5. Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole (2010)
Otherwise known as 'that animated film that everyone forgets Zack Snyder directed,' this adaptation of Kathryn Lasky's book series is an interesting experiment on the director's part, which unfortunately doesn't quite pay off. It may be the only CG animated movie about owls, and aims for photorealism over the more typical cartoonish aesthetic of Pixar, Dreamworks et al; yet when all's said and done, there's very little about it we haven't seen innumerable times before. The story centres on two young owl brothers who are kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers for the despotic Metalbeak, leader of the self-proclaimed Pure Ones. While the good-natured Soren escapes with another small owl named Gylfie, his brother Kludd is indoctrinated to the Pure One cause and willingly abandons his family. When Soren seeks to free the kidnapped owls with the help of the legendary Guardians of Ga'Hoole, he and his brother inevitably come to blows. This is fairly standard as far as your Joseph Campbell hero's journey mythic storytelling goes, but it's pretty dark stuff for a contemporary family film. Nor does the film shy away from violence and threat, the Guardians and Pure Ones donning notably Spartan-esque helmets and imposing metal 'battle claws' for combat. It's isn't quite an airborne Watership Down, but it's not far off. As can be expected from Snyder, the film is very nice to look at, with beautiful forest, mountain-top and ocean settings, and it's not hard to see the swooping flight sequences (replete with the director's signature dashes of gratuitous slo-mo) as a dry run for Man of Steel. Still, there's no getting around the fact that it's a pretty generic adventure story; and as well-realised as the owl protagonists are, they are often hard to tell apart, which can make the film a bit tricky to follow, particularly for the younger viewers the film is most geared toward.