1/5 Plain Stupid...
  by Super Dave (Ada, Oklahoma)
I am adult, and this movie is clearly intended for children, so please keep this in mind. If you have children, and watch the movie with this in mind, you would probably get a different experience out of it. As is, I didn't get much out of it at all.

Basically, this movie is certainly an attempt at making some sort of philosophical, idealogical statement, and I really have no idea what that statment was.

Spoilers to follow.

You begin with cute adorable aliens with eyes like saucers (puppy dog eyes times one million). Obviously, these are the ones who you need to feel sorry for, because, with those eyes, you just have to feel sorry for them when they look sad. I mean, if they cried a single tear, their whole bodies would dehydrate!

These aliens are familiar with other aliens visiting from other worlds, as indicated by some "Chariot of the Gods" commentary early on. They see the human invaders as gods, and want to be abducted by them, which is just plain weird. But no, the elder says, they aren't gods, but invaders who are pretending to be gods. Which, that was just a quite weird statement. So, are they saying that they have been visited by "gods" who were aliens and didn't want to invade them, or are they saying that some sort of deities have visited them or what? Whatever their relationships with the "gods" is something that is bizarre.

They also have rules about not building any technology because they had wars in the past, and so they tried to keep their current culture in tune with nature, while keeping a "backup" culture that is ready to fight off any possible alien invaders. Yeah. Real probable, that.

Then, you have a human who crash lands and for some reason isn't equipped with a portable oxygen supply. Basically, this is a plot device so that the native tadpoles could nurse him back to health, and help teach him that these aliens are not monsters, they are just like people. The aliens have art and culture, and even a grand Disney "celebration of life." The probably even had "Earth Day" but, unfortunately the invasion came too late for that one.

Of course, the human was taught that all aliens would be monsters. I guess, this is a reference to how wars are started, by "dehumanizing" the enemy. Of course, in this case it is out of place, since given the existance of aliens, no certainties could be drawn since they are, for lack of a better word, aliens. There would be no possible pre drawn conclusions about how they would react to the presence of humans.

Of course, the human plan was stupid. The plan was to fly down, attack the aliens, and abduct and torture them. The humans were ruled by a wise council which was concerned about the morality of their actions. Of course, they condoned attacking without contact or provocation, and the capture and torture of the natives without batting an eye. The part of the plan that posed a problem was the complete destruction of the native aliens. To make a point, they never opposed the plan, they just need more time to consider it.

The humans had a robot which could update your brain with information by shining a beam of light into your eyes, and could teach you the native language. The reason they were programmed this way was so that when your human protagonist gets shot down, the hostile alien might have a chance of constructing an oxygen tent, and then saving and communicating with their human superiors. They couldn't have done this so that they, the humans, could communicate with native aliens, now could they?

The protagonist had a gift of creating complex engineering because it just felt right, and the human protagonist saved the native population by a suicide flight which had the potential of condeming the human race to extinction. In the end, it turns out the whole terraforming thing wasn't necessary, since the humans can live in domes. I guess they just never considered that until they had no other choice. Humans can be so shortsighted.

Oh, well. This is an interesting movie, and the battle scenes are great. The aliens even fly ships that look remarkably like the gungan subs for SW Episode 1.

I would only recommend it for folks who like to fast forward a lot. Overall, the whole movie is a bit too goofy to handle.

Avoid if possible.

1/5 Was I watching the same move as the others who reviewed this story?
  by J. Hall (Rawlins, WY USA)
The story "Battle for Terra" is not the animated film one would want their children to see.

Mankind has destroyed Earth and two other planets in the solar system because of the desire for independents from each other.

Now mankind is on a search for another planet to live on. The first contact with the Terrans is a sneak attack upon their world, a world that has found how to live with nature.

A takeover on the rusting old spaceship by a U.S. style military is depicted as the bad guys. The hero in the story, a soldier who turns on and kills the military leaders who are hellbent on destroying the Terrans.

It is my opinion that this very colorful animated film has no entertainment value, but an abundance of propaganda it does have.

5/5 Oustanding and thought provoking CGI animated film
  by James Finch (Bradford, PA)
Battle For Terra is a very unusual CGI animated film about Earth invading an alien planet...no, this is not Planet 51 and is not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination. It's a serious and inciteful film made over 2 years ago and finally released on DVD. What would we do, if our civilization was reduced to a small group of marauders on a failing generation ship desperate to terraform a planet to save what's left of humanity, even if it would wipe out the indigenous population who breathe a different gas? It's well written, acted and animated. A true labor of love and has a bittersweet ending. I don't recommend it for really young children, but perhaps kids 8 and up could get the story.

5/5 Just brilliant
  by Xhunter RUS (dk)
I love this movie. It literally touched my soul. The animation is so beautiful. Characters are very interesting. Especially a gentle being~Molla and that human(main character).I disliked him at first,but liked at the end.And another human female in this film is quiet interesting character. She is like Molla in my opinion, just human. The ending was brilliant, but sad. Will not tell why. Watch it. I don't want to spoil anything. Some people in reviews claim that this film is boring. It wasn't for me. Not at all. I was fascinated by it. And even had some tears at the end. I hate the destructive nature of humans. But this is so true about us. I wish we were a peaceful race.Life would be better.

5/5 Outstanding
  by magellan (Santa Clara, CA)
This is is really a beautiful and visually appealing movie about a war between a peaceful race and warlike humans who attack their planet. If you compare it with say, Titan A.E. from almost ten years ago, you can see how much the animation technology has changed in that time. Titan A.E., although great for its time, looked more like an animated cartoon. This movie looks like they're shooting actual 3D models, the figures and sets are so realistic and lifelike. It's a totally different world, literally.

Even technically difficult lighting effects such as reflections and even specular highlights are rendered realistically, which many world-class painters have trouble rendering (Vermeer and van Eyck are two of the greats who could do this well). As if this wasn't enough, at the very end of the movie, amazingly, some erudite visual jokester inserted chromatic distortions that look like the internal reflections typical of compound optical lenses, which various high-tech optical coatings are designed to minimize, as if the movie was shot with a real film camera. Too funny.

I was mostly interested in seeing how the CGI had come along, and as you can see I certainly wasn't disappointed there. But the story line is interesting and atypical in that here the Earthlings are the bad guys, trying to kill off a peaceful, intelligent species so that we can take over their world after the Earth was destroyed by war. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe humans will finally realize they're not warm, fuzzy, nice, lovable creatures after all, but instinctive hunters and killers who need to learn to constrain their violent impulses if the human race is to have a future at all in this now overcrowded and increasingly resource-strained world.

So overall a visually appealing movie with a message that I would completely agree with.