Earth

Earth

96 Minutes

Seven years ago I had the poor judgment of enthusiastically sitting down with my four year old nephew to watch The Lion King, an absurdly globally successful piece of coming of age that pitted Nazi hyenas against the good and might of all that is cuddly, sellable and leonine. We got as far as Mufasa’s horrible death and to this day the kid can’t listen to “The Circle of Life” without going into Raymond Shaw mode. Earth is cut from the same Disney animation genre mold that shaped Lion King, Bambi and any other pre-Toy Story Disney tale of familial loss you care to mention.

With jaw-dropping photography and narration by King Mufasa himself (James Earl Jones), the flat-out gorgeous Earth has been adapted from the high-definition nature series Planet Earth and expertly edited into a compelling documentary with a strong ecological message. Earth uses cutting-edge filmmaking techniques to capture never-before-seen, close-up views of animal behavior from around the world.

Elephants, lions, great white sharks, polar bears, whales and many more star in Earth — which helps explain why it took 71 camera people and five years to capture the footage. The film reaches to the remotest corners of the planet and leads viewers through the its harshest deserts, richest jungles and darkest caves. Viewers’ respect for nature and wildlife will grow with every scene and the impulse to protect the world’s delicate balance will likely follow, especially after you see what happens to the Papa polar bear. Stay for the credits and you’ll get a rare treat: a behind-the-scenes look of the filmmakers at work and some funny mishaps.

Using the seasons as a guide, the film follows three different mothers struggling to bring up their young: a polar bear and her two cubs waking up to the first sunlight of spring; an elephant in the Kalahari trying to protect her calf and a humpback whale migrating 3,000 miles from the Equator to the Antarctic. Since the white furry beasts are the symbol of the struggle against global warming, the most time is devoted to their suspenseful and sad storyline.

Earth includes all of the most memorable bits from the TV series such as the horror-movie styled lions ganging up on an adult elephant sequence, the spectacular shark attack and the starving Papa polar bear hunting walruses. Other highlights include: a wolf chasing a baby caribou, a bird’s eye view of a caribou migration, wildly exotic Birds of Paradise putting on a comedic seduction show and a majestic cheetah chasing and catching an antelope in slow motion. The filmmakers stop short of showing any actual dying and dining but, just in case, you may want to prepare yourself for some awkward questions from little catatonic kids, i.e. “Titi, where’s the Lion King? What happened to the Lion King? Where’s the Lion King?” For families with kids old enough to understand basic animal behavior, the series will entertain and educate in a whole new way.

On a technical level, the film is nothing short of astonishing, particularly in its use of cutting edge time-lapse photography to show climate and seasonal changes, such as a sandstorm in the Sahara Desert or the transformation of parched desert land in Africa into a lush feeding ground for species of all shapes and sizes. A sequence showing the growth of moss is especially eye-catching and is reminiscent of the gore of David Cronenberg’s earlier films.

Earth is very entertaining, informative and well worth seeing on the big screen, particularly if you haven’t seen Planet Earth. Even though animals die left and right to Darth Vader’s voice-over narration, it carefully avoids fatalistic rhetoric and adds a valuable environmental message that encourages viewers to get involved. Earth should have been a straightforward action movie, but I was able to forgive the blatant manipulation of emotions and the thriller and horror aspects. If making a nature documentary play like a narrative film will get audiences in the seats so they can see what they stand to lose, then I’m all for it. It’s unlikely, but I hope Earth makes a ton of money so that Disney can continue to finance films like this. They can leave the story-telling and animation to the geniuses at Pixar.

by Teri Carson