Earth

If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then Disney's nature documentary Earth could challenge the breadth of the world's longest novel. The imagery on display in this globe-spanning film is both breathtaking and exhilarating, as cameras soar over herds of caribou being pursued by white wolves and dive underwater to glimpse a humpback whale playing with its young. The footage is among the most beautiful I have ever seen, except that, as someone who has viewed the 11-part BBC miniseries Planet Earth, I've already seen it.

This first instalment in Disney's planned series of nature documentaries timed for release on Earth Day is actually a truncated version of the award-winning 11-part miniseries that first aired in the U.K. in 2006. That series was separated into distinct sections that looked at everything from deep sea marine life to unusual forest fungus. Planet Earth quickly became an audience favourite and also held the distinction of being the first nature documentary shot on high-definition video.

Now, Disney (handling distribution under the new banner of Disneynature) has released a 90-minute big-screen version of the Planet Earth series, in which the high-definition video footage has been transferred to traditional 35mm film stock. The other difference is that the original series was voiced by BBC veteran David Attenborough, who has now been replaced by actor James Earl Jones, perhaps still best known as the iconic voice of Darth Vader.

Jones has a great voice filled with power, but his pandering narration in Earth is more distracting than complementary and I consistently yearned for the authoritative, hyperbole-ridden boom of Attenborough's voice. Some of Jones's lines are stolen directly from the script read by Attenborough several years ago, but much of it has been changed to evoke a sense of playful fun that is clearly designed to please young children.

But while Earth is really just a condensed version of an already brilliant (and much larger) series, the majesty of the imagery remains absolutely captivating for every gorgeous frame that is projected on screen. And while I won't say that seeing the footage on a 40-foot cinema screen is like seeing it for the first time, I will remark that the aerial shots that send us over the edge of towering waterfalls and past the peaks of the Himalayan mountains are entirely unforgettable.

Any movie that features both the hypnotic mating rituals of the otherworldly Birds of Paradise and a slow-motion shot of a great white shark lifting its entire body out of the ocean to capture a seal in its jaws is clearly going to make an impression. The vast diversity of the footage crammed into 90 minutes of screen time is enough to justify the big-screen treatment.

But not all of the footage has comfortably made the transition from high definition video to 35mm film. A late night scene involving prowling lions and protective elephants is especially grainy in this version, since it had to be captured using a built-in "nightshot" mode on the video camera in order to avoid using external lighting devices that would have disrupted the animals. The transfer to film has made the footage even more blurry, but the dramatic power of the scene, in which desperate lions gang up on an adult elephant, makes its inclusion in this movie entirely understandable.

By opening our eyes to the glorious beauty and curious complexities of our spectacular planet, Earth succeeds as a magnificent visual celebration of nature and its inhabitants. Despite the woeful absence of Attenborough's ominous narration and the nagging sense of having seen it all before, Earth still manages to stir emotions with its expansive visual vocabulary. If you've already seen Planet Earth or have never even heard of it, this trip to our glorious planet is a journey worth taking in order to experience the magnificent wonders at home in our own backyards.