Earth (2007 film)

***Earth*** is a nature documentary film depicting the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film covers the events of a single year, beginning in the Arctic in January before southward and ending in Antarctica in December. It features the journeys made by three particular species - the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale - to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. A companion piece to the BBC/Discovery Channel television series *Planet Earth*, the film was co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and Greenlight Media, with Discovery providing some of the funding. It was released in cinemas internationally during the final quarter of 2007 and 2008, then in the United States in 2009.

Alastair Fothergill, the executive producer of the television series, and Mark Linfield, the producer of the "From Pole to Pole" and "Seasonal Forests" episodes, served as directors of the film. The British version is narrated by Patrick Stewart, and the U.S. version by James Earl Jones. Only thirty percent of the footage in the film is new, with the remainder being reworked from the television series to suit the narrative of the film, and even features previously unseen footage.

## Plot

Over the course of a calendar year, the film takes the viewer on a journey from the North Pole in January to the South in December, revealing how plants and animals respond to the power of the sun and the changing seasons. The film focuses on three particular species - the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale.

Starting in the high Arctic in January, as the darkness of winter gives way to the sun, a mother polar bear is shown emerging from her den with two new cubs. She needs food and must lead her cubs to her hunting ground on the sea ice before it begins to break up. By April, the sun never sets, and by August all the sea ice has melted. The mother and cubs have retreated to dry land, but a male polar bear is trapped at sea and must seek out land by swimming. He reaches an island with a walrus colony but is too exhausted to make a successful kill. He dies from injuries sustained in a walrus attack.

African bush elephants are filmed from the air as they negotiate a dust storm in the Kalahari Desert. June is the dry season, and they must follow ancient paths passed down through generations to reach watering holes. A mother and calf are separated from the herd in the storm but manage to reach shelter. The matriarch leads the herd to a temporary watering hole, but they must share it with hungry lions and scavenger white-backed vultures. The lions are shown attacking a solitary elephant at night, when their superior vision gives them the upper hand. The herd times its arrival at the Okavango Delta to coincide with seasonal floodwaters which transform the desert into a lush water world.

A humpback whale mother and her calf are filmed from the air and underwater at their breeding grounds in the shallow seas of the tropics. There is nothing here for the mother to eat, so she must guide her calf on a 4,000-mile (6,400 km) journey south to the rich feeding grounds near Antarctica, the longest migration of any marine mammal. En route, they navigate dangerous seas where great white sharks are filmed breaching as they hunt. Sea lions, sailfish and dolphins combine to bait a shoal of small fish. By October they enter polar waters, and by December the Antarctic sun has melted the sea ice to form sheltered bays. Here, the whales are shown feeding on krill by trapping them in bubble nets.

The stories of these individual creatures are woven into the film alongside a great many additional scenes. The supporting cast of animals include mandarin ducklings filmed jumping from their tree-hole nest, Arctic wolves hunting caribou, cheetahs hunting Thompson's gazelle, elephants charging at white-backed vultures, birds of paradise displaying in the New Guinea rainforest, Adelie penguins in the Antarctic and demoiselle cranes on their autumn migration across the Himalayas.

Time-lapse photography is used to show the blossoming of spring flowers, seasonal changes to deciduous forests, clouds sweeping up Himalayan forests, and the growth of jungle spores and fungi.

## Themes

The narration is woven around the theme of anthropogenic environmental change. The three species featured are used to illustrate particular threats to the planet's wildlife. In the Arctic, rising temperatures are causing a greater area of sea ice to melt and threatening the polar bear with extinction as early as 2030. Global warming is also disrupting the planet's weather systems and making seasonal rainfall patterns less predictable. This poses a threat to creatures like elephants, which must travel greater distances to reach water. Rising ocean temperatures have started to kill the plankton on which humpback whales and most other sea life depend. The film ends with the message that "it's not too late to make a difference."

## Release

*Earth* received its world premiere at Spain's San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2007. It was released across Europe in the fourth quarter of 2007 and early 2008 to much success. In April 2008, it was announced that distribution rights in North America had been acquired by Walt Disney Studios, who would release the film under their then-new Disneynature film unit, which would specialize in natural history documentaries. The film was released in the United States on April 22, 2009, with James Earl Jones narrating in place of Stewart. Additionally, the U.S. version uses a more dramatic soundtrack and runs only 90 minutes, compared to the original cut's 99 minutes.

## Reception

### Critical response

*Earth* received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes sports a rating of 87% based on 91 reviews, the second highest score of all the Disneynature films (behind *Monkey Kingdom*), with an average score of 7.1 out of 10. Its consensus slated: "With its spectacular and extensive footage, *Earth* is both informative and entertaining." Metacritic gave an average score of 72 out of 100, based on 26 reviews.

### Box office

On its first day of release in the U.S., *Earth* opened at #1, grossing $4,023,788 from 1,810 theaters. For its first weekend, it opened at #5, grossing $8,825,760, as well as $14,472,792 over the five-day period. Despite dropping to #7 the next weekend, taking in $4,340,235, it took in $12,017,017 over the previous week (including Sunday), and ending with a two-week total of $22,004,284. It closed on July 30, 2009 after 100 days of release, ending with a final gross of $32,011,576, making it a moderate success in the U.S..

*Earth* picked up an additional $76,931,115 at the international box office. It took over $30 million in Germany alone, becoming one of the three highest-grossing films of the year in France and had the best opening day of any natural history documentary in Spain. By contrast, in the U.K. *Earth* debuted on just 14 screens and amassed less than £75,000 in ticket sales.

In January 2008, the Japanese version of *Earth*, narrated by actor Ken Watanabe, knocked Hollywood blockbuster *I Am Legend* off the top of the box office despite opening on half the number of screens. It went on to gross more than 2 billion yen ($18.5 million), making it the most successful documentary there of the last ten years.

Its worldwide total of $108,942,691 made *Earth* a commercial success and placed it second on the all-time list of highest-grossing documentaries behind *March of the Penguins*.

## Trivia

* *Earth* marks one of the few times where Discovery was involved in production of a theatrical film based on a series from one of its networks. Others, like *The Crocodile Hunter*, *Walking with Dinosaurs*, *The Blue Planet*, and *My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic* all received feature films which were made without Discovery's involvement.