The Trailer for Lionsgate’s Battle for Terra has hit the net leaving me with a sense of distaste for the human race but wanting to cuddle something cute.
A star studded cast didn’t save the independent film Delgo, but that doesn’t mean that an animated feature from a studio that isnt Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks is destined to fail. I just suspect that this isn’t it.
However Delgo did leap to mind when I saw this trailer. It really feels like they have a similar thread – both focusing on a nonhuman race for primary protagonists – but something else bothers me about this that just screams discomfort.
The Humans are the badguys. In film, especially fantasy, you need a character or culture that you can identify with. The clear front runner in any film with aliens or talking animals in it, we react to the human element. In this trailer its the humans that are unbiasedly evil here. The cute simple alien race are peaceful loveable creatures and the big bad humans, desperate for a new homeworld are going to stomp them out like bugs.
We don’t like going to movies that remind us of our more base instincts without some sort of redemption and in an attempt to paint the humans in this trailer as the enemy it fails to find a connection with me.
The sad part is as akward as that feels, we know that the movie will eventually have a predictable turning point in which the lovable peaceful creatures of this world will find a sympathetic human and befriend them so they can share their world with the last of human kind.
I wonder if this will beat Delgo’s “record”
