Rise of the Guardians [Blu-ray]

Arrived on time and as expected; package had been abused a bit but the contents were in perfect shape. Good job on the packaging, Amazon!The good parts of this review: The eggs are too cute. The movie comes with Blu-Ray, Standard DVD, and a Digital copy unlocked by using Ultraviolet. While i don't use Ultraviolet because their system was still buggy when I first bought something that used it (Green Lantern) and I still have problems getting through their system, I don't need the digital copy at this time. Because it's not necessary to my enjoyment, I only detract a half-star and cannot 'round down' here, so. This is generally a good packaging of a very good movie. I'm not going to review the movie itself... well, OK, a little.The cultural characters of Santa Claus, the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, all came from a series of beautifully illustrated, fanciful children's books, by William Joyce, which are described here at this website: [...]Joyce recreates the characters completely from their embed in real human historical things - there is no Saint Nicholas of Myra in this Santa, there is no rabbit of the Goddess of Spring in the Easter Bunny, there is no analysis of why Christmas or Easter deserve prominence, because it's not about the religious background.For some people this will be bad. For others this will be good. Until I knew that this was from a series of stories, I didn't know that it wasn't just a deliberate removal of the religious background from two of these characters, but the focus of the movie was on the extremely engaging character of Jack Frost, voiced by Chris Pine. So far as I know Jack Frost is not part of the books (yet).Jack Frost is intangible and inaudible except in the way he exerts his power of cold, because nobody believes in him. He's a "bad boy" - a very mischievous youth (at 317) who was changed by the Man in the Moon - another character from the original books, who appears in the movie only as the full moon, and never speaks aloud so that we can hear him.The movie tells three stories. The first is a story of Jack Frost - the young man whose delight in the fun of living is being eroded by the constant reminder that he is not 'real' to the people around him. He knows he was made by the Man in the Moon, but doesn't know anything about himself from the moment he awoke underwater in a partially-frozen pond, dragged out of the fear and the dark by the brightness of the moon. His coming into himself is the first story; the second is his becoming, and being accepted, as a Guardian of Childhood, one of the elite mythical beings who inspire the positive feelings of childhood.The third story is that of 'the boogy man' - Pitch, the Nightmare King, ruler of darkness of fear and doubt and pain who wants to spread them over the world, who has slowly grown stronger since his last defeat. He has returned, and he has everything he needs to overcome the Four Guardians... except for this interloper Jack Frost, who isn't sure he wants the job of Fifth Guardian.Even if you don't like the secularization - the story is filled with positive, uplifting narrative, with strong moral values.The packaging is cute, though a bit disposable, and the eggs are amusing.Now for the less thrilling aspects, the production of the Blu-Ray disk and the content wrapper. You may skip this if you don't enjoy rants, because I do rant a bit there at the end.There were two "interactive games" and a number of language subtitle options, including director's information, which I will be exploring later. For now, though? The movie was good, and all I needed was to make popcorn to make it as enjoyable as the movie theatre experience. Playback was not as simple as it should have been.Fortunately, I watch blu-ray movies using a blu-ray drive on my personal computer.As happens with many Blu-Ray products, I once again had to upgrade my commercial Blu-Ray software because in the never-ending paranoid attempt to explain to us how we're all thieves, the movie industry has made it yet again a format incompatible with my previous software. At this point, I suspect that any Blu-Ray player I would have purchased before last year would be worthless to play this movie. Further, they hammer the viewer with several mandatory warnings, threats, and bluster-fests wherein they explain that the world is ending because people don't respect copyright. It must be fun living in a world where everyone caters to your whims and terribly upsetting when they stop putting up with you (and I'm talking to the Studio people here) but in the real world, people don't respect people who start out by showing their own disrespect in the first place.Make stuff available that people want and they will pay well to see it. Make crap and people will probably pay what it's worth.Make good stuff unavailable, and people will find a way to get it. That's been true for as long as recorded civilization.The FBI warning? Unnecessary, reading it doesn't make me do anything but resent you.The bit at the end with the earnest message of "how you can go educate yourself (because you're obviously an ignorant pirate) about how PIRACY has been destroying our ECONOMY" ... uhm, yah, no.What's been destroying our economy is a combination of things involving greed and overreaching, but one big part of it has been fraudulent acts on the part of banks that grossly inflated then collapsed a major part of our economy to below the point before the inflation was started. That's an entirely different kind of piracy.But I promise that I won't take the DVD and Blu-Ray disks that I just PURCHASED for MONEY and make copies of them for everyone else, if you promise to start looking at realistic ways to make piracy not worth it, by making it easier to get your stuff and by making it easy for people to pay you what they feel it's worth - and that's usually more than you'd get otherwise if it's any good.One Hint: Continually changing formats, messing up things with DRM, and generally insulting your customers? That won't do it.

I bought this for my son to use in the car. He loves this movie

Great movie

Arrived new.

Best movie out there, visually stunning, Jack Frost is the best character, incredible voice acting for actors who don’t do that, music is beautiful, the whole thing is a blast you can watch with anyone.

Critics suck sometimes... I should know, I'm a film graduate and so I often fall into that "critic" category. But this movie is honestly a blast and I'm sad it didn't do better in the theater. It was just poorly advertised, poorly released and critics are tired of almost every animated movie anymore. So yes... this isn't going to change your life or take over Pixar or make animation-haters suddenly realize what they've been missing all these years. Its story is good, nothing epic like Toy Story... but the visuals are gorgeous, the world is fascinating and alive, and if you're even looking at this review, it's because that's kinda what you were looking for anyway, I bet. (Also, it's nice to finally have a movie that is based more around Easter for once so we can have an annual Easter movie.)My 5 year old LOVED this movie. I had a ton of fun in it too and bought it on day one after seeing it in the theater. It's comparable to How to Train Your Dragon in quality of visuals and storytelling, so if you liked that, you'll like this.Some of the darker scenes can be slightly frightening to younger viewers as the villain is Pitch Black (the Boogey Man) but the movie teaches a good lesson for kids and can be a great teaching tool for some of you with scared-of-the-dark children: (Spoiler Alert!!!) Darkness can be scary and the Boogey Man can be frightening, but in the end, he can't do anything to us if we don't give him the power to. It's also empowering for your kids to see that the human children in this story turn the tide of battle, not those with the super-powers. It's not TOO frightening though- my daughter climbed in my lap to watch the rest of the film but never covered her eyes.Now I don't mean to be offensive- but if you are one of those that looked at Santa in the trailer or posters and said "I can't believe they gave Santa tattoos," you should probably just skip this and move onto something else (though I'd never get a tattoo myself- just a personal choice). It ruined the whole movie for my mom, my kid's grandma (who was also mad that in UP! they killed the main bad guy ("You can't do that in a cartoon!")). This world is based on our most beloved holiday "guardians" being a warrior/superhero team when they are not covering their own responsibilities. The premise alone is probably too much for traditionalists... but I personally loved the designs, and the characters embody a sense of adventure as much as a sense of awe and wonder.Action-packed, constantly moving (where did my last 90 minutes go??), heartfelt and attention-grabbing... this movie really does need to be seen to understand what I'm talking about.

One of my favorite animated, fantasy films! Sad to see it didn't do better when first released. A sweet film with a positive message. I encourage those who haven't seen it, to take a look.

Santa Claus (although I don't believe he was ever named in the movie), the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, and the tooth fairy enlist Jack Frost to defeat the Bogeyman. The Santa character and the Easter Bunny are certainly different personalities than most kids have been taught to believe, so maybe parents should watch it before showing it to the kids.But it's fun for adults, and the 3D is excellent.