Battle For Terra

If Battle For Terra sounds a bit familiar (a man enters a foreign land and falls for the natives), that's because it's pretty much the story of Pocahontas Dances With Wolves Avatar. Aristomenis Tsirbas's 3D feature is a futile effort to create an immersive alien landscape and historical allegory but, like James Cameron's juggernaut of a picture, it's shorn of any dramatic punch by predictability.

Without the backing of a Pixar or DreamWorks, Terra's troubles run deeper than its script and slight characters - it just doesn't have the financial clout behind it to match the top tier digitoons and consequently has technical shortcomings to match the narrative ones. The action takes place on the distant planet of Terra. The inhabitants are peaceful tadpole-like creatures who float through the air (sometimes alongside giant whales), in harmony with nature. They've found a way to live comfortably and maintain their planet, but the idyllic existence comes under threat when a fleet of ships from Earth arrive to conquer and mine it for resources. After the initial attack, wounded pilot Jim Stanton (Wilson) is left behind and taken in by Terrian Mala (Wood). He becomes fond of her and the planet's people, who later find themselves at the centre of the action as Brian Cox's barking General Hemmer launches a terraforming weapon to convert the planet's atmosphere to breathable air.

Director Tsirbas has lofty ambitions for his invasion tale (he admits to being inspired by the HG Wells classic War Of The Worlds), but in making it away from Hollywood he loses the support of cutting edge animators, script doctors and marketing budgets. The direction and characters are flat and uninspiring, and at times it isn't even crafted very well. On Terra, Jim wears a mouthpiece respirator to breathe the atmosphere. It makes sense, but when you realise it's there so production crew don't have to lip-sync the dialogue, the cracks begin to appear. Human characters are either bald or have cropped hair (another corner cut), while the landscapes and mise-en-scène are often sparse with little detail. It only highlights the gaping chasm between this film's aesthetic and the superior sheen of Pixar's computer-driven adventures.

Having debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007 and been in a kind of cinematic limbo ever since, it's probably down to a bright spark who noticed the film's similarities to Avatar that Terra even gets a theatrical release. The undercurrents of colonial expanse vs. ecological preservation are explored here, yet the cut-price execution and limp story mean it'll never find favour with eyes and minds attuned to more sophisticated animated fare. Battle For Terra would have been better off going straight to DVD - it's an instantly forgettable big screen experience.


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