Questionable anthropomorphism aside, Earth is fine, fascinating viewing
Like a greatest-hits collection, Earth, Disney’s latest foray into nature documentaries, is flashy and easily marketable to the masses, but really only scratches the surface of a wealth of material. In this instance, that wealth of material is Planet Earth, the acclaimed 2006 BBC documentary series.
While Planet Earth directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield were working on their magnum opus, they also set film aside for a full-length feature that would act as an overview of the whole series. Earth, originally released in the United Kingdom in 2007, was the result.
Following the struggles of three animal families — polar bears, African elephants and humpback whales — the film applied big-budget production values to filming the natural world from north to south (the first episode of Planet Earth, “Pole to Pole,” contains much of the same footage used in this film). The 2009 North American version of Earth is the same as the British one, with a few important changes.
First, Patrick Stewart’s original narration has been replaced with the deep intonation of James Earl Jones. While it’s undeniably awesome to hear the voice of Darth Vader narrate a scene where a great white shark hangs in the air in jaw-dropping slow motion after exploding several feet out of the water to catch a seal, the change isn’t necessary.
Jones’s voice certainly doesn’t detract from the film, but the revised script does. In Americanizing Earth, Disney apparently saw the need to litter the film with dozens of corny and broad jokes. At best, these passages are distracting, but at times they border on a kind of anthropomorphism that is antithetical to what the film is trying to achieve.
Even worse is the new score that has been added to sections of the film. One of the central premises of Earth is that some of the most amazing, dramatic and powerful stories can be found in the day-to-day struggles of the creatures with which we share the planet. Yet, instead of letting these stories speak for themselves, the American version is crammed with gaudy music that is clearly designed to evoke an emotional reaction. A flock of birds overcoming fierce conditions to pass over the highest mountain range in the world is impressive without tacky, triumphant strings. A nighttime standoff between a herd of elephants and a pride of lions gains nothing from comically foreboding music.
Even with these flaws, Earth still contains an abundance of drop-dead gorgeous imagery. Fothergill and Linfield wonderfully illustrate our planet’s immense beauty, whether through the bizarre mating rituals of birds of paradise, an enormous herd of caribou migrating through the boreal forest, or dust cyclones touching down on an endless desert landscape. To see these scenes play out on the big screen makes it easy to forgive the film’s shortcomings, but it’s also all Earth really has in its corner. In every other respect, the film can’t match its more developed sibling Planet Earth.
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