Kaena: The Prophecy (2003)

Kaena wants more than her village life which centers around collecting sap from the tree Axis for their gods. The village elder sees the rebellious girl as a threat as the god demands more sap from the dying tree. She explores and encounters alien Opaz who reveals he is the sole survivor that crashed on her planet. The native Selenites killed his people and stolen their technology. The ship's core Vecanoi survived the crash and the Axis tree grows from it into space. Kaena has to retrieve the core from the base of Axis.This is an exercise in CG animation with a clunky story that needs too much exposition. It has one character in Kaena and the rest are forgettable. The CG is functional video game graphics from the era. It's an interesting world for a video game but needs much more work to make it a good story.

The picture starts near a village high on a huge vine called Axis. One resident is Kaena, a young adult woman who likes to adventure, while the rest of the village is bound to harvesting sap and offering it to the gods.For sassing the priest, she is exiled. She is captured by an unfamiliar group that is very interested in her because she has curiosity, and will venture beyond the village.Opaz and his people have reconstructed a star ship to return to their home planet. Kaena sees visions of a repository of knowledge of Opaz' people.After various machinations, the repository opens itself to Kaena, with conflict all around her.Will the disputes among the groups be resolved? -----Scores------Art/Animation: 2/10 There is seriously too much negative space is the artwork for most of the scenes, rather like the more disgusting parts of the Alien series, or most of H. R. Giger's paintings or sculptures. It is mostly dark, dull, depressing, surreal, and hideous. Other parts of the film are overly bright and washed out. Neither of these habits is attractive or 'eye candy' as I have seen this monstrosity described so often. Here and there I see serious frame jumps, the kind one sees in a flip book.Sound: 2/10 Amazingly bad leveling. Keep your hand near the volume control. This detracted seriously from the voice acting.Acting: 4/10 Richard Harris and Keith David were fine; Kirsten Dunst was much better than I expected. The queen and so many others were just terrible.Screenplay: 3/10 Next to opaque. Exposition of motivations was a distant, never achieved goal.

That was the caption in the cable guide that got my attention. OK, so I'm a frustrated artist who can really appreciate the end result of CGI work. And it keeps getting better and better with each new release. I just caught this one on cable and missed it at the "one theater" that IMDb says it was shown at. Sure, the storyline has gaps and the characters could use more development but the artwork is state of the art and phenomenal. From an artist's point of view, drawing 16 frames per second to simulate motion has always been an overwhelming task but not with computers. It still takes an army of programmers but what they're doing today was impossible just a short time ago. The freedom of expression as evidenced by this work is truly unlimited. Every scene had me in awe. The delicate motion of bodies and fluids was mesmerizing. Now if they can only get people to look like real people instead of textured geometric shapes. One can only dream.

Kaena has been produced both by Canadians and French so to those who might be wondering, Canada being a bilingual country, this film has been made both for English and French audiences from the start. Kaena is a lovely orphan who lives on her own. People from her village toil incessantly in a desperate attempt to satisfy their God's thirst for a certain material, which they're having more and more trouble to produce. Kaena being somewhat on the edge of that society, having no authority above her is the only one who is not working and therefore she can afford to take some time to think. Thinkings gets her to doubt what she has been taught about Gods and fearing for her people's safety she sets out to discover the depths of the threat that these Gods have been enslaving her people with. This film is a journey to the truth and a quest for freedom. Will Kaena find what she seeks? Will her people be saved from the wrath of the Gods? If you wanna know just go and watch it because despite what some may think of the outfits of Kaena or of the designs, all you will see is a great show of colors and of emotions. Those who have been seeking humour in that film have been misled because this film was intended to bring the viewers to a state of emotion and to reflect upon some struggles humanity still has to face. Far from being a movie for the kids, it is suitable for teenagers, young adults and older viewers alike. I have seen it in French but since i'm a native speaker it was no problem for me but the choice is up to you.