If there’s one Zack Snyder movie that deserves far more love than it has gotten, it’s his 2010 animated movie Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. To state it upfront: I’m a massive Zack Snyder fan. His zombie movies are some of my all-time favorites; 300 really left me enamored with his work, and I think of his DC movies as the pinnacle of what superhero films can aspire to. I’m also proud to call myself one of the many fans who campaigned for the eventual release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
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All of the above is exactly why it struck me as odd to realize, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that Owls of Ga’Hoole was the only Zack Snyder movie I had not seen!
Based upon Kathyrn Lasky’s book Guardians of Ga’Hoole, Snyder’s movie follows an owl named Soren (Jim Sturgess), who escapes the captivity of the “Pure Ones” and summons the legendary “Guardians” to defeat them and save the owls of Ga’Hoole. Upon finally seeing Owls of Ga’Hoole, what really stood out to me, and still does, is how overlooked and underrated the film is among Zack Snyder’s work.
Owls Of Ga’Hoole Is A Visually Breathtaking Animated Movie
Zack Snyder is a director often praised for bringing a vibrant, colorful visual style to his filmmaking. His work in the superhero movie realm is certainly heavy on wild, comic-book-style visuals, which makes it all the more odd that Owls of Ga’Hoole isn’t as immediately recognized in Snyder’s filmography. The film is a stunningly gorgeous CGI animated movie at every moment, and simply looking pretty is only half of the visual formula.
Zack Snyder also has a well-known predilection for slow motion and speed ramping. He frequently uses this as a tool in fight sequences to emphasize visual splendor or the impact of hits, and both are very much present in Owls of Ga’Hoole. However, being Snyder’s first animated film, he liberally uses slow-motion and speed-ramping to capture just how alive the movie’s owl-populated world is. He also puts both tools to use in scenes of owls flying through rain or fire, showing how complimentary Snyder’s manipulation of speed is to the visual feast of his filmmaking with Owls of Ga’Hoole, specifically.
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Owls Of Ga’Hoole Is Snyder’s Most Family-Friendly Movie (Without Being A “Kids Film”)
It isn’t uncommon to hear the refrain that animated movies are largely perceived as being aimed at children and families. Obviously, that’s an oversimplification, but it’s also hard not to come away with that feeling when Pixar seems to steal most of the animated movie spotlight. With Owls of Ga’Hoole, Zack Snyder quite clearly endeavors to strike a middle ground with his epic style of storytelling and the parameters of child and family-friendly animated adventures. Snyder even pares down his notorious long runtimes for an unusually brief 97 minutes, making Owls of Ga’Hoole the shortest movie Snyder has ever made. In that respect, Owls of Ga’Hoole is arguably Snyder’s most family-friendly movie to watch.
With much of Snyder’s filmography being R-rated (or at least at the hard PG-13 level), he seemingly saw Owls of a Ga’Hoole as his chance to make something in the vein of a children’s movie. However, Snyder also doesn’t compromise on the intensity he brings to the rest of his work. The owl battles are still as powerful and visceral as the Justice League’s showdown with Steppenwolf, with real danger for the characters involved. Additionally, the story is also one with real fate-of-the-world stakes for all of Ga’Hoole and its owl population.
In structuring Owls of Ga’Hoole the way he does, Snyder crafts an animated movie that is wholly appropriate for children, but also one imbued with just the right level of intensity and punch from his live-action work to make it feel different for both the children and their accompanying parents. I can still remember being eager to show Owls of Ga’Hoole to my nephew after first seeing the film, as a way to both show him a different kind of animated movie and a soft intro to the Snyderverse. I can see other Snyder fans with young ones in their lives all thinking the same, which speaks to Owls of Ga’Hoole as perhaps the best possible introduction to Snyder for younger viewers and their parents – just another reason why it deserves greater recognition.
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Owls Of Ga’Hoole Captures All Of Zack Snyder’s Strengths In An Animated Movie
Despite Owls of Ga’Hoole being the Zack Snyder movie with the lowest profile, it’s also one that showcases all of his greatest strengths as a filmmaker, to remarkable effect. The movie’s aforementioned visual splendor elevates it above what a film about talking owls should be. What immediately stood out to me the most about Owls of Ga’Hoole is how well Snyder showcases his bag of great filmmaking trademarks – epic scale, action, and unity between warriors.
As a storyteller, Snyder frequently gravitates towards tales of an assembly of warriors banding together against a common threat. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the most obvious example, but it’s every bit as essential a storytelling device in Dawn of the Dead, 300, Sucker Punch, Army of the Dead, and the Rebel Moon films. Snyder’s band of warrior owls in Owls of Ga’hoole is testimony to how much he excels at stories with an ensemble of radically unique and powerful warriors as their foundation. This combined with Snyder’s style as an action filmmaker also completes Owls of Ga’Hoole‘s delivery of the full Zack Snyder package.
Owls of Ga’hoole is as epically and breathlessly action-packed as any other Snyder film, with the movie’s sprawling sequences of owls in aerial combat as breathtaking as the Spartan’s last stand at the Hot Gates in 300. The fact that Snyder pulled that off in a family-friendly movie, without in any way watering down his style, left me as impressed as I’d ever been with a Snyder movie. It is perhaps the most puzzling side of his filmmaking career that Zack Snyder made the most epic animated owl movie ever with Owls of Ga’hoole – but then again, Snyder’s work also has a habit of growing more loved retroactively. If it took even this Zack Snyder fan years to finally see Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole, hopefully, the rest of the world will discover his most overlooked movie in due course.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole can be rented to stream on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube
