Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Review Rating: 7

A beautiful alien-populated world named Terra is coveted by the last survivors of earth, intent on conquest rather than assimilation.

This is a lovely movie to watch in terms of aesthetic pleasure, yes, definitely. But the film becomes very hard to watch in a metaphorical sense when you see how the last remnants of humanity are acting. The story is presented from the alien point of view literally throughout the entire movie, and that brings the sense that the film-makers are shaking their collective finger at you for being human. Which will confuse the younger generation, and annoy the older generation trying to watch the film.

So we have the planet Terra (the aliens never say what they call it) and the alien race already occupying it: peaceful, joyous aliens who celebrate life on a daily basis, often with a whole ritualized celebration. Then one day mushroom city is bombarded by humans in futuristic fighter planes, and one plane in particular is downed and the pilots life is saved by a Terrian who figures out how to get him to breathe the atmosphere with the help of his plucky robot co-pilot. The military general of the human forces is intent on terra-forming the planet to breathable atmosphere, despite being well aware of the fact that that will kill all the native life and the Terrians of the planet. Downed pilot Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson), after spending much of his time with Terrian Mala (Evan Rachel Wood), determines to stop the crazed General Hemmer from destroying everything!

I don’t want to ruin the ending by giving it away here, sufficit to say I was a little surprised, and that can be good. Movies like this generally have a standard formula to follow, I’m pleased to say Battle for Terra definitely broke that mold. Sadly, a great deal of people never even heard of this CGI marvel, as it came out around the same time as other overshadowing blockbusters.

Battle for Terra is worth seeing, even just once!