Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1176 in Movie
• Released on: 2009-10-06
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Running time: 80 minutes

Customer Reviews

An Incredibly Subversive Film About Following One's Conscience!
Battle for Terra is one of those rare films that dares to have a politically charged message: Genocide and ecocide is inexcusable under any and all circumstances; following your conscience can have an extraordinarily high price; and government is best run by civilians and not by a military dictatorship!

What is mind boggling is that a soldier is forced to kill his commanding officer and allow his brother, and only surviving family member, to die in battle in order to follow his conscience! This is truly a profound and subversive story. Too bad it is being shown on only one screen in a metropolitan area with 1 1/2 million people! It deserves being seen by a much wider audience!

This exact same subject matter of humans colonizing another world at the expense of another intelligent and benevolent species is rarely covered in science fiction on the big screen. Human beings are usually the victims of some evil alien power. It's nice to see the tables turned for once and witness human beings as the oppressors, or bad guys.

While watching Battle for Terra, I asked myself repeatedly, "What would I do in a similar situation?" I realize I will never be a soldier in a critical battle that will determine the destiny of the human race. But I'm forced to examine the power I have, no matter how small, to battle evil and injustice when given the opportunity to do so! That's the beauty of a subversive story! It makes one think!

See: Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey and The Light of Conscience: How a Simple Act Can Change Your Life

For other great Science Fiction see::Zardoz and Enemy Mine and Fantastic Planet and A.I. - Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition) and Bicentennial Man and Galaxy Quest (Deluxe Edition)

GREAT FILM!!!!!
Love this movie! Highly recommend it! Would have did well on the big screen! A must see...especially for us americans!

Surprisingly Good Movie
I really liked Battle for Terra. I went to see it with my 6 year-old daughter, thinking it would be a kid's movie and a yawn-fest for me. The title is horrible, so I figured the movie would be equally so. But I was surprised to find that I liked it - a lot. There are a lot of elements in the film that remind me of another Canadian animated film 'Skywhales' - and Battle for Terra even has creatures called skywhales that are pretty much clones of the earlier film's skywhales. I won't say the film borrowed heavily from Skywhales, but it does share quite a few elements.

Anyone who likes sci-fi will find the film's premise to be a bit derivative. Countless movies have explored the same themes as this one, but what's interesting about this movie is that it doesn't have clear-cut good and bad guys. I'm glad that more and more kid's films are presenting more nuanced stories - older kids can certainly handle it.

Having said that, I think it was a mistake to bring my 6 year-old to the film. A couple of the scenes were quite disturbing. I'd say 8 years old would be my personal judgement for how old a kid would need to be in order to fully understand the film and to be able to handle the death scenes - yup, there are a couple of death scenes in the film.

One note that rang a little false was the language problem. We get no hint that the aliens don't speak English, and when the issue is raised in the film it's handled confusingly and a little heavy-handedly. I wish they had shown the aliens speaking their natural language for a minute (like they handled the Russian submariners in Hunt for Red October), or subtitled the first ten minutes or something. But that's a small quibble.

One thing that will turn a lot of people off is that this does tend to be a nutty crunchy environmentalist film. Even so, the themes are handled with a lot more subtlety than most. But if you're a right wing wacko I'm pretty sure you're not going to like this film.

All-in-all, Battle for Terra (I really wish they'd gone with a different name) is a good film - at least as good as Monsters vs. Aliens, but perhaps not quite as good as The Incredibles. Well worth a cinema ticket and I'll definitely be looking for it on DVD.