Yesterday, we brought you the brand spanking new trailer for DreamWork Animation’s Rise of the Guardians, the big screen adaptation of William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood books. This animated film is produced by Guillermo del Toro with Peter Ramsey (Monsters vs Aliens) at the helm of this project where belief gives these heroes strength. The script was written by David Lindsay-Abiare.
William Joyce actually created a backstory for his own kids of how the Man in the Moon, Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Sandman knew each other. His daughter Mary Katherine even had a hand in this story’s creation and what she and her brother created together with their father holds even more meaning to the author as Mary Katherine had passed away two years ago from a brain tumor at the age of eighteen. Joyce hopes to add to the mythology of these characters by giving them the dimension of bravery and strength.
Check out what Joyce means with a look at these character dossiers for Rise of the Guardians along with Joyce’s comments in an interview with EW:
[Click Images To Blow Sh!t Up]
Character: Nicholas St. North (Alec Baldwin)
Profile: He is a former Russian Cossack (that explains the accent!) Nicholas is “the bravest man in the world.” He “was as wild as they come as a youth, and along the way his warrior heart was turned to good. He decided to put all that prowess and energy and courage into protecting the innocent.” Joyce was inspired by Sean Connery’s James Bond for this character: “There’s no way you can be Santa and not have extraordinary technology at your disposal.”
Character: Man in the Moon (not pictured)
Profile: Leader of the Guardians who guides from afar. He is “an ancient, benevolent being whose massive starship, which we see orbiting our planet, was disabled in orbit around the Earth when he was just a child.” He is “like Bosley from Charlie’s Angels.”
Character: The Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman)
Profile: Bunnymund is the Spock of the group. “If Santa is Kirk, then Bunny is a little Spock. ‘Don’t just tear in there and start sword-fighting. Let’s think this through a little bit.’” Bunny is of a race of super-rabbits that saved the world long ago: “Earth was originally egg-shaped, but that was rotationally unstable, so we were heading toward the sun,” Joyce explains. “The planet was going to be cooked like a hard boiled egg, so against his aesthetic judgment, with his incredible digging ability, he rounded out the Earth into a rotationally more docile sphere. In doing so, he created a number of continents, among them his favorite, Australia. The joke is he’s from waaay down under.”
Character: Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher)
Profile: She is half human and half hummingbird! (Just don’t think about how her parents made that happen…) She collects memories of children through the teeth they lose and returns these childhood sentiments when they need them in adulthood. She also has the ability to be in many places at once by creating endless miniature versions of her. “It’s a hard job. It’s like tucking in every kid, or a portion of the kids of Earth, every night. Every kid who has lost a tooth during that day, she has to be there. It’s like being a mom on a global level. This is a huge task that leaves her a little bit rattled and distracted. It’s dealing with being a mom on a heroic scale.”
Character: The Sandman aka Sanderson Man Snoozy (silent character)
Profile: He is a cheerful being not of this Earth whose mission is to spread positive energy and good dreams to fuel the imagination in children. “He is the caretaker of dreams. He wields the dreamsand that gives you good dreams every night, from his island of the sleepy sands, which was a shooting star long ago that he was piloting.” His physical stature may be small but he’s a badass with his dreamsand… much like Yoda.
Character: Pitch (Jude Law)
Profile: The big bad of this story. He is a Boogeyman who attacked the Man in the Moon’s ship, family and crew and crash-landed on Earth. Look at those awesome devilish horses! His weapon is fear (Funny, I didn’t see a Yellow Ring on his finger…) “He crashed to Earth in his Nightmare Galleon, and has been trapped in the bowels of the inner Earth.” Pitch is accidentally awakened by The Man in the Moon in his search for his old enemy. Pitch and his army of nightmares, of course, seek world domination.
Character: Jack Frost (Chris Pine)
Profile: He’s the guy you thank for giving you a snow day. He’s a fourteen amnesiac who likes to prank people with his powers of wind and ice. He’s the vehicle for exposition for the film as the Guardians seek help to battle Pitch. “I love the Peter Pan story, and there’s something heartbreaking about being a kid forever. He’s stuck at 14 , which is not the best outcome. He has never belonged to anybody. That’s fun on a certain level, but he yearns for more. He hasn’t really taken a side. And nobody really believes in him. But that’s something he longs for.”
Synopsis:
RISE OF THE GUARDIANS is an epic adventure that tells the story of a group of heroes – each with extraordinary abilities. When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.
Rise of the Guardians is slated to hit theaters in 3D on November 21st, 2012. Watch the trailer here.
