Battle for Terra

Battle for Terra, originally screened as Terra, is a 2007 American animated action-adventure science fiction film, based on the short film Terra, about a race of beings on a peaceful alien planet who face destruction from colonization by the displaced remainder of the human race. The film was directed by Aristomenis Tsirbas who conceived it as a hard-edged live action feature with photo-real Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) environments. The close collaboration with producing partner and investor Snoot Entertainment redirected the project to become fully animated and appeal to younger audiences. The film features the voices of Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson, Brian Cox and James Garner (In his last major film role before his death) among others.

It premiered on September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was widely released in the United States on May 1, 2009 by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

The film was originally shot in 2D but was made in such a way that a second camera could be added to the film. After the film was shown at festivals and distributors showed an interest in it, a small team was hired to render the entire film again from the perspective of the second camera for a true 3D effect. It won the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Mala and her friend Senn are young creatures of an alien race that inhabits Terra, a peaceful planet that is part of a star system in the Milky Way galaxy.

One day, a large object partially blocks the Terrian sun, piquing the Terrians' interest. Mala goes against the Terrian rules that ban the development of new technologies without the approval of the ruling council and creates a telescope. She takes it outside the city and uses it to view the object. Recon ships emerge from the object, come down to the city and start abducting Terrians. Some willingly offer themselves to the spaceships mistaking them as their new "gods".

After Mala's father, Roven, is abducted, she lures a ship into a trap, causing it to crash. She saves the pilot, a human named Lieutenant James "Jim" Stanton. After his personal robot assistant, Giddy, warns Mala that Jim will die without oxygen, which is absent on the planet, she scavenges suitable plants and creates a tent in which Jim can breathe. In exchange, Giddy teaches her human language. Jim awakes and finds out that his ship is damaged beyond repair. Giddy tells Mala why the humans have come: centuries beforehand, both Mars and Venus were terraformed and colonized by humans for their natural resources. Two hundred years later, the planets demanded independence from Earth, to no avail. This dispute escalated into a war that rendered all three planets uninhabitable. The large object in the sky is The Ark, a generation ship containing the remnants of the human race, traveling for generations in search for a new home. They arrived at Terra, and gave it its name. Mala agrees to fix Jim's ship, so she can go with him to save Roven. When Mala, Jim, and Giddy return to the crash site, they discover the ship has been moved.

The trio tracks the ship to a secret underground military facility where the elders and Doron, the leader of the council, secretly retain the military technology from prior conflicts. After infiltrating the facility and fixing the ship, they fly to the Ark. In it, the commander of the human army, General Hemmer, takes over the Ark in a coup, and declares war on Terra. Mala finds Roven, but gets detected. A fight with the guards starts, in which she gets captured and Roven, while trying to keep the humans away from him with a laser, unintentionally causes a decompression that kills him and the men. Hemmer tells Jim his goal is to turn Terra into a new Earth. He will drop the Terraformer, a large machine capable of creating an Earth-like atmosphere onto the planet's surface, annihilating the Terrians in the process. To test his loyalty, Hemmer creates a scenario in which Jim has to choose between killing Mala or his younger brother Stewart. Jim saves Stewart, while discreetly ordering Giddy to rescue Mala and help her escape back to Terra. Hemmer orders Jim to join the space-fighters in charge of defending the Terraformer, while he personally supervises the mission within the machine.

Doron and the Terrian elders allow Terrians, along with Mala, Senn and Giddy, still under Jim's order to protect her, to defend their planet with their stockpile of military tech, but are outnumbered by the opposing fighters. The humans drop the Terraformer onto the surface and it begins to poison the planet with oxygen. As the machine is close to completing its objective, Jim finds Mala fighting Stewart in retaliation for shooting down Senn. Realizing the immoral decision in killing the Terrians, he turns back to destroy the Terraformer with missiles, killing a betrayed Hemmer. Mala, Giddy and Stewart steer away from the fireball in time, but Jim's critically damaged ship fails and is consumed. He accepts to dying in peace. The Terraformer collapses.