Terra (film)
Encyclopedia
Battle for Terra, originally screened as Terra, is a 2007 computer animated
science fiction film
, based on a short film of the same name about a peaceful alien planet which faces destruction from colonization by the displaced remainder of the human race. The film was directed by Aristomenis Tsirbas
who conceived it as a hard-edged live action feature with photo-real Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) environments. The close collaboration with producing partner and investor Snoot Entertainment redirected the project to become fully animated and appeal to younger audiences. The film features the voices of Evan Rachel Wood
, Brian Cox, Luke Wilson
, Amanda Peet
, Dennis Quaid
and Justin Long
among others.
It premiered on September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival
. It was widely released in the United States on May 1, 2009. The film was originally shot in 2D but was made so that a second camera
could be added to the film. After the film was shown at festivals and distributors showed an interest in it a small team was hired to render the entire film again from the perspective of the second camera for a true 3D effect.
It won the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival
.
) and Senn (Justin Long
) are young alien creatures who live on Terra, a planet from a solar system in the Milky Way. Terra is a peaceful planet of small alien creatures who have a rich semi-advanced culture.
One day a Large Mysterious object blocks the Terrian sun, piquing the Terrians' interest. However, since the Terrian culture bans the development of new technologies, such as telescopes, without the approval of the ruling council, none of the inhabitants are able to get a closer look at the huge object in their sky.
Mala, who is inventive and headstrong, goes against the rules of her community and creates a telescope, which she takes out into the dark empty area outside the Terrian city and uses to view the object and witnesses smaller objects coming from the large object that turn out to be incoming scout spaceships. She returns to the city to find that the scout spaceships have already started abducting Terrians (who willingly offer themselves to their new "gods"). After Mala's own father is abducted she goads a ship into tailing her and lures it into a trap, which causes it to crash. Afterward, she saves the life of the pilot, revealed to be a human, an officer named Lieutenant Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson
). After his personal robot assistant warns Mala that Stanton will die without a supply of oxygen, (The Terran atmosphere contains none) she creates an oxygen generator and fills a tent with air so that he can breathe. The Robot informs Mala that the mysterious object is a generation ship
called The Ark, containing humans from Earth
. Centuries beforehand, Both Mars
and Venus
were terraformed by humans and colonized. But 200 years later, demanded Independence, and the resulting war left all three planets uninhabitable. The Ark, containing the remnants of the human race, traveled for several generations looking for a new home. When Stanton awakes the robot informs Stanton and Mala that a crucial part of the ship was damaged in the crash, Mala offers to make a replacement part herself. When Stanton, Mala, and the robot return to the crash site, they discover that the ship has been moved.
The trio track the ship to a huge underground military facility which was built by a previous, warlike generation of the Terrians. The trio realizes that despite the current peaceful nature of the Terrian city, the elders have secretly retained the military technology from the dark days of war. After infiltrating the facility, fixing the ship and flying back to the Ark, Jim orders Mala to stay and goes to be debriefed.
Mala ventures off and finds her father, but before she can rescue him, the human guards are alerted to her presence. While trying to save Mala, her father kills himself and two men after breaching the hull, and she is captured, but Stanton helps her to escape back to Terra. The commander of the military wing of the Ark, General Hemmer (Brian Cox), takes power over the civilian leaders in a coup, and declares war on Terra, citing the deteriorating condition of the Ark. His goal is to annihilate the Terrians so that the humans can turn Terra into the new Earth. He plans to drop a huge machine onto the planet's surface--called the Terraformer--which will create an Earthlike atmosphere. Stanton is sent to be in the first group of spacefighters designated to defend the Terraformer, while General Hemmer will go down to the planet's surface in the Terraformer to personally supervise the terraforming process.
After the humans drop the Terraformer machine onto the surface, it begins to replace the native gases with oxygen and nitrogen, which will asphixiate the aliens. The alien elders bring out all of the secretly-hidden military technologies from their secret base, and huge waves of alien glider-fighters attack the Terraformer machine. The human spacefighter ships begin a huge and bloody battle against the relatively low-tech alien glider-fighters, and the sky is filled with laser cannon fire and explosions.
Finally, as the Terraformer is close to the completion of its goal of turning the Terrian atmosphere into an Earth atmosphere, Lieutenant Stanton realizes that annihilating all of the inhabitants is morally wrong. He turns his ship towards the Terraformer machine, and, with his laser cannons blazing, attacks it. As his ship is raked with anti-aircraft defensive fire, Stanton fires his air-to-air missiles at the Terraformer's command module, destroying it, General Hemmer and himself in a ball of flame.
An epilogue shows what happens in Terra some time later. The Terrians and the humans have decided to live in peace. With the Terraformer machine destroyed, the Terrian atmosphere becomes safe once again for the aliens. The aliens create a huge domed city for the human colonists to live in, with an Earth-like atmosphere. In the human domed city, a large statue of Lieutenant Stanton is erected, in honor of his memory and sacrifice.
and used its business relationship with Lionsgate to open the film wide in the United States. Battle for Terra received uncharacteristically little marketing for a wide release film. The television campaign consisted of a small number of television spots on Cartoon Network
and a handful of network television ads in select markets. Awareness for the film on its opening weekend was subsequently little to non-existent. This strategy of having a disproportionately small advertising campaign for a wide release was employed only one other time a year earlier with the film Delgo
. The results for that film were disastrous as the $40 million Delgo grossed a mere $694,782 on 2,160 screens. The lower costing Battle for Terra fared considerably better by taking in more than twice as much revenue ($1,647,083) on roughly half as many screens (1,159) and continued on to gross $6 million internationally. Battle For Terra opened May 1 in the United States against 2 other wide releases: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
(4,099 screens) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (3,175).
, the film has an average rating of 5.5/10, and a score of 48% from all critics, with 52% from Top Critics. Another review aggretator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 54%, based on 19 reviews.
and Blu-ray Disc
September 22, 2009 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment
.
Battle for Terra was released in France in French and English version by Rézo Films on DVD
and Blu-ray Disc
October 20, 2010 and include a 3D version of the movie with 4 3D glasses. It uses the TriOviz Inficolor 3D technology, a patent pending stereoscopic system, first demonstrated at the International Broadcasting Convention
in 2007 and deployed in 2010. It works with traditional 2D flat screens and HDTV sets and uses glasses with complex color filters and dedicated image processing
that allow natural color perception with a pleasant 3D experience. When observed without glasses, some slight doubling can be noticed in the background of the action which allows watching the movie in 2D without the glasses. This is not possible with traditional brute force anaglyphic systems.
A Region B Blu-ray 3D was released in Germany.
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
science fiction film
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
, based on a short film of the same name about a peaceful alien planet which faces destruction from colonization by the displaced remainder of the human race. The film was directed by Aristomenis Tsirbas
Aristomenis Tsirbas
Aristomenis Tsirbas is a film director, producer, writer, animator and visual effects animator. He is well known for directing the award winning short films The Freak and Terra which was adapted into the 2007 feature film of the same name produced by MeniThings Productions and Snoot...
who conceived it as a hard-edged live action feature with photo-real Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) environments. The close collaboration with producing partner and investor Snoot Entertainment redirected the project to become fully animated and appeal to younger audiences. The film features the voices of Evan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
, Brian Cox, Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
, Amanda Peet
Amanda Peet
Amanda Peet is an American actress, who has appeared on film, stage, and television. After studying with Uta Hagen at Columbia University, Peet began her career in television commercials, and progressed to small roles on television, before making her film debut in 1995...
, Dennis Quaid
Dennis Quaid
Dennis William Quaid is an American actor known for his comedic and dramatic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, his career rebounded in the 1990s after he overcame an addiction to drugs and an eating disorder...
and Justin Long
Justin Long
Justin Jacob Long is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his roles in the Hollywood films Galaxy Quest, Jeepers Creepers, Dodgeball, Live Free or Die Hard, He's Just Not That into You, Drag Me to Hell, and Youth in Revolt, and his personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a...
among others.
It premiered on September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
. It was widely released in the United States on May 1, 2009. The film was originally shot in 2D but was made so that a second camera
Virtual camera system
A virtual camera system aims at controlling a camera or a set of cameras to display a view of a 3D virtual world. Camera systems are used in videogames where their purpose is to show the action at the best possible angle; more generally, they are used in 3D virtual worlds when a third person view...
could be added to the film. After the film was shown at festivals and distributors showed an interest in it a small team was hired to render the entire film again from the perspective of the second camera for a true 3D effect.
It won the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival
Ottawa International Animation Festival
-History:In 1976, the Canadian Film Institute founded the biennial Ottawa International Animation Festival . First held August 10 to 15, 1976, the OIAF created a gathering place for North American animation professionals and enthusiasts to ponder the craft and business of animation...
.
Plot
Mala (Evan Rachel WoodEvan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
) and Senn (Justin Long
Justin Long
Justin Jacob Long is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his roles in the Hollywood films Galaxy Quest, Jeepers Creepers, Dodgeball, Live Free or Die Hard, He's Just Not That into You, Drag Me to Hell, and Youth in Revolt, and his personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a...
) are young alien creatures who live on Terra, a planet from a solar system in the Milky Way. Terra is a peaceful planet of small alien creatures who have a rich semi-advanced culture.
One day a Large Mysterious object blocks the Terrian sun, piquing the Terrians' interest. However, since the Terrian culture bans the development of new technologies, such as telescopes, without the approval of the ruling council, none of the inhabitants are able to get a closer look at the huge object in their sky.
Mala, who is inventive and headstrong, goes against the rules of her community and creates a telescope, which she takes out into the dark empty area outside the Terrian city and uses to view the object and witnesses smaller objects coming from the large object that turn out to be incoming scout spaceships. She returns to the city to find that the scout spaceships have already started abducting Terrians (who willingly offer themselves to their new "gods"). After Mala's own father is abducted she goads a ship into tailing her and lures it into a trap, which causes it to crash. Afterward, she saves the life of the pilot, revealed to be a human, an officer named Lieutenant Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson
Luke Wilson
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
). After his personal robot assistant warns Mala that Stanton will die without a supply of oxygen, (The Terran atmosphere contains none) she creates an oxygen generator and fills a tent with air so that he can breathe. The Robot informs Mala that the mysterious object is a generation ship
Generation ship
A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light...
called The Ark, containing humans from Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. Centuries beforehand, Both Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
and Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
were terraformed by humans and colonized. But 200 years later, demanded Independence, and the resulting war left all three planets uninhabitable. The Ark, containing the remnants of the human race, traveled for several generations looking for a new home. When Stanton awakes the robot informs Stanton and Mala that a crucial part of the ship was damaged in the crash, Mala offers to make a replacement part herself. When Stanton, Mala, and the robot return to the crash site, they discover that the ship has been moved.
The trio track the ship to a huge underground military facility which was built by a previous, warlike generation of the Terrians. The trio realizes that despite the current peaceful nature of the Terrian city, the elders have secretly retained the military technology from the dark days of war. After infiltrating the facility, fixing the ship and flying back to the Ark, Jim orders Mala to stay and goes to be debriefed.
Mala ventures off and finds her father, but before she can rescue him, the human guards are alerted to her presence. While trying to save Mala, her father kills himself and two men after breaching the hull, and she is captured, but Stanton helps her to escape back to Terra. The commander of the military wing of the Ark, General Hemmer (Brian Cox), takes power over the civilian leaders in a coup, and declares war on Terra, citing the deteriorating condition of the Ark. His goal is to annihilate the Terrians so that the humans can turn Terra into the new Earth. He plans to drop a huge machine onto the planet's surface--called the Terraformer--which will create an Earthlike atmosphere. Stanton is sent to be in the first group of spacefighters designated to defend the Terraformer, while General Hemmer will go down to the planet's surface in the Terraformer to personally supervise the terraforming process.
After the humans drop the Terraformer machine onto the surface, it begins to replace the native gases with oxygen and nitrogen, which will asphixiate the aliens. The alien elders bring out all of the secretly-hidden military technologies from their secret base, and huge waves of alien glider-fighters attack the Terraformer machine. The human spacefighter ships begin a huge and bloody battle against the relatively low-tech alien glider-fighters, and the sky is filled with laser cannon fire and explosions.
Finally, as the Terraformer is close to the completion of its goal of turning the Terrian atmosphere into an Earth atmosphere, Lieutenant Stanton realizes that annihilating all of the inhabitants is morally wrong. He turns his ship towards the Terraformer machine, and, with his laser cannons blazing, attacks it. As his ship is raked with anti-aircraft defensive fire, Stanton fires his air-to-air missiles at the Terraformer's command module, destroying it, General Hemmer and himself in a ball of flame.
An epilogue shows what happens in Terra some time later. The Terrians and the humans have decided to live in peace. With the Terraformer machine destroyed, the Terrian atmosphere becomes safe once again for the aliens. The aliens create a huge domed city for the human colonists to live in, with an Earth-like atmosphere. In the human domed city, a large statue of Lieutenant Stanton is erected, in honor of his memory and sacrifice.
Cast
- Evan Rachel WoodEvan Rachel WoodEvan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
as Mala - Brian Cox as General Hemmer
- Luke WilsonLuke WilsonLuke Cunningham Wilson is an American film actor known for his roles in Old School, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, Legally Blonde, Idiocracy and Death at a Funeral.-Early life:...
as Jim Stanton - David CrossDavid CrossDavid Cross is an American actor, writer and stand-up comedian perhaps best known for his work on HBO's sketch comedy series Mr...
as Giddy - Justin LongJustin LongJustin Jacob Long is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his roles in the Hollywood films Galaxy Quest, Jeepers Creepers, Dodgeball, Live Free or Die Hard, He's Just Not That into You, Drag Me to Hell, and Youth in Revolt, and his personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a...
as Senn - Amanda PeetAmanda PeetAmanda Peet is an American actress, who has appeared on film, stage, and television. After studying with Uta Hagen at Columbia University, Peet began her career in television commercials, and progressed to small roles on television, before making her film debut in 1995...
as Maria Montez - Dennis QuaidDennis QuaidDennis William Quaid is an American actor known for his comedic and dramatic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, his career rebounded in the 1990s after he overcame an addiction to drugs and an eating disorder...
as Roven - Chris EvansChris Evans (actor)Christopher Robert "Chris" Evans is an American actor. He played Cary Baston on the television series Opposite Sex, and transitioned to a film career, starring in several hits, including Not Another Teen Movie , Fierce People , Fantastic Four, sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer , and...
as Stewart Stanton - James GarnerJames GarnerJames Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...
as Doron - Danny GloverDanny GloverDanny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...
as President Chen - Mark HamillMark HamillMark Richard Hamill is an American actor, voice artist, producer, director, and writer, best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy of Star Wars. More recently, he has received acclaim for his voice work, in such roles as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, Firelord...
as Elder Orin - Tiffany Brevard as Singer Soloist
Release
Roadside Attractions handled theatrical marketing in North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and used its business relationship with Lionsgate to open the film wide in the United States. Battle for Terra received uncharacteristically little marketing for a wide release film. The television campaign consisted of a small number of television spots on Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
and a handful of network television ads in select markets. Awareness for the film on its opening weekend was subsequently little to non-existent. This strategy of having a disproportionately small advertising campaign for a wide release was employed only one other time a year earlier with the film Delgo
Delgo (film)
Delgo is a 2008 computer-animated fantasy film. The film was produced by Fathom Studios, a division of Macquarium Intelligent Communications, which began development of the project in 1999....
. The results for that film were disastrous as the $40 million Delgo grossed a mere $694,782 on 2,160 screens. The lower costing Battle for Terra fared considerably better by taking in more than twice as much revenue ($1,647,083) on roughly half as many screens (1,159) and continued on to gross $6 million internationally. Battle For Terra opened May 1 in the United States against 2 other wide releases: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 2009 American action film based on the Marvel Comics' fictional character Wolverine. The fourth installment in the X-Men film series, it was released worldwide on May 1, 2009...
(4,099 screens) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (3,175).
Critical reaction
The film has received average reviews from critics. Based on 93 reviews collected by Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, the film has an average rating of 5.5/10, and a score of 48% from all critics, with 52% from Top Critics. Another review aggretator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 54%, based on 19 reviews.
Box office
The film opened at #12 in the United States grossing $1,082,064 in 1,159 theaters with an average of $934 per theater. The film's international box office began May 14, 2009 in Russia with a 5th place opening of $332,634 at 83 screens. "Battle for Terra's" current worldwide total is $6,101,046.Home media release
Battle for Terra was released on DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
September 22, 2009 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Lionsgate Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD distribution arm of Lions Gate Entertainment and most former Artisan Entertainment releases. Its library of more than 8000 films owes some of its size to output deals with other studios...
.
Battle for Terra was released in France in French and English version by Rézo Films on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
October 20, 2010 and include a 3D version of the movie with 4 3D glasses. It uses the TriOviz Inficolor 3D technology, a patent pending stereoscopic system, first demonstrated at the International Broadcasting Convention
International Broadcasting Convention
The International Broadcasting Convention, more commonly known by its acronym IBC, is an annual trade show for broadcasters, content creators/providers, equipment manufacturers, professional and technical associations, and other participants in the Broadcasting industry...
in 2007 and deployed in 2010. It works with traditional 2D flat screens and HDTV sets and uses glasses with complex color filters and dedicated image processing
Image processing
In electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...
that allow natural color perception with a pleasant 3D experience. When observed without glasses, some slight doubling can be noticed in the background of the action which allows watching the movie in 2D without the glasses. This is not possible with traditional brute force anaglyphic systems.
A Region B Blu-ray 3D was released in Germany.