Trailer Tuesday: Epic

Following on from last week's profiling of The Croods, we're looking at another upcoming animated release today - Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox's Epic.

Bringing back fond memories of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Epic sees a young woman Mary Katherine (voiced by Amanda Seyfried) magically shrunk to insect size when she goes searching in the woods for her professor father (Jason Sudeikis). Despite the skepticism of others, he believes that there are tiny guardians in the forest, and much to her shock Mary Katherine finds an army of Leafmen, voiced by the likes of Josh Hutcherson and Colin Farrell. Our heroes must work together to defeat the villainous Boggan leader, Mandrake (voiced of course by Christoph Waltz). Beyoncé Knowles and Steven Tyler help round out the cast of this fantasy adventure.

Epic, like last year's Rise of the Guardians, is loosely based on a children's book by William Joyce - this one entitled The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs. As a movie, Guardians was overstuffed with plot and characters, resulting in a manic if beautiful-looking mess (read my review here). Hopefully Epic will avoid that pitfall.

Watching the trailer above, I'm pretty confident about that though. Not only is there a sense of wonder generated by the world creation, with its minute attention to detail, but the choreography of the action scenes is thrilling. If Epic plays its cards right it could be the Lord of the Rings, or Avatar, of CGI-animated flicks.

Out of interest, while the feature trailer above helps to establish Epic's plot more clearly, I kind of prefer the original, more enigmatic preview.

Anyway, the 3D and 2D Epic releases in North America on 24 May. The film's South African release date has yet to be set. 

P.S. The wonderfully atmospheric song you hear in the background of this trailer is Snow Patrol's The Lightning Strike.