The story of three animal families and their amazing journeys across the planet we all call home. The film combines rare action, unimaginable scale and impossible locations by capturing the most intimate moments of our planet wildest and most elusive creatures.
Also Known As: Panet Earth
Planet Earth
Unsere Erde
Production Status: Awaiting Release
Genres: Action/Adventure, Art/Foreign and Documentary
Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.
Release Date: April 22nd, 2009
MPAA Rating: G
Distributors: Disneynature
Production Co.: Greenlight Media, BBC Worldwide, BBC Television Listing
U.S. Box Office: $29,088,771
Produced in: Germany
Earth is a decent attempt to recut BBC's epic production Planet Earth into a kid-oriented, 90-minute feature film. While it is very good at times, it ultimately falls way short of the original.
Earth is at its very best when it offers us sweeping bird's eye views (sometimes literally) of our spectacular planet. The footage is well-suited for the big screen and the voice of James Earl Jones is always welcome in my ears.
I was pleased that Disney incorporated many scenes from Planet Earth, and not exclusively those that pertain to the three families (polar bear, elephant, humpback whale) so prominently mentioned in marketing efforts for the film.
That said, several such scenes felt as if they were tossed in without much thought for transition and others seem to have made the cut just because.
A good example of both is the great white shark sequence. It's incredible to watch (particularly in Blu-Ray), but here it shows up without context. One moment, we are watching the whale mother and her calf, the next we are treated to super slo-mo shots of great whites munching on seals. Unlike the other death sequences in the film, this one has absolutely no frame of reference to potentially help ease the minds of troubled young viewers.
While I'm on the subject, I would like to give a most hearty thumbs-down to Disney's decisions with respect to the all-important treatment of life and death struggles in nature.
If a film like this is marketed toward children, it should go one of two ways. First, it can take the "they all lived happily ever after" approach and save the concept of predation for a different production. Or it can carefully teach children that many forms of life feed on other forms of life. Earth does neither. Instead, it seems confused as to how it will treat this question, and it ultimately sends a lot of mixed messages.
For instance, the first death scene in the film involves a herd of caribou and a pack of wolves. From the moment the wolf is introduced on screen, it is vilified. Everything from the ominous music to the selection of a rather sinister looking specimen tells us that the wolf is the bad guy.
There is no mention of the fact that the wolf must eat, too. There is no shot of the wolf's fuzzy cubs to balance the tragic struggle of the doomed young caribou. There is no attention paid to the fact that an unchecked population would eventually weaken the caribou or cause them to starve. So, what's the deal, Disney? Bambi didn't do enough to make kids hate wolves? You wanted to introduce a new generation to the supposed evils of this long misunderstood creature? I was disappointed to see such reliance on a tired old cliche.
I was also rather disturbed by how this scene ended. After the calf slips, but before the wolf can finish it off, the scene concludes with a surprisingly anti-climactic shot of exhausted wolf and exhausted calf, both seemingly resigned to what will happen next. The problem is that we don't see what happens next. The problem is that the the scene is made all the more disturbing by the fact that it lacks finality. If the result was going to be left ambiguous anyway, then why not end the scene mid-pursuit after the narrator has explained that the caribou will survive if it keeps its footing and will perish if it does not?
Compare this sequence to a later scene in which a cheetah pursues a young gazelle. Essentially, this is the same scene with different players on a different continent. The lessons seem to be the same. In fact, the cheetah was also vilified, though not to the same extent that the wolf was. The difference is that this sequence does not end until we see the cheetah's jaws wrapping around the throat of the gazelle in stunning slow motion.
Ultimately, the contrast between these two scenes left me wondering. Did the wolf not kill cleanly enough for kids? Was there some other reason for these two very similar scenes to conclude with such discrepancy?
I'm sure many people will argue that these scenes appeared as they did because the filmmakers had a responsibility to show the truth. They owed it to the audience to show us the reality, albeit an occasionally grim one, of life on our planet. Sadly, the film fails with respect to this point, as well.
While there are several examples of the truth being left on the cutting room floor, I would like to focus on the one I consider to be the most egregious. Specifically, I find tremendous fault with the film's treatment of the humpback whale and her infant calf.
Viewers will recall the scene in which the mother must repeatedly help her calf to the surface so that it can breathe. Later in the film, we are told that the whales "have made it" to their destination.
Viewers of Planet Earth will recall that the whales were not so lucky. In fact, they were attacked by a pod of orcas, who relentlessly piled their weight upon the calf until it finally succumbed and drowned. The grieving mother was forced to make the rest of her journey alone.
I don't mind that the filmmakers omitted this harsh reality. It is one of the most difficult sequences to watch in the BBC documentary, and I suspect it would be especially difficult for children. But why manufacture a happy ending that wasn't? Why not pick a different ocean-bound animal to follow if the fate of this family was beset with a tragedy to deep for young minds?
Ultimately, I love the idea of a kids' digest version of Planet Earth and I was very hopeful that Disney would pull it off. However, I can't help but feel that Earth fell far short of its source material. Planet Earth contains so much love and respect for its subjects that you can feel it pouring off the screen. Rarely did I encounter the same sense of reverence as I watched Disney's Earth.
Final Verdict: Worth the price of admission (if only for the waterfalls and the birds of paradise), but nowhere near as good (I repeat, NOWHERE near as good) as BBC's Planet Earth.