody Morgan

      He doesn’t look all that much like a purple unicorn to me, to be honest.

  • Oranges Smoranges, who

    I saw a test screening about a month and a half ago. Yes, Jack Frost is the main character.

    Obviously there’s still plenty of time to spruce it up. But based on what I saw, I’d recommend not getting your hopes up TOO high on this one. The visuals (the finished ones anyway) were magnificent. The story? Eh, notsomuch.

    And the bad guy looks like Odo.

  • Walt

    I think Jack has a little hiccup…

    Otherwise, it looks like an interesting film and I definitely check it out.

  • Mr Verde

    King Joffrey Lannister as Jack Frost? Every time I see his face that’s all I can see.

  • Conor

    With a few exceptions, the character designs just looks super bland to me, Jack Frost is just a few degrees off of a full blown dead-eyed Zmeckis puppet, and with an entirely inappropriate voice. A lot of the action shots just look loaded with special effects and pixie dust to the point of being incomprehensible. Story wise, all I see is the same carefree loner joins a team to save the while learning the value of camaraderie/accepting responsibility. Really, Dreamworks may be getting better, and Pixar might be slipping, but I’d still say Brave comes out over this.

  • Face

    For people who advocate “oo but the original race written as white” Perhaps schools should sit out non-white kids out if they do this as play or any other done during imperialism and slavery. There was a reason they were so wrong they destroyed the idea in minds that you form a main part of the society and not just fringes.
    I want the Lion in the Lion King to be African.

    • Blues

      You’re focusing on the wrong things mate. Let’s just hope for a good movie shall we?

  • Skip

    When it comes to Dreamworks Animation, I have liked The Prince of Egypt, How to train your Dragon, and the Kung-Fu Panda films, but that’s it. Although the films that I’ve listed are very good, whenever Dreamworks releases a new Animated film, I anticipate it being on the level of A Sharks Tale, or Bee movie. That said I’ll reserve judgment on this film till it comes out.

  • Hey now

    Lousy character designs. Easter Bunny looks very “Furry” creepy to me.

  • Andrew Kieswetter

    It looks great. Although I could do without an Aussie Easter Bunny.

  • Nic Orizaga

    so where’s Mother Goose??

    • Shroom

      Schedule conflict, as she was staring in Puss in Boots.

    • FigmentJedi

      She’s “Sir Not Appearing in this Film”. The novels have for the most part used her with the original formation of the team taking place during her childhood, serving as the viewpoint character and chronicler of the adventures there.

  • mat

    Looks good so far. Jack sounds way to old however. He looks like a little kid. They need someone who sounds like a kid. Shame they can’t revoice him before the film opens.

    The rest looks fine.

  • hm

    The weirdness intrigues me.

    The designs are weird and don’t match, the large furry creatures in santa’s workshop are incredibly weird, the concept is weird and I have no idea what Jack Frost could possibly do to save children from nightmares (or fear or whatever) that the other’s couldn’t (like the sandman).

    A lot of comments here on the lack of appeal of the character designs, but I for one got sick of everything being so cute and gel-like. These have some grunge to them, it’s kinda nice for once.

    • Mike

      I don’t necessarily think that’s the reason for the dislike of the designs…it certainly isn’t for me. Something can be not cute and still appealing (I loved many of the Rango designs, and those are about as grungy as they come!) but these are just….off.

  • Scarabim

    I remember seeing that first trailer on this website and commenting: “Where’s Jack Frost? He was the only cool-looking one!” And lo and behold…coincidence? I don’t think so… ;)

    Anyway, the film look like it’s got an interesting storyline now. A better one than the book it’s based on. (While I admire William Joyce’s artwork, his storytelling has always struck me as being a bit weak.) Looks like Dreamworks has tweaked the original just enough (although I still wish it had retained the title “The Guardians of Childhood”). I’ll def check out the movie come November.

  • Turns out

    The character designs are heavily influenced from William Joyce’s designs from the storybooks. The only design that looks to be completely different is the East Bunny.

    So should we be thankful that Dreamworks stuck to the source material? Or annoyed that the designs are a little nutty? They’re certainly not what the animation industry is used to… but maybe that’s not a bad thing?

  • http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

    I’m dying a little bit inside for writing this but… this is probably the first time a movie involving Guillermo Del Toro doesn’t interest me in the least :´(

  • wever

    Am I the only one here who DOESN’T have a problem with the character designs? This film is obviously supposed to be dark and somewhat twisted anyway. The fact that they all look like they come from different movies further shows how they come from different regions of the world.

  • http://www.paulbadilla.blogspot.com Paul Badilla

    ¿Would you buy these toys or wear a shirt of this movie? What a horrible characters …The protagonist looks like a gay version of Barbie!

  • Azz

    Looks like garbage. The whole ‘Using fear against children’ was done perfectly in Monsters Inc.

  • http://www.youtube.com/2MKcreations Matthew Koh

    I want to remind you all again, that if you’re comparing new things to the past, you’re actually killing originality.

  • http://tigerhawk01.deviantart.com/ Sam Filstrup

    Have to agree with you Jerry the more I see the more I’m getting into the idea of this film. Its a nice change of pace in terms of design.

  • MIke Christian

    This looks lame, there is no clear art direction, the characters a hodge-podge of styles and very unappealing and why would I want to watch an animated feature starring a Justin Bieber look alike. Dreamworks did a GREAT job with Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, even Madagascar had a cohesive visual style… I think that most of you are interested in the concept and ignoring the facts

  • Gin

    Such a shame. Like Brave, this could (and should) have been so much better. Clever characters and cutting-edge animation mean little without a great story.