Review in a Hurry: This 3-D CG 'toon is like WALL-E in reverse: Humans in a rundown, polluted spaceship try to take an unspoiled planet away from the Snork-like beings who glide around blissfully in its low gravity. Rooting against humans in favor of cute animals in something like Bambi is one thing, but rooting against them in a struggle with an entirely fictional species? Bad bet, filmmakers.
The Bigger Picture: 3-D can make almost any CG animated feature better; even the Ashton Kutcher-Martin Lawrence flick Open Season. But Battle for Terra struggles despite the visuals, which means that it must really suck in 2-D.
In a distant future, humans have destroyed not just Earth, but Mars and Venus too, via the one-two punch of excessive pollution followed by nuclear war. After searching the universe and running out of resources, the last remaining survivors come upon a planet so Earth-like they dub it Terra. Unfortunately, it's already inhabited by a hippie-ish race of "Terrians" (funnier if they were called "Terra-ists") who live in tune with nature and hang around with whales (yes, there are whales on this planet), though they're also religious fundamentalists.
But the atmosphere breathed by the Terrians is toxic to humans, and vice-versa, so against the wishes of the humans' ineffective president, a hardass military general declares—pardon the pun—a global War on Terra.
The only hope for peaceful resolution may be a human soldier (Luke Wilson) who is rescued by a female Terrian (Evan Rachel Wood) after his stunningly unoriginal starfighter with X-wings (pay no attention, George Lucas!) is forced to crash on the planet's surface.
Like in many sci-fi movies, the script vastly underestimates the size of actual planets—couldn't the humans settle on a different continent or something? But no, they have to transform the atmosphere around the only settlement on the entire world. That's not the dumbest thing that happens, either.
A quality voice cast—it also features Dennis Quaid, David Cross, Brian Cox, Ron Perlman, Danny Glover, Chris Evans, Amanda Peet, Justin Long and James Garner—is left out to dry by a silly story and subpar character rendering. Eight years ago, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did a similar concept more justice with better animation. And the 3-D? Not used anywhere near as effectively as it could be.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Any 3-D moments involving snow flurries (Terra has multiple climates within a small area) are captivating, and the final battle is somewhat fun to watch.
______
Follow @eonline on Twitter