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Felix Quinonez: This seems like a definite disappointment. Even if it had made its five-day total in the three-day portion of the long weekend I would say Rise of the Guardians underwhelmed. An animated movie like this should shine during Thanksgiving weekend. But unfortunately with such a weekend as strong as this, there's bound to be a movie that gets the shaft and maybe that's what happened with Rise of the Guardians.

Reagen Sulewski: Count me in the "salvageable disappointment" category. Even though the salad days for animated films are over, and you can't guarantee a hit every time out, $32 million in five days for any animated film, particularly one that's been promoted as strongly as this one, is unquestionably an underperformance. I think one crucial aspect here is that it was marketed as action-adventure rather than comedy, and that's always a tougher sell to families - some who might find that too much for their kids, and some who are just conditioned to seeing these films as comedies (which isn't to say there wasn't humor in the ads, it just wasn't the focus). If there are decent legs, though - seeing as how it's the main family focus for the next month, and there's not another single animated film out the rest of this year, it seems plausible - it could make it to Christmas in okay shape and add around $40 million over the holidays. But if DreamWorks had eyes on a new kid's franchise, that's been dashed rather definitively.

Kim Hollis: I agree that this result has to be viewed as primarily disappointing. Even though the studio tried to temper expectations, they still threw under. I actually think that the look of this film was kind of weird (on top of the action focus that Reagen mentioned), and I expect that put some people off. I guess people like their imaginary icons a little more cute and cuddly.

Max Braden: It's a significant improvement from the last animated movie that Hugh Jackman voiced (Flushed Away opened to $18 million in November of 2006). I'm usually wary of how-it's-made movie trailer advertising - the type that show all the actors in the recording booth - because it says they don't have much of a story to sell. In this case I think they were lucky to get over $30 million, and the reason they did get that much was probably because they showed Jackman et al. To me the CGI also looked sub-par.

David Mumpower: What always troubled me about Rise of the Guardians is that in trying to be this meta-holiday film, it could not be directly tethered to any specific one. Even the Thanksgiving release reinforces the ambiguity of the project. There is an Easter and a Christmas-related character as well as a vaguely wintry one. So there is not a specific reason to launch this premise over this particular holiday save for the fact that Thanksgiving is, you know, exceptional for box office. The problem is that with The Hobbit on deck, 3D venues are not available in December to the degree that they are right now. The choices were either to hope for the best at Christmas, push back until Easter or grab all the money they can this week then pray that international receipts and home video revenue justify a sequel. In hindsight, this should have been a summer 2012 release.

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