"You could say I was in command of the whole thing."

Legend of the Guardians was mind blowing! I thought “How To Train Your Dragon” was epic but this… oh…. this just took the cake! Maybe even two cakes! While “How To Train Your Dragon” had tremendous flight scenes and really cool dragons, “Legend of the Guardians” has wonderfully realistic owls and the movements were all beautifully animated. All the owls have character and if you have read the series you can tell who each owl is by sight, if not by name. Naturally, if you’ve read most of the series like me before you even watched the movie you are bound to make comparisons.

Soren was supposed to be younger than Kludd, Eglantine wasn’t able to talk much yet, Ms. Plithiver was an entirely different colour, Twilight was NOT a bard, etc. However, the writing and the animation were so seamless that unless I am mentioning dissatisfaction over the fact that certain things were changed, I cannot find fault in this movie. I hope one day to own it and my favorite owls (in terms of design) were Bubo (who didn’t get a single line) and Ezylryb. In terms of character, my favorites were Soren’s Da, Twilight, Digger, the Echidna (“IT WAS FORETOLD! Doubter”), Nyra, Kludd, and Metalbeak. Metalbeak was just evil!

While watching the movie, my grandmother and I were keeping up a constant stream of dialogue. Either I was telling her what a certain part was like in the book or she was commenting on Elemere’s knight-like appearance (he was her favorite in terms of design). Sometimes, like when Soren and Gylfie escaped from the Pure Ones and Grimble was killed, you would really begin to wonder if all was going to continue being well for them (even if you had read the books and new that yes, they would be perfectly fine). Of course, their next encounter is with Digger, who’s a whole lot more hyper than he is in the books (in the books he was a thinker, very sweet and quiet). Twilight was hilarious and he referred to Ms. Plithiver as “dinner”in just the right amount of times in my opinion.

So let me calm down so that I can write this properly…

In the beginning when we meet Soren’s family you would think that all is perfectly fine and that Soren’s going to spend the whole movie with gentle parental guidance (once again, only if you hadn’t read the books). It’s all so sweet and calm and Soren’s helmet was very cute and made out of three leaves. When their father (who they simply call “Da”) tells them to go to bed, they are going to do so but then Eglantine and Soren start acting out one of the battles that their father told them about. Eglantine got Soren with a head butt to the gut which was highly entertaining for me.

After going to sleep, we are suddenly launched into Soren and Kludd’s first branching lesson, in which Kludd’s flight is ‘noisy’, while Soren manages to be perfectly quiet. When the lesson is over and their parents go, Soren convinces Kludd to practice with him. This was one of the first major differences from the book for me. Sure, Soren didn’t have the helmet in the book and Kludd was older and Soren wasn’t able to do branching yet but how Kludd and Soren both fell to the ground in the movie was greatly at odds (to me) with how Kludd simply kicked the extremely young Soren out of the nest in the books.

Yes, Kludd is a rotten egg! Then they’re attacked by some weird creature (my Grandma said it might have been a Tasmanian Devil I think) and Soren demonstrates that he’s learned some things from their father’s stories when he goes straight for the creature’s eyes. Next comes St. Aggies owls to kidnap them and whisk them away from home. When Gylfie and Soren quietly introduced themselves on the flight to the ‘orphanage’, I got my first look at Grimble. I’d seen the other main characters from movie poster pictures and they had been pretty close to the pictures I had in my mind of him. However, Grimble was nothing like what I’d imagined. He was supposed to be a shade of brown and wasn’t supposed to have blood on his facial feathers, etc. The list went on and on both vocally and mentally as I watched the flight.

Skip skip skip, moon-blinking, skip skip skip, “Oi! You with the vacant expression!” skip “That’s all of them.” Skip skip skip… AH YES! Grimble takes them to the library and then reveals that he is going to teach them to “FWYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!” :D At that point I was like “YES! THEY DIDN’T MAKE HIM A VILLAIN!” which was followed by relieved chatter. I was also hoping that they wouldn’t kill him in the movie and that he’d also get to escape.

SPOILER ALERT: Unfortunately, it seems they decided to kill him in the movie too. -.- R.I.P. Grimble, you shall be sorely missed…

In all honesty, I am leaving out lots of details because A) I don’t want to suddenly spout the whole storyline and the PLOT TWIST OF DOOM and B) I’ve forgotten a few details and don’t want to give you the wrong idea… or have I already? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

… Is it obvious I have had sugar, even though I shouldn’t be when I am sick? :P

EVERYONE SHOULD REALLY WATCH THIS MOVIE! Perhaps I’ll make a stamp about how someone must watch a certain movie… Hmm… Tomb Raider shall definitely be included… I’ll have to watch it again so I can write a decent review… *dashes off to do so and consume more candy*