DVD Reviews

Battle for Terra - Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Oct 5, 2009, 23:12 GMT

A nice little animated eco-sci-fi film that features an all star voice cast. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much but was pleasantly surprised that the film turned out to be pretty good with some interesting production design.

On a distant planet, the curious alien Mala (Evan Rachel Wood) and her friend Senn (Justin Long) discover that a mysterious object has entered their atmosphere. Mala wants to investigate, but her father Roven (Dennis Quaid) is satisfied to accept whatever the Elders say the object is.

Mala builds a telescope to investigate the object and discovers that it is a spaceship and not a “new god” as the Elders speculated. The “new aliens” turn out to be humans who attack Mala’s village and abduct her father and other citizens. One of the humans crashes his spaceship and Mala takes the unconscious Lt. James Stanton (Luke Wilson) back to her home. When she examines him a small robot named Giddy (David Cross) warns her that Stanton is dying because his oxygen tank is almost empty and Mala has to help Giddy find an oxygen producing plant to save him. It turns out that the humans are looking to terraform Mala’s world because theirs has been depleted and destroyed and their spaceship is falling apart from disrepair. Changing to an oxygen based atmosphere will allow humans to live on the planet, but it will destroy all indigenous life since their physiology is not oxygen based. The militaristic General Hemmer (Brian Cox) will colonize the world no matter what the cost to the peaceful Terrans, but Stanton comes to realize that the aliens are much more human than he first imagined. Battle for Terra has a lot going on in it. Not just action, but in theme. It takes the current fascination with all things ecological but also addresses man’s inhumanity to other men, or aliens in this case, and also the good side of mankind. There are some pretty heady issues hidden in a kid’s film. I suppose that I’m being disingenuous to animation though since you can do anything with the process. It’s trended towards kid’s films in the states, but other countries have used it for more adult material. Battle for Terra has more adult themes hiding in it’s seemingly kid friendly characters. I only say kid friendly because the aliens are ones that the kids might like the look of. They’re a cross between tadpoles and seahorses and have big cute eyes. Awwwwww. However, then we have the mean(ish) humans come into the picture and their General overthrows the more peaceful leadership and is going to wipe out the cuties to make sure that humanity has a place to live. Boooooooooo.

Get your hands off me you damn, dirty human! The production design is fascinating and I applaud the filmmakers for giving us something so alien. The Terrans float around and appear to be a peaceful and rural race. The planet is very interesting and even has giant sky “whales.” We humans are not given such a nice place since we’ve depleted Earth’s resources, destroying it in the process, and is a ragtag band looking to find a new home. Luckily, the better part of some of us prevails and Terra is saved, but a happy ending is had by all. It really is a pretty good little picture, but varying age groups will find different lessons in it. Battle for Terra is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (2.35:1). Special features are in high definition and include a commentary from director Aristomenis Tsirbas, writer Evan Spiliotopouls, and editor Jim May. There are also 7 minutes of deleted scenes, the 4 minute “The Making of the Battle for Terra,” a storyboard comparison, a 2 minute animatic, a 1 minute tour of the virtual set by the virtual director as he talks about his love of film, production stills, and previews of other Lionsgate titles. Battle for Terra is interesting all around. Greenies will squeal “I told you so,” but there are several themes at work in the film. I found it a much deeper film that I first imagined and always enjoy it when things surprise me.