Earth: Rise and Fall of a Species, the newest summer blockbuster from the team that brought you Life on Mars, has experienced a lukewarm response from critics and audiences alike, but if you go into the film expecting very little, you may come away pleasantly surprised. Spoiler Warning No matter which side of the debate you’ve taken, no one can deny that this was truly an ambitious undertaking. While the last film in the series focused primarily on geological formations and basic life forms, this film choose to up the ante with the inclusion of complex organisms based on an element different from our own (carbon, for the super fans out there). I’d prefer not to spoil too much here, but the climax of the movie, made possible by the late addition of technological and militaristic advances, was a stroke of brilliance, and the ensuing action scenes have already become a cinematic benchmark –it was without a doubt the greatest sequence of action set pieces ever put to film and will leave you shaking in awe. I say that with no hyperbole. That aside, there was plenty here that didn’t work for me. Pacing issues abound, and the substantial time spent focusing on tribes and shamanism was disappointing, and turned the largest portion of the movie into a slog. The plot meandered all over the place; we spent considerable time witnessing the birth and death of several civilizations, anyone of which could and should have revealed themselves to be our protagonists. Each one turned out to be just another red herring. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why the director felt the need to spend so much time on the development of Rome just to cast it away in the most unheroic way possible. The majority of the criticism, though, is aimed at the development of our primary species: the humans. I am not sure exactly what the directors were going for here. Historically speaking, films in the Societal genre are moralistic tales and have been created to reflect our own short comings. The idea is to give us as an audience something to think about and perhaps an idea with which we can better ourselves, but there were almost no similarities between the humans and our own species so what were they trying to say? The fatal flaw of the human species was its tribalistic tendencies and ideological diversity . The species organized itself into groups based upon arbitrary values such as color, gender or the particular Earth environment in which they happened to be born. Even worse, this species apparently can’t help itself but to make up an infinite amount of answers to a single question, leaving us with a remarkably convoluted and confusing story driven mostly by misunderstandings and blind, stupid hatred. How nonsensical is that? There is absolutely no species in possession of these flaws that could possibly rise to the point that we have in our development, so was this merely movie made just to pat ourselves on our backs, or was it supposed to be some sort of ‘what if’? What a waste. If the finale hadn’t been so phenomenal, this misstep by the director and screenwriter would have been unforgivable. So, you’ve been forewarned: if you’re going into this film expecting to think, you’re going to leave disappointed. But, this film is a truly visual experience, and if you’re the kind that is entertained by extraordinary battle scenes, than this film is for you. I recommend seeing it in 3d. I give this film 4 stars out of 5, but if the last few hundred years hadn’t been so exciting, it would have been lower. This has been Gleebo, and I’ll see you at the movies!