6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.6 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.3 |
When environmental destruction forces people to leave Earth, the remaining survivors rocket through space on a quest to find a new home. At first it seems like the beautiful planet Terra is the perfect place to take over. But when a fighter pilot crashes on Terra, he forms an unlikely friendship with a rebellious Terrian girl named Mala. Now, putting aside their differences, the young heroes join forces to protect Terra from destruction.
Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Brian Cox, James Garner, Chris Evans, Danny GloverAdventure | 100% |
Animation | 99% |
Fantasy | 76% |
Action | 68% |
Sci-Fi | 63% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: LPCM 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
To paraphrase CGI guru Brad Bird, animation is not a genre—it’s an art form—and you can do anything with it. While Asian and European directors have used animation to explore some definitely, defiantly adult themes, here in the good old U.S. of A we’ve got a habit of seeing the medium as a realm for kiddie fare. Director Aristomenis Tsirbas wants to change that. His debut feature film Battle for Terra doles out some heady issues—genocide, fundamentalism, war, sacrifice—but it does so under the guise of kid-tested, mother-approved CGI imagery. It’s a strange dichotomy, and I’m not sure that it works entirely. Even if they’re targeted mainly to children, films by Pixar and Dreamworks tend to have something for everyone—kids and adults alike—but I’m hard-pressed to speculate on Battle for Terra’s target audience. Grownups—animation fans excluded—will be less-than-impressed by the film’s juvenile look and overt, moralizing message. Older kids will pick up on the themes but might be too bored to care, and younger children will probably be frightened by the movie’s ample menace.
The peaceful world of Terra...
Battle for Terra may not boast the best CGI on the market, but it looks stellar on Blu-ray nonetheless, thanks to a vivid 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. Though the film's aesthetic favors simple character designs with minimal texture, the details that are apparent are sharp and clean. Like the best CGI feature films, Terra displays a terrific sense of dimensional presence, assisted by great contrast and some well implemented artificial depth of field. Black levels are expertly tuned and colors are saturated and weighty. I was constantly impressed, if not by the CGI itself, then by the ultra-colorful palette. Terra's evening sky is a deep midnight tone, glowing magenta thrusters power the human spacecrafts, and the long shots of the galaxy are layered with fuchsia, purple, red, and blue. It's clear than this is a straight, digital-to-digital transfer, and the image is pristine, with very little noise at all. I did notice some slight banding in a few of the more subtle color gradients, but it's hardly distracting and there are no other compression-related issues to be found. Terra may not stand up to its Pixar and Dreamworks cousins, but considered on its own merits, it looks outstanding on Blu-ray.
The film's A/V package is further bolstered by a capable and battle-ready uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround track. While many films have lots of ambience in the rear channels and few discrete effects, Terra goes the opposite direction. There are some environment-establishing sounds, but this track is characterized by big, cross-channel swooshes of spacecraft and directional laser pulses that criss-cross the soundfield with precision. The dogfights in the sky over Terra offer near- constant surround engagement, and the rest of the film keeps up with clear and well-planned sound design. Dialogue is nestled comfortably in the center channel, and apart from a few low sounding lines by Giddy, voices come through cleanly in the mix. On the dynamic spectrum, the film shows a great deal of range, growling out with deep LFE rumble while allowing the flutes, horns, and strings of Abel Korzeniowski's excellent score to show off the intricacies of their timbres.
The Making of Battle for Terra (1080i, 4:45)
For such a complex undertaking—even with a modern workflow, CGI takes forever—this making
of featurette is dreadfully short. Here director Aristomenis Tsirbas and screenwriter Evan
Spiliotopoulos discuss some of the film's underlying themes, while a few members of the visual
effects team explain their roles in the production. There's really not much here, but most of the
questions you might have are thankfully answered in the director's commentary track.
Commentary with Director Aristomenis Tsirbas, Screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos, and Editor
Jim May
Making up for the underwhelming "making of" featurette, Tsirbas, Spiliotopoulos, and May offer
up an informative track that explores nearly every facet of the film's production. As an
independently financed animated feature, Battle for Terra had to crawl over many
obstacles that a bigger budgeted Pixar film could easily surmount, and Tsirbas details some of the
inventive processes used to bring a shoe-string CGI story to life. About halfway through the film,
the commentary starts to get a little dull, though, as the participants start to dwell too much on
some of the obvious characterization and thematic content. A decent enough listen, but by no
means essential.
Deleted Scenes (1080p, 6:58)
There are four deleted scenes here. "Forbidden Hobby" shows Mala creating another illegal
invention, "Some Creepy Weird Thing" shows the Terranian's initial reaction to the human ark,
"Snow Monster!" is—you guessed it—an encounter with a snow monster, and "Maria's Call to
Action" gives voice to one of the human dissenters.
From Storyboard to Final Render: Mala Sneaks Around (1080p, 00:24)
In this brief clip, the screen is divided into four quadrants—storyboards, animatics, a rough CGI
pre-visualization, and the final render.
Animatics: Mala's Escape (1080p, 2:15)
I'll just write out the accompanying text for this feature, because it really is impressive: "A year
before actual production, director Aristomenis Tsirbas single-handedly created all the designs,
storyboards and majority of the 3-D models for the entire film. He then lit, animated, and edited
an advanced 3-D animatic that completed up to 80% of the film minus character animation and
visual effects. This unusual approach was necessary in order to realistically complete an epic
animated adventure under a very tight budget. The following clip shows Tsirbas' original animatic
accompanied by the final production version."
Production Design (1080p)
This is a user-controlled gallery of 18 sketches created when the director was pitching the
film.
Aristomenis Tsirbas: Pulling the Strings (1080p, 1:29)
In this animated short, Tsirbas literally injects a CGI version of himself into the film's
environments and explains his filmmaking influences and aesthetic.
Also From Lionsgate (1080p, 2:08)
Includes a trailer for Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow.
Just to reiterate, Battle for Terra is definitely no Pixar production, but it has a style all its own and a story to tell, even if the message sometimes muddles the plot. The film makes a grand entrance on Blu-ray with a vivid picture and lossless sound, so the more forgiving among you may feel swayed to a purchase based on Terra's technical merits. I probably wouldn't buy this for a younger child—people and aliens do get asphyxiated in a fairly intense manner—but if you're simply looking for another piece of CGI candy on Blu-ray, Battle for Terra more than capably meets the requirements.
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