This film surprisingly begins to go farther down the path of a downright epic societal drama in the mold of a David Lean, or, even an earlier George Miller film, with the kind of brash, starkly bold and mythic tone that the first film arrived and left off at, with its narrative relying on the survival of the penguin colony as their world comes crashing down, and how they respond to the trauma that surrounds them. Whereas the first movie began in the light and descended into the dark and grandiose as it went along, this one picks right up from the urgency of the first movie’s end notes and only gets more dramatic from there. The core of it is entirely about how this community tries to keep together in the face of starvation, famine and vulnerability to birds of prey, and the caustic changes of the barren wasteland environment itself, which Miller incorporates as a real element of narrative impact like never before.

And yet, it’s also a more immediate story. Where the first film was structured, like “Mad Max 2″ (“The Road Warrior”), as a mythic fable being recounted by a narrator whose presence in the story becomes known later on, from the very start of this installment, with it’s unsettlingly quiet opening notes as a single drop of water leads through eventuality to the cataclysm that spurs the film, that we’re made known as to the shift and flux that this entire micro-cosmic world is right in the middle of, and all of the characters are defined basically by their reactions to it – either evolve or die, which is one of the more obviously stated thematic spines running throughout the film. Indeed, most of the larger musical numbers here carry this train of thought onward from the very first scene, placing an emphasis on songs about the need for communities to band together in times of struggle and change.

Within this framework of potential societal breakdown, Miller places an even stronger importance on the relationships within it, and in particular, the one between new father Mumble and his son Erik, and his attempts to raise him in fractured times. What initially looks like the beginnings of a very similar “outsider finds his way” story soon becomes, with the arrival of the iceberg and its impact on the community, more about Mumble’s pragmatism versus his son’s misplaced idealism coming to a head, rendered in stark terms, with the character Sven acting as a more palatable and escapist influence on the child and the community at large – later on, Sven is revealed in no uncertain terms as an ultimately sympathetic false prophet. This revelation leads to the disillusioned child’s near death; and it’s only after a grand and tense rescue by his father that Mumble is truly lionized through his eyes, and besides all of the impact he has on the rescue of his society and that kind of stuff, it all comes down to one core thing on an emotional level: he comes to realize the essential value of his father’s humbleness and “great heart” toward others, simple heroism even in the face of his own peril, as in the relatively grim and traumatic elephant seal sequence or his own rescue earlier on in the film. And with all of Miller’s films, it seems to always come down to this in the end – while they might be surrounded by social and moral cataclysm of all kinds, what pushes his Max or his Babe or his Lorenzo or – now – his Mumble forward is simple idealism and compassion in the face of it all, even if it might be at first reluctant. The theme of interconnectedness is writ large through the film’s narrative, and it’s here, through a focus on this essential sense of honor and debts that Miller brings this down to the personal level – through a series of interwoven connections and good deeds that allow Mumble to rally every species behind him in the attempts to save his people, from the neighboring penguin nations to the elephant seal leader, Bryan.

It is with Bryan that the film’s “evolve or die” theme — a theme that interconnects with the overarching theme of interconnectedness and change as a necessity (see what I did there?) — comes full circle in one of my favorite scenes of the movie. Their initial confrontation is a pretty harrowing sequence, as Bryan ends up falling into a wide chasm after the narrow ice bridge beneath him breaks. The matter is complicated by the reveal of his children – he refuses to back up onto the ice in front of them because of its implied indication of weakness and submission within their species, and so falls out of sight and into the abyss. He makes it clear that he wants them taken home and looked after, and then he resigns himself to death. Mumble dives in and saves him through a contrivance with a leopard seal without a second thought, and a bond is made between the two. Later, Mumble goes off to request his nation’s help in bringing down the iceberg enough for the rest of the penguin colony to escape. Bryan tells him, essentially, to fuck off and look after his own kind. Mumble bursts back, “If I’d thought that way, I would’ve left you down in that hole!” It’s one of the few times in either of the two films where we’ve seen this character get visibly frustrated, and angry – the other also in this film being on top of the trapped colony arguing with his son over their fate – and, it takes you aback for a minute to hear a relatively innocent character like him state something like this so plainly and harshly. I like it.

Running alongside the core narrative of Mumble’s own struggle to save his people, there are a number of smaller stories occurring in tandem, including the B-plot about the krill, played by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Much has been made of the fact that they don’t really have any connection or impact on the plot until the very end of the film – but yeah, that’s the point. They’re very much in the mold of a more existential Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and it’s astonishing that so few reviewers have caught onto this fact. Within the framework of these two that Miller concisely reduces all of the existential themes that are running underneath the surface into their core elements, through a particularly ballsy and heady sense of humor, and parallels many of the larger and more dramatic conflicts occurring above into a more palatable and less serious minimalist setting.

They’re also a large part of how Miller furthers his ideas of interconnectedness that have now come to the forefront in the sequel, through ecological extremes, e.g., the film begins as a drop of water leads to the catastrophe that defines the film, and it ends when, unintentionally, the krill, tinier than a drop of water by much, respond to the sound above and give the final stomp that breaks down the iceberg. I’ve gotta say, when I heard that Pitt and Damon were going to be included in the sequel, I didn’t really imagine that these would be their roles, but they somehow manage to steal every scene they’re in. They’re just fantastic little characters, and the first sequence with the massive whale, which they catch sight of from afar, is an eye-opening shot.

There’s also Sven the puffin, played by Moe Syzlak – although this article’s running pretty long as it stands, so suffice it to say his entire arc acts as a continuance of Miller’s examination of religion, something the film makes no bones about. He arrives in Antarctica as an accidental prophet, and is revered for his unheard of ability to fly, and the green moss that he seems to have with him. By the time the film focuses on him, he’s already drawn a flock to the Adelie’s colony from far and wide and from every species of penguin who indulge in his groupthink and cult of personality. Although Miller includes Noah the Elder from the first film only sparsely, in his few appearances he acts as a reminder of religion’s essential goal of unity and solidarity, hope and perseverance in the face of social trauma, rallying his people like a Churchill to stand together in the face of vulnerability and fight back for the sake of The Great Guin and their nation in what’s also a rather stirring sequence (which I’ll get to later on, and then even later on in passing). Sven acts as the other side of the coin, all of that drawn inward toward his own ego – initially a curious and intriguing character, he’s given himself over to indulging in the worship of himself. And yet, even after he’s revealed for the huckster that he is, Miller aligns our sympathies with him, and his better nature underneath begins to poke through. Like in most other Miller films, there aren’t any real villains, only characters at the behest of their environment, doing what they can.

There’s a moment here that really establishes what I so love about Miller’s idiosyncratic approach to film, and a real hint that tells us that this isn’t any kind of traditional animated filmmaking; it’s a quiet moment that comes right in the middle of the film’s bombastic opening medley, a celebratory sequence that really strikes home what the rest of the film is about with it’s use of the aggressively communal “Rhythm Nation” to pull us right in – but no, that’s not it. Right as the music begins to hit its peak, Miller slows it down and his framing becomes an observer – Mumble and Gloria meet for the first time in the middle of the crowd, and the way Miller establishes the history between them that precedes this second film, and so defined the first, isn’t some long and drawn out dialogue. All it takes is a shot of their eyes, their faces meeting, their breath hanging in the air as they’re framed in golden hues. There are no words, but these few understated shots of pure emotion say more about these two characters and how their own love story has developed and deepened while we’ve been away than any other I can recall. And again, it’s a mark of the superb animation team, just by the way, that Miller can rely on the fact we can read this much into this scene despite the fact that these characters are beady-eyed penguins who leave trails of guano in their wake.

There are many other moments like this in the film – Mumble contrasted against the wide berth of the colony below, screaming up at him for help until their cries become a cacophony of noise; Erik’s first meeting with Sven; the penguins all huddling together in the raging snow of a blizzard after the approaching storm forces the benign humans to pick up and leave to the strain of morose, operatic tones; and another one of my favorites, the sequence I made mention of earlier where the vulnerable colony is attacked by the birds of prey is just breathtaking in its construction – from its tense, silent beginning of hundreds of tiny silhouettes cast against the open sky to its bombastic conclusion of chaotic fight or flight on the grounds below. Miller can still stage a scene like this better than anyone working currently, and it’s such a true and visceral action scene that it’s actually gotten me excited again for “Fury Road,” whenever that happens. And yet, so few of these sequences are the kind of eye-opening and massive musical numbers of the first, which is fine, because this film isn’t really about that, until the end, when percussion again saves the day. As a tap dancer and a hoofer from way back, I do love that we’re the heroes of these films.

And after all this emphasis on societal trauma and impending doom, the climax of the movie arrives as a positively mesmerizing stroke of kaleidoscopic, giddily euphoric brilliance. All of these elements coalesce together in such a stirring, visceral way that it seems even the most negative review can’t help but comment on it. It’s a number that builds and bursts forward organically with such pent-up, palpable energy in the way it contrasts the entire crowd of penguins in the colony with Gloria at the lead singing a version of an altered, communally emphatic version of “Under Pressure” that acts as the real epitome of all the pressures put upon them as a community in the film being released in one giant vocal swell against the rhythm of the penguins and elephant seals above, stomping and slamming primally toward survival, causing the ground to shake and the snow to fall, and the earth itself to move, with the vibrant, neon colors of the entire krill biomass responding to the beat and noise down below, all at once. This is the moment that defines and epitomizes the entire film, without a doubt.

It’s thrilling stuff, and to digress a little bit from the overall critical assessment for a minute, what’s great is that not only is all of this stuff explicitly stated without any mucking about — the thematic ballsiness of that first film still remains in full measure – but that Miller still manages to make this a true family film by inserting Erik’s story within it. In terms of narrative construction, he goes for broke and eats his cake too by having all of this thematic and narrative depth take place while somehow not alienating children or the oldies; the children relate to him and the basic outsider element of his own story, just as they did with the child Mumble from the first film, and as they grow older they’ll begin to become aware of the rest of the narrative context that defines the story. It’s astonishing how well he’s pulled this double-act off, both here and with the first one, and it’s to be admired. And that’s one of the things that’s so great about these two films, even if this one isn’t the total astonishment that the first one was. They’re right between the violent “Mad Max” films and the pastel children’s story-books that the “Babe” movies were. They’re family films, in the truest sense, for the adult in the child and the child in the adult.

The only thing that brings this film down a bit is the presence of a couple of strange out of place piss jokes – neither of which are particularly funny. Strangely enough, however, this is also kind of a motif in Miller’s movies, although one that had up until now, gone thankfully abated by whatever wise hand held the white-out over the screenplays. In the “Lorenzo’s Oil” draft I read recently there is this strange running joke that emerges about every forty pages where the parents will look for a sign of Lorenzo’s cognition, and get the slightest bit of wee in reply. The last shot of the movie was to be a golden arch of piss across the screen – and, then in the previous draft of “Pig In the City” I read, titled “Babe In Metropolis” (see guys, it was intentional) there’s a big moment not too dissimilar from what’s seen here at the beginning of the film with Erik where Babe, after causing Farmer Hoggett’s accident, goes into the barn and wets himself. I’m gonna be honest – I don’t get it, and it’s just kind of disgusting. Maybe it’s an Australian thing.

And to be fair, the film does start off as kind of an uneven jumble in terms of structure – especially in comparison to the first one, which is a masterwork of emotional and narrative orchestration. The first ten minutes or so are a good example of this, and especially during the opening medley: it feels a little disjointed and tries to pack a lot of contextual information into too few scenes. In theory I like that idea because it is intriguing how much this film relies on the context of the first film and how it moves onward from that, but it could’ve used a bit more breathing room. We’re informed of Mumble’s new place in the community as a leader, of his son’s embarrassment, of the incoming iceberg, of the krill and their journey, all in the space of about fifteen minutes. And, while individually I think a lot of those moments are great, when they’re placed together it just becomes jumbled. This is particularly obvious in the opening scene in the scattered way it seems to jump from song to song rather than allowing it to flow emotionally from one to another, as the first film did so well. It, jarring, but it finds it’s feet pretty quickly.

“Stories have to be experienced at every possible level of the human being,” Miller says. ”You have to experience a story emotionally, intellectually, viscerally. It affects the groin, the heart, the brain, the spirit. It affects an audience anthropologically.

”Some people look at the film and just might enjoy the dancing or some of the songs. It’s very spectacular in 3D, so you might just enjoy being in Antarctica and seeing the spectacle … The thing I most want is that people get an immersive and hopefully meaningful experience from being in the cinema.”

The way Miller describes his approach to the storytelling process kind of gets these two movies down pat for me.

And as to the film’s box office failings – well, “Twilight.” There, I just explained it in one word. And as for critically, well – that’s a bit more complex. From all of the reviews I’ve read, they’ve all basically taken a stance of “Hey, these penguins are singing pop songs. What’s our culture coming to, right guys?” Well, no. I mean it’s fine if you have a problem with that, I guess – but, it’s kind of lame to dismiss the rest of the film, and by proxy the first film, entirely on that basis, isn’t it? Also, it’s a little hipster, you hipsters. Put your coffee down, take your comically large glasses off and get back in the tollbooth.

Happy Feet, like the Mad Max films and Babe: Pig In the City, begins with an expansive, mythological vision of a microcosmic world in the midst of great transition. The film begins quietly, in space, which will becomes a constant visual motif throughout the course of the film. A wide, vast cosmos is spread before us, like a shot from the Hubble – a nebula. And, in the middle of it, the faintest of familiar outlines – a mother penguin, her head bent down toward her young. At first, all we hear is the softest of voices behind the stars – a slow cover of The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers.” And, then we begin to descend – down toward the Earth, as the noise begins to build. The planet takes center frame, spinning until Antarctica is at the top, something that astronomer Neil Degrasse Tyson notes as one of the film’s first examples of its implicitly anthropological (if that is the correct word to use, given that it’s a fable) point of view, similar to that found in Martin Rosen’s Watership Down, when interviewed by Variety: “From it’s opening, you come at Earth from space, and the Earth rotates until Antarctica is on-top of the world. From the beginning, it establishes a point of view, and you are … in the culture of the penguins.”i And, it’s here, in these first thirty minutes, that the tone – or tones – of the film solidifies, constantly shifting from the serene and light-hearted into the sudden and potently mythological. From the parents of the main character Mumble meeting in a relatively bright unity of song, and into the huddle of the males in the harsh, bleak red light of the setting sun, set against the primeval chants of the colony Elders in praise of their food god, whose visage appears above them in the swirling winds. The juxtaposition of these two scenes together, and how they relate and reflect off of each other, epitomizes Miller’s use of tone for the rest of the film, with a slight emphasis on the latter aspect.

And fittingly, this is a mythic tale, a fable fully realized – like Miller’s Mad Max films, intently so. “Most of my films are, in a sense, fables” Miller has said, “in that they’re worlds that exist only on the screen in the cinema, and in a sense, like fables you see them as allegory, or at least they’re metaphorical, and you read them as you would fables. And hopefully, they’re not specific to any time … and aren’t entirely specific to one moment in history.”ii And always, with the exception of that first Mad Max film, his movies have remained intently focused on the elemental community, and the relationship of the outsider to that communityiii; the outsider who becomes, in his words, an “agent of change, evolutionary agents”iv to a tribe in the midst of a wasteland that is either physical (as in the Mad Max films, and here as well) or cultural (as in the second Babe film, and The Witches of Eastwick). Here, the world and the community at the center of his story isn’t quite as picturesque and water-color storybook as those found in the Babe films, and yet at the same time, it’s not quite as harsh and grim as those on the sand dunes of the Mad Max trilogy. Here is something entirely other, a fable in the sensibility epitomized by the works of directors like Martin Rosen and Michael Schaack – a strong blend of the explicitly naturalistic, the real and the instinctive, with the implicitly allegorical, the mythic and the slightly fantastic. Although, they do share contextual similarities – beside those mentioned just previously, both employ a central narrator to create the consciously mythic framework of their stories, and where children are of importance in some form or another in the salvation of the society or community at the core of the story. The mythic composition of the story comes finally full circle as Mumble delves off the ice cliff and into the Unknown, and Lovelace makes a vow to tell his tale, even long after his death. And indeed, everything in the film leads up to the cusp of its first hour, after Mumble is forcibly excommunicated from his colony, becoming a pariah in the most spiritual sense – it’s here that Miller’s film hits its most mythic stride, with an archetypal camera tracking the penguin compadres through sweeping, vast – and yet, starkly minimal – ice-lands in search of that great Other (which is a pretty over-used critical term, I’ll agree – but, with a film that works on such an archetypal level, I think we can grant its use): the much whispered-about “aliens,” the identities of which the film makes no secret about, because that isn’t at all the point. Here, Miller employs scale in a way that creates an eye-opening dichotomy between the penguins and their environment, always a constant factor in his films – reducing his penguin compatriots to spare figures on an archetypal landscape, and moving over them, those shadowy, almost god-like machines from without, breaking through the mist and ice, represented often in a primal, visually elemental sense of wonderment and fear. That’s how you do it, Lucas.

More than any of his previous films, Happy Feet is a film that defines its characters in terms of their surroundings – framing its characters in against the wide, barren expanse topped by vivid blue skies, and clouds that seem to go on forever, a visual motif the film shares with the latter two Mad Max films, whose rhythm of composition is similarly mythic. Indeed, as Glenn Heath notes, “When Norma Jean leaves Memphis with their newly formed egg to fish with the other females, the season changes from obscenely bright to brutally dark, and in turn so does Miller’s use of color, lighting, and texture. Memphis’ loneliness and panic parallels the blue and black hues of the icy rain-drenched environment, not only in terms of character but also plot.” Miller’s mastery of environmental mise-en-scene and composition is emphasized most clearly here, in the stark white wastelands of Antarctica, which he uses in a similar fashion to the empty deserts of Australia – pitting character and locale together with growing tension. v This becomes most obvious in what I consider to be one of the best scenes of the film, where Mumble and his compadres, against the eternally setting sun, attempt to cross a tundra in the throes of a massive blizzard, only to be constantly pushed back by the winds – shot in Miller’s trademark panoramic widescreen, the scene is really a simple battle to move from the left to the right of the screen, made into a force of wills and compounded by Miller’s disarmingly simple manipulation of the frame. Leaning in to each other, bearing the winds, they make their way across – into the dark.

It’s also interesting how well thought out the primal religion of these penguins is – while the film posits itself primarily as allegory, this element of Miller’s penguin community also seems also to have been implicitly crafted to fit into the same kind of naturalistic mold as the one found among the rabbits in Watership Down, and other, similar works – this is a fairly tribal food god they pray to, certainly. Interestingly, we never do learn in full about the spiritual structures of any of the other penguin colonies seen in the film, outside of the Adelies and their fashioning of Lovelace as a(n admittedly false) prophet and a sage; this poses an intriguing question, one that in all probability might be confronted in the sequel, and that is – of what shape do any of the other penguin colonies in the film’s universe resemble? Taking the film’s implicit fable structure and sensibility into account, would it be potent to say that there are, say, African penguins with elements of something resembling Shamanism within their culture? I digress, however. There’s also a reasonable skepticism apparent here and there in Miller’s Thomas Aquinas-esque reconciliation of faith and reason, science and religion, the individualist and the collectivist, represented in the smaller community of the colony, also indicative of his oft-quoted philosophy, cribbed from astrophysicist Paul Davies, that “science is a faster way to god than religion.” There’s a bit of the Carl Sagan here as well, remaining from Miller’s time on the film version of Contact – in fact, some, like Rajik Djoumi of France’s Excessif, have posited that much of the film’s narrative comes by way of the several abandoned drafts of that film that Miller had writtenvi – it isn’t overly cynical about the mythology that holds this penguin community together at the bottom of the world, and it even seems awed and fascinated by it at certain points, despite the machinations of its Pharisaic Elders. This is a colony that must remain welded together to survive in this harsh wilderness, and indeed, the emperor penguin is the animal most emblematic of collectivism – and, it is this purpose that their mythology serves, as the concrete of their society. At the same time, there’s also a slight unwillingness and uncertainty about it, in hushed whispers at first – which culminates in the zoo sequence near the end of the film, where Mumble steps out of his plastic enclave for the first time and into the antiseptic white light of the aquarium, here represented by a long, drawn-out tunnel cast in silhouette, with the light at the end only gradually coming into focus. And, upon asking where this place is, the only answer he gets is, “You’re in Heaven. Penguin Heaven – and, it’s wherever you want it to be.” Ultimately, the film seems more focused on the personal relationships inside of this culture – of Mumble to his father Memphis, particularly, and the continuously developing arc of his father, by itself, as more and more his guilt overwhelms him over the course of the film until, by the end of the film, he finds himself as spiritually dead as Mumble was in the zoo.

Mumble the character is an idealist, as much as Max was a nihilist, and constantly, Miller places this idealism – or naiveté’, some would say – at the behest of a violent and often cruel world. As with all of his films, there’s an emphasis on the essential safety that the community provides, in the wasteland, and the inability of individuals to live outside their environment. The farther away that Mumble gets from his tribe, the more immediately dangerous the world around him seems to become – gradually, the size of the predators pitted against him increases, from a skua bird to a leopard seal to a killer whale – until, he ends up in a zoo, continents away. And it’s here, in this sequence in the zoo that Miller breaks the character down toward his “essential self.”vii As Matthieu Santelli notes, “the film revives the theme of the Mad Max trilogy and the Babe films, when the crossing of the line becomes inevitable. The danger in Miller’s films always comes from the other side. And, if they walk too far, they may find themselves trapped.”viii Yet, it’s only there, after months of isolation and being driven toward near-insanity, that he finds what he’s been looking for – just on the other side of the glass. And always, a cautious sort of optimism compounded by personal and societal salvation, something that acts as the real through-line between this and the latter two Mad Max movies, and everything in between pervades the film, even in its most darkest moments, when the main character finds himself screaming his lungs out at the faces behind the glass, staring down at him.

Music, and rhythm, both take an especially active role in the film, as well – the pinnacle of these penguin’s culture is the “Heartsong,” coming from the natural practice of the Emperor penguin’s mating rituals, represented here in iconic fashion through the use of prior-recorded music – a device that bears less similarity to that other Australian musical Moulin Rouge and more to Gene Kelly’s Singin’ In The Rain or Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop, though within a more mythological framework – and, it’s through this that we’re informed of much of their world, in more ways than one would think, initially – it becomes Miller’s centralized way of representing the unease growing within the penguins’ community; along with the use of The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” at the beginning of the film, mirroring it and bookending the movie is a rendition of “The End,” from the same album – and, to parallel the religious, almost ‘prophetic,’ subtext of the film, Gloria’s song during the two’s courtship ritual that marks the midpoint of the film is a simultaneously somber and bombastic rendition of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland,” a song about the loss of faith in prayer – and bell-bottom jeans, but I digress. And always, following the character is an almost Gregorian soundtrack, reminiscent of the chant of the Elders in the Huddle sequence near the beginning of the film, and repeated in defiance of the dancing below again near the end. When Mumble is awoken from his dormant egg early on in the film, it’s by the tapping on the shell by baby Gloria. Later on in the film, it’s this same rhythmic tapping, on the glass of the aquarium exhibit, that startles him from his emotional death – and into a rebirth, in a sequence that returns Miller to what he’d found so fascinating about cinema in the first place, images without sound, “visual music” in the clearest sense.

And in keeping with that train of thought, this – like most of Miller’s films – is a movie fascinated with the possibilities of cutting, editing and visual kineticism, the relationship between the pure movement of the camera and the performer – which becomes most apparent in his musical sequences. Musicals have always seemed like the brother or sister to action films, with their collective emphasis on the kinetics of cinema, something that Miller has always cited as one of the primary formal interests that pushed him forward, initially – and, in several contemporary interviews, he’s identified the self-titled sequence in Singin’ In The Rain as what he considers one of the great action sequences of cinema -and here, Miller takes full advantage of that relationship, adapting his headlong, constantly moving and almost aggressively lyrical style to the unification of image and music, song and rhythm, voice and dance. Energy is constantly pushed forward, energy in explication of character, in spurts that appear at first haphazard, but upon examination reveal a careful composition; and, like his second Mad Max film, here Miller keeps his Puffin hero exclusively in the center of the frame and set against the vivid blue of the sky above – and, near the end of the film, when all in the colony has come screaming down, the implicit visual connection between the two becomes obvious, as Mumble returns and becomes the savior of the colony, through revolt. In a way, it’s all very much a return to the principles and style of the classical musicals of the forties and fifties, like Stormy Weather or Singin’ In The Rain – I hazard to mention Busby Berkeley, because what most people miss with his musical sequences is that they were entirely meant as pure escapism with little relationship otherwise to anything else in the films they were in, which isn’t the case here although there is much that is similarly kaleidoscopic and even hallucinogenic at times (Berkeley’s ideas applied with narrative relevance?) – but at the same time, it’s also a furtherance of those ideas, with a cast of thousands, spanning colonies and, in the final sequence, continents. There’s also a very strong stylistic connection to the Indian Bollywood films, through their textual interweaving and use of massive song and dance sequences and travelogue-esque movement to tell strongly emotional stories in an environment that is often alien to the viewer – something Miller posits he only became conscious of after-the-fact. A rendition of Freddy Mercury’s Somebody To Love early on becomes not just a song of forlorn romance, but a call for sympathy from the heavens above. A Blue Angels-esque musical sequence that, for the penguins, represents nothing so much as the equivalent of a spring break, with the contrails creating shifting geographical shapes and lines in the water, in the penguins wake. There’s a courtship ritual that breaks out of its cultural boundaries, one that seems at first similar to what we’ve seen come before, but whose tone and notes reveal a noticeably more somber context – here, Miller’s focus initially is not on any ostensibly incidental commotion in the background, but remains instead intent on the faces and the eyes of the two characters at the heart of it, constantly moving and circling each other, but always in the center. Later on, we’re presented dance as a rudimentary communicative tool, within the zoo and without – it’s an idea that has led some to interpret the end of the film as, among various other things, the discovery of sentience through an entirely other species, or even as a markedly less optimistic bit satire, as the human redeem themselves only in time to save a species they feel can entertain them. Myself, I believe the film is something considerably more utopian, and Capra-esque – there is something here about the relationship between personal and societal love, romantic and empathic, beyond everything else, something that is made obvious by film’s end, during the film’s dream-scale montage set under a softer rendition of The Beatles’ “The End,” bringing the film sonically full circle. Mumble returns to lead a rebellion against the perched, and a celebration of social salvation, something that ties the film’s societal eye in with it’s personal, as Mumble remains at the center of the crowd, physically scarred by his journey but not alone -

The role of Mumble comes as a three-way composite between Elijah Wood, Alan Lee, and Savion Glover – and, as a tap-dancer myself, it’s Glover’s role as both the character’s feet and the general choreographer of the film that gives the character an almost iconic feel, much like a Babe or a Max, or even an Odone; in contrast to what candy-colored Broadway floss might have come if someone like, say, a Dein Perry (of Australia’s own Tap Dogs) had been brought on, here Glover gives the character an individualized and gradually evolving artistry to the noise he’s creating with his feet – near the beginning of the film, it sounds like physical white noise, without rhythm and resembles nothing so much as a physical tick, or a strange walk; yet, as the film follows the character in his youth, he sometimes it’s very “light and bright,” and other times it becomes “real hard and heavy,” to use his own terminology. There’s a real love and respect apparent here for the form, inside the film and out – it isn’t trivialized, as most seemed to expect it would have been, given the ostensibly throw-pillow trappings of the general plot that had become known, early on. And along with the character, the use of dance gradually evolves throughout the film, becoming something larger and more unifying – first as a method of personal expression, and then of courtship and love, which is followed by its shift into something a bit more primal, a tool of mass rebellion and defiance, against those up on the perch above, who do their best to drown it out with their own ritual noise. And, as the helicopter arrives, all falls silent for a moment – before the penguins begin to move again in unison, following their new leader at the back. And, finally, dance becomes a tool of almost universal communication, as revealed by the final sequence.

There are a lot of interesting ways to look at the film, actually – as a religious allegory, as a veiled alien abduction story, or as the meeting of two societies and cultures, the Indians and the Spanish, which is a reading that Miller encourages to some extent – in an interview with Elvis Mitchell, Miller explains the use of dance as communication in the film thusly: “One thing I do recognize is that singing in a way of communicating is pretty human … a very basic way of communicating. When different people’s met each other, when the world was colonized, we – went out and met native peoples. They didn’t have our language in common, so the way they communicated – becoming clearer now through the record – they would use dance and music. It was through music that people first communicated – and so, there’s something very elemental about it.” And, since its release four years ago, it’s gradually become something of a favorite of online film writers, all over. I remember once, a while back, reading someone’s essay comparison between the film and James Cameron’s The Abyss, and – you know, it does make sense, and it’s a parallel that becomes especially potent in light of what was removed from the film, just before its release; there seems to have been almost an entire half hour cut out of the film, involving ‘aliens’ in a broader, more implicitly extraterrestrial sense – from those that I’ve spoken to, they seemed to resemble strongly the penguin deity seen during The Huddle sequence at the beginning of the film, which is something that gives a small hint as to the thematic breadth of that plot-point and how it might have intertwined with what’s found in the finished film, and existing concept artwork seems to depict them as shadowy faces poking out from underneath the ice caverns. But, again – I’ve digressed, and greatly. More simplistically, it could be a love story, a tale of the outcast, or even the gap between the new generation and the old. Or, it could be all of those things. Whatever you consider the film – a piece of children’s cinema in the vane of Golden Age Disney, a new sort of mythic fable from the same class as Martin Rosen’s Watership Down with a sense of humor, or something that sits somewhere in between – either way, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is something indelible in its imageries and vision, and will remain.

Henry J. Baugh manages the online film blog/journal The Filmist, from which the original essay that this article was drawn from can be found; previously, he’s written for Chazz Lyon’s now defunct film criticism collective, Gone Cinema Poaching, and Blogcritics, as well as a festival correspondent for Einsiders, among other places. He can be reached at henry.thefilmist.j0@gmail.com.

And although his plans to play Mad Max in the George Miller-directed “Mad Max: Fury Road” has hit another snag, the burgeoning superstar sits atop the heap for another high profile role at Warner Bros.

Deadline reports that “Inception” helmer, Christopher Nolan, has selected Hardy for a lead role in the third “Batman” film.

Naturally, all involved are tight-lipped about exactly what role Hardy will be playing, refusing to even comment on whether he’ll be a good guy or a bad guy.

Hardy is currently starring with Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon in the McG-directed Fox comedy “This Means War.”

E! News Online is reporting on information from “multiple sources” that say that the Oscar-winning sexpot is the front runner to the play the lead female role in the upcoming “Mad Max 4.”

Director George Miller already nixed the idea that Gibson would reprise his role saying back in 2007 when the film was first announced that star would be too old to play the renegade antihero, “Mad” Max Rockatansky.  “I don’t think he would be interested in being involved at all,” he added.

British actor Tom Hardy, best known for his roles in “Black Hawk Down,” “Band of Brothers,” and his electric performance as a volatile prisoner in “Bronson,” is the new front runner set to star opposite Theron.

No casting choices are confirmed and no formal offers have yet been made.

Studio is currently scouting locations and is planning to start shooting in June 2010 for a 2011 release.