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Battle for Terra

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: PG
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

Battle for Terra is a 3-D animated science fiction tale that has intriguing narrative possibilities that are not fully explored, and while it is meant for a more adult audience, viewers under 10 years of age may require some explanation about some of its more disturbing plot details.

Director Aristomenis Tsirbas tells a rather compelling story of a peace loving alien plant of Terra, whose inhabitants are flying tadpole like bug-eyed creatures who are presently under attack from human forces who are forced to explore other planets for life sustaining water and oxygen after years of warfare left Earth nearly destroyed and uninhabitable.

The human forces are lead by a renegade General Hemmer, who leads a military coup after unsuccessfully trying to convince the human’s ruling council (who now inhabit a large spaceship called the Arc) that they need to conquer Terra and transform their environment to make it habitable for humans, thus annihilating all Terrians. Terribly outnumbered and out armed by the invading humans, the Terrians are lead by a spunky teenaged girl named Mala, who will do anything to save her captured father and besieged planet. When she later befriends a downed human pilot named Lt. Stanton they form a strange, but hopeful alliance of the two cultures.

Tsirbas and his screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulous fill the screen with the requisite amount of sci-fi action, rather stunning visual effects, numerous battle sequences and even bits of humor, but their main narrative seems like a loosely veiled parable on recent US militaristic foreign policies of the Bush era.

Characters are effectively voiced by an expressive cast of recognizable stars with Brian Cox as the nasty General Hemmer, Luke Wilson as Lt. Stanton and even Mark Hamill as the Elder Orin. Television’s Evan Rachel Wood voices the heroic Mala and Justin Long, her friend Senn. While things turn out predictably well for the Terrians, the humans’ fate is seemingly more ambiguous, which will undoubtedly cause some anxiety and dread in younger, more sensitive viewers.