Legend of the Guardians trailer

If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Owls with hats on! News and a trailer for Zack Snyder’s star-stuffed owl picture Legend of the Guardians follow.

Zack Snyder’s upcoming animation, Legend of the Guardians has released its very first trailer. The film is based on the first three books in a series of 15 novels entitled Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky. The film originally shared the title but it was decided “Ga’Hoole” was too difficult for audiences to grasp and so it was simplified. This seems like a lot of rubbish since the book series is aimed at children and they seemed to manage. Is the apostrophe too much for us? (Just for the record, in the fictitious owl language, Krakish, Ga’Hoole means “Great Spirit of Hoole”.) It’s almost as annoyingly pointless as the renaming of the first Harry Potter book/film, which was changed from Philosopher’s to Sorcerer’s Stone. If anything, Legend of the Guardians is too bland and unexciting. (So there.)

The film follows a young owl named Soren (voiced by Jim Sturgess), who is spellbound by his father’s stories of the mythic band of winged warriors who fought a great battle to save all of owlkind from the evil Pure Ones: the Guardians of Ga’Hoole (see, even the owls can remember it – and they’re owls!). Soren dreams of joining his heroes while his older brother Kludd mocks him and wants nothing more than to hunt, fly and steal his father’s affection from him. Kludd’s jealousy causes him to push Soren, they both fall out of their treetop home and into the talons of the Pure Ones. Soren bands together with other brave young owls to make a daring escape. They soar across the sea and through the mist to find the Great Tree, home of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole.

It’s pretty clear this flick is aimed at about knee-high since the inherent silliness of helmeted owls flapping around is pretty hard to ignore. (They look very, um, battle-ready – that is, if only their heads are going to war. What about the rest of their bodies? Or are they afraid the CIA will read their minds?) But a fantastic voice cast means that adults might find themselves drawn in too, with Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving, Emilie de Ravin, Jim Sturgess, Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren, Abbie Cornish and David Wenham lending their dulcet tones to the production.

Legend of the Guardians will be released in glorious 3D – Snyder is not only jumping on the 3D bandwagon for this film but for Sucker Punch as well. The trailer will be attached to Alice in Wonderland and the film will be released September 24 in the US and October 15 in the UK (prime 2011 Best Animated Feature Oscar consideration time).