Film Review: Battle For Terra

Director: Aristomenis Tsirbas. Screenplay: Evan Spiliotopoulos. Producers: Ryan Colucci and Keith Calder. Cinematographer: Aristomenis Tsirbas. Abel Korzeniowski. Editor: J. Kathleen Gibson. Studio: Lionsgate. Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson and Justin Long




A major problem with 3D animated movies is that they tend to privilege the medium over the message, form over content, and 3D technology over good movie making. This is true for most of the 3D movies that I have been released this year, but for a certain select few which includes Up, Avatar, and Legend of the Guardians. The last may appear rather ill chosen as the first two movies are certainly classics in their time. The reason for its selection lies in the fact that Legend of the Guardians is based on a rather famous children’s book and for this reason has more substance, structure and cohesion than movies like Despicable Me, Alpha Omega and so on.

Battle For Terra not surprisingly lacks the content required to turn a good animated production into a memorable tale. In fact, the themes of this movie are very much the same as those we saw earlier this year in Avatar. Humans wandering through space have come upon an alien planet, which they decide to exploit, ergo they need the planet’s resources, which are being protected and preserved by a native indigenous population of what from the human perspective is an alien species. A human being through a series of not so unfortunate events lands himself in the daily life of the native species of the planet Terra. He comes to admire their way of life and develops a close bond with a particular feminine member of the natives. It sounds familiar doesn't it? Eventually there is a Battle as the title suggests but, praise be to the script writing gods, there is an original ending to what is a very unoriginal movie.

Adults will probably end up bored to death, while their young will enjoy it! So Moms and Dads take your kids to see Battle For Terra, but don’t switch off your Blackberries as you may finally have the time to catch up on some deferred emailing.

Rating: 40/100