THINGS THAT ALMOST INTEREST US: "The Battle for Terra"

I saw this trailer today for the first time over on the Bigdumbobject site.

While it looks moderately eye-popping, and it's interesting to see Lionsgate do a cartoon, and an SF cartoon at that...a lot about this trailer made my eyes roll.

I've not seen the movie, but let's make some predictions, shall we?:

1) This is an ecological fable.
2) The aliens are a politically correct hybridization of American Indians and Hippies, which is the kind of thing hippies will love and Indians will hate for good reason.
3) Earth was destroyed because bad people (LIke me, I guess) refused to recycle and "Go Green" and give ol' mother earth a big ol' hug.
4) The Hippie-aliens live "In tune with nature" and, of course recycle everything, even their old U2 CDs.
5) The bad humans in this movie (Notice they're all caucasian?) are essentially analogues for the European powers who invaded and enslaved the New World, and all-but-destroyed all the native cultures and civilizations and religions and suchlike.
6) Eventually, however, one of the bad humans will go native, realize he has to "Do the Right Thing" and will stop the invasion, convincing humans and aliens to live together in peace and prosperity and militant vegitarianism, and the human race will survive now that we've become worthy of it.
7) Whoever wrote this movie has never seen "Babylon 5" and doesn't realize "Earthforce" is the name of the military in that show.

Now, in fact, none of these elements are bad, and in the hands of a really good writer - say vintage Ray Bradbury, or Octavia Butler, or Ursula K. LeGuin - it could be freakin' amazing! I mean, "The Martian Chronicles" has some significant elements of this anyway. I have a hunch, though, that rather than a serious explanation of any of these elements, or a fully-drawn and believable alien society, what we're gonna' get is heavy-handed earth-first Kalifornia Uber Alles "Western Culture Is Inherently Evil" propaganda. Probably with a tiny bit of hokey new-age mysticism for the selfrighteous "Spiritual but not religious" crowd.

I'm not closed-minded on these issues. There's some significant overlap here thematically with Wall-E, and I loved the hell out of that movie. It had just the right balance of cautionary tale and entertainment, thought provoking and reassuring. "Terra" has a dozen subconsious red-flags going off in me, and I can't even identify 'em all yet, much less figure out why. I'll also mention that I've been an advocate of American Indian Rights for twenty-five years now, and the idea of trivializing the genocide they suffered just so you can make a preachy fad-of-the-moment flick galls me. So there's plenty of stuff that they could do right here, but...I dunno...it's just itching at me. But I could totally be wrong. I haven't seen the movie. But I have seen a *lot* of movies, and I know how these things usually go...

It sure does look pretty though. I'll review it after I've seen it with the kids.