Reviews & Previews - Battle for Terra

Posted on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 06:00 PM

Battle For Terra

By: S. Tran

Starring: Luke Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood
Directed By: Aristomenis Tsirbas
Running Time: 85 minutes
Rated: PG

Not Your Daddy's 3-D!

Unfortunately in this case the "Daddy" is me..I feel old. I remember when I was a kid once in a while a 3-D movie would come out and we'd put on those paper red and green glasses. It was supposed to make things pop out from the screen but usually ended up with your vision going blurry followed by a headache.

Thankfully the technology has gotten better. As with "Beowulf" from a couple years back "Battle For Terra" is a great looking 3-D film that will not have you lying in a dark room afterwards trying to stop the pounding in your skull. In fact, for my money I think this is actually a better looking film than "Beowulf" taking into account the lack of a naked CGI Angelina Jolie of course.

The animation and 3-D effects in the movie are so good because the entire movie retains the 3-D feel. A lot of movies that promise 3-D only deliver on that promise in a few shots but "Battle For Terra" manages to make it a part of the whole movie. Even in slow scenes the film had a nice depth to it. They also threw in a some shots where you really notice the 3-D as well just to give you that "Wow" factor. Check out the falling snow sequences to see what I mean.

The renderings of the characters themselves are more cartoony than realistic. The people looked like what we saw in "The Incredibles". It would have been interesting to see what they could have done with more realistic looking characters.

The story itself is really nothing special, its been done a million times before and is one of those standard "Humans are violent self destructive creatures" moral tales. After watching so many movies with this theme its a wonder that the human race is still around because apparently we suck. Still it's not one of the worst versions of that particular story I have seen on the screen.

What does not suck is the rendering of the alien world of Terra where the movie takes place. The art directors did a great job creating a vision of the planet. It's a ll a bit dream-like and fairytale-ish but still looks great onscreen.

A pretty interesting little movie that I think people can enjoy, if for nothing but the good animation and great 3-D. You may get a laugh from some of the dubious "science" in the movie but this is more of a visual film than a hardcore science fiction movie.

3 and a half stars out of 5.