Disney’s ‘Earth’ stunning on the big screen
Disney’s Earth narrated by James Earl Jones
Disney is going to be planting a lot of trees. The
multi-national corporation offered to plant a tree for every movie
ticket sold during the opening week of its new documentary
”
Earth.
”
The movie came in fifth at the box office over the weekend, and
for a documentary that’s good.
Disney’s ‘Earth’ stunning on the big screen
Disney’s Earth narrated by James Earl Jones
Disney is going to be planting a lot of trees. The multi-national corporation offered to plant a tree for every movie ticket sold during the opening week of its new documentary “Earth.” The movie came in fifth at the box office over the weekend, and for a documentary that’s good.
The promise of planting a tree was enough to get me to theater for a movie I might otherwise have waited to see a few weeks from now or even on DVD. Watching the movie at home would have been a mistake, given the amazing scenery that unfolds on the big screen. At times the wide angle shots of the landscape reminded me a little bit of the films used on Disney rides such as “Star Tours” and “Soaring Over California,” since some of the scenes seemed to pull the audience in.
The movie follows life on Earth for one year, starting in the dead of winter in the Artic. The movie was made with cooperation with BBC, and anyone who watched the “Planet Earth” series on the Discovery channel will certainly recognize a few of the scenes. I knew I had seen the rare bird of paradise do its mating dance before, but it was worth seeing it again on the big screen. The movie loosely follows the journey of three animal families – polar bears in the artic, elephants in the Kalahari Desert in Africa, and two humpback whales who journey to the South Pole.
The movie is part of a new branch of Disney Studios called Disneynature that releases nature films that hearken back to those that were made in the 1950s. Anyone who grew up with the Disney Channel has probably seen some of them, and the narration in the new movie is very similar.
The movie is not a documentary in the traditional sense. There are no talking heads in the movie, no scientists explaining what is going on to the viewers. The movie is not stuffed full of scientific facts – after all, anyone who has seen Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” knows how overwhelming too much information can be – and instead it uses the images on the screen to tell the story of a warming planet by showing the effects in the most remote of locations.
The most stunning part of the film is seeing the dramatic seasonal changes that can take place in some parts of the world. I’ve been to Africa on a safari, and it still amazes me to watch the transformation of the Kalahari Desert from a dry wasteland to a lush wetland. It really drove home the point that everything is connected when the film talked about snow melt in the Himalayas heading toward the ocean, where rain clouds are formed that travel to the desert and create the seasonal wetlands.
The narration can at times be lighthearted, as the commentary on the bird of paradise being stood up after his mating dance, and it comes across less as a lecture than as an opportunity for the audience to reflect on what is happening. In fact, Disney has worked with curriculum specialists at Young Minds Inspired to put together a 58-page guide for teachers that can be downloaded at www.disney.com/earth.
The transitions from some scenes can be a little abrupt since the filmmakers decided to tell the stories in chronological order throughout the year, rather than focusing on one region of the world or animal at a time, and to do that they do need to move around from region to region. And even though this is Disney, don’t expect it to be all peaches and cream – this is the studio that brought us “Bambi” after all. Animals are going to die along the way, but the filmmakers spare us the blood and guts.
This is one film that needs to be seen on the big screen, as will future Disneynature releases. So far the studio has plans to release Disney’s “Ocean,” but it won’t hit theaters until Earth Day 2010.
