A Festive DreamWorks Animated Movie Flop Deserves More Love This Holiday Season

Peter Ramsay's 2012 animated film "Rise of the Guardians" swept into that year's holiday season, pocketed a decent handful of cash, and promptly vanished from the public consciousness. This is odd, as the film was perfectly decent. A whimsical, action-based reinterpretation of the Santa Claus myth, the movie featured an impressive cast of voice actors that included Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher, and Jude Law. Regardless, it didn't become a holiday standard, and it seems that few households have "Rise of the Guardians" on regular rotation in their homes during the winter holidays.

"Rise of the Guardians" came out the same year as "The Avengers," and it took on a similar "team-up of champions" mentality. But instead of superheroes, it was the well-regarded folk characters of Santa Claus (Baldwin), Jack Frost (Pine), the Easter Bunny (Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Fisher), and the Sandman (who doesn't speak). They needed to team up to stop the wicked machinations of the Boogeyman (Law), who was going by the spooky name of Pitch Black. It turned out that Pitch wants to shake the foundations of children's faith, as the magical folk beings need children to believe in them in order to keep on existing. Jack Frost was the ultra-cool outlier of the group, having never had the same kind of pleasant childhood associations as figures like Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Indeed, Jack was said to have no memories of his life prior to 300 years ago (he's very ancient) and resents that he has no childhood of his own.

Along the way, the folk heroes have to engage in chases, panicked fetch-quests, and other missions of action and delight. "Rise of the Guardians" is a light, fun film that /Film reviewed positively back in the day.

"Rise of the Guardians" could be reasonably described as a commercial bomb. At the end of the day, the film struggled to cover its $145 million production budget plus marketing and advertising expenses. A big part of the problem was that it wound up having to face off directly with high-profile blockbusters like "Skyfall," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" at the box office. "Rise of the Guardians" was made by DreamWorks Animation, which had been generally very successful since its inception in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the film was a huge misfire for the studio and became its first release to lose money since the mega-flop "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" came out in 2003. In the end, "Rise of the Guardians" was such a flop that it led to DreamWorks laying off hundreds of people in its animation department.

Again, it's a pity because, as mentioned, the film is perfectly entertaining. The Jack Frost character sports a kicky white hairdo, a light blue hoodie, and walks around in the snow barefoot. He looks like "the dangerous one" from any given boy band (suffused with both cool and a tendency to brood), and Pine plays him as such. The other Guardians are envisioned just as creatively, with Santa being transformed into an over-muscled Finnish lumberjack with tattoo sleeves. Similarly, the Easter Bunny is envisioned as an outback-dwelling Aussie who's skilled with a boomerang and can hide eggs with supernatural accuracy. Even the Tooth Fairy is given an imaginative makeover, as she takes on the form of a fluttering peacock woman who collects teeth as a means of archiving. (Human teeth contain precious childhood memories, you see.)

It may be easy to see why "Rise of the Guardians" failed. For one, the premise was silly; little kids may not have wanted to see their beloved childhood folk heroes transformed into cinematic action stars. Some people may've even felt it was a little pathetic to try and make the Easter Bunny seem "cool" (although the movie's creatives did a bang-up job). It was also too action-packed for very small kids and too kiddie-fied for older ones. The people who would've responded best to "Rise of the Guardians" might've been adults, seeing as they would be able to put figures like Santa and the Tooth Fairy into a different context.

Also, the title is vague. "Rise of the Guardians" could be about anything, from medieval knights to the Guardians of the Galaxy. It didn't help that, just two years earlier, Zack Snyder made an animated film about warrior owls titled "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole," which may've confused certain members of the general public. On top of all that, it's possible that the character designs weren't broad enough; the Guardians looked too ... human, lacking the big eyes and squash-and-stretch animation style of, say, "Shrek" or "Kung Fu Panda." But above all else, the movie's biggest sin may've simply been that it cost too much money to make.

Still, there's no reason why "Rise of the Guardians" can't become a Christmas staple now (or an Easter staple, for that matter). Heck, it could even become a Halloween staple, seeing as the Boogeyman is the central antagonist. "Rise of the Guardians" was constructed to be a year-round annual tradition. Sadly, it hasn't been embraced. Curious souls, however, can get the traditions started by streaming it on Peacock.