Rise of the Guardians

For our family, Easter has never been about bunnies and Christmas has never been about Santa. (For the record, we didn’t go around bursting any Santa-bubbles - we just read this book to learn about the true story inspiration behind jolly old St. Nicholas).

But, being Easter weekend, we wanted to share with you a family-favourite movie that, ironically, features both the Easter Bunny and Santa.

We originally watched Rise of the Guardians back in 2014, after our littles were tucked into bed. It seriously messed us up...in a good way. A Notebook kind of way. 

A movie about Santa and the Easter Bunny messed us up. You read that correctly. And you are wondering how this is possible... The best way to understand is to let North, Sandy, Tooth and Bunny explain it themselves in this scene.

Oh, another tidbit about our family; the females in our house typically don’t do so well with the intense emotions of animated movies: Lion King, Finding Nemo and Peter Rabbit all had at least one of us (usually all of us) bursting into tears.

And so it was with good reason we didn’t watch Rise of the Guardians with our girls until just this year (they’re 9 and 12 now) Even then, there were points we weren’t sure if we’d all make it through. This movie is both funny, and intense.

But we decided to risk the emotional fallout because the message is so important and so timely.  We want our girls to learn, through as many mediums and stories as possible - fear only has as much power as we let it have.  

There’s a quote from Jamie that gives us shivers every single time. 

(Depending on the age of your kids and their emotional comfort zones, this may be an adults-only movie for your family right now. This next clip will help you decide.)

Spoiler alert: this is THE scene that makes the movie. If you like your suspense, this will give away the ending, so view at your own risk.

Watching again with our girls; a whole seven years later, we were reminded that Rise of the Guardians had a bigger influence on the formation of Author than we had realized. [The power of story at work yet again.]

When the kids step forward to stand up to Pitch...THAT. 

Whether you watch it with or without your kids or make it a date-night movie - let us know what you think of Rise of the Guardians. We’d love to hear what scene spoke to you.