You would be hard pressed to really call Earthlings a documentary. It's an hour and a half of animal cruelty clips strung together with rambling pseudo-philosophical narration. Many of the clips aren't even recent and have been floating around youtube for years.
Moreso Earthlings falls into the same trap that so many documentaries do. It over-saturates the audience without providing any real information. 100% about the problem, 0% about a solution. Sure there's lots of gross, graphic images from all over the world in this film but not much else. Instead of focusing on a solution and informing the audience of how to change laws or live cruelty-free the entire film is just a constant stream of 'This is bad. This is mean. Look at how mean it is.' Audiences will leave disgusted but quickly tune it out and fall back into bad habits with no outlet or information on how to change those behaviors.
If they're trying to change skeptics minds, they have no chance. There's nothing concrete such as scientific reports or even a single 'expert' put forth in this movie for anyone who wants more than just ramblings about feelings and clips of animals frolicking in nature. It's just a constant stream of clips -- some of which clearly seem to date back to the 70s or perhaps even 60s -- set to music and narration.
You could get the same for free from youtube with the same level of educational value. Being shocking alone doesn't make a documentary or good documentary.
Moreso Earthlings falls into the same trap that so many documentaries do. It over-saturates the audience without providing any real information. 100% about the problem, 0% about a solution. Sure there's lots of gross, graphic images from all over the world in this film but not much else. Instead of focusing on a solution and informing the audience of how to change laws or live cruelty-free the entire film is just a constant stream of 'This is bad. This is mean. Look at how mean it is.' Audiences will leave disgusted but quickly tune it out and fall back into bad habits with no outlet or information on how to change those behaviors.
If they're trying to change skeptics minds, they have no chance. There's nothing concrete such as scientific reports or even a single 'expert' put forth in this movie for anyone who wants more than just ramblings about feelings and clips of animals frolicking in nature. It's just a constant stream of clips -- some of which clearly seem to date back to the 70s or perhaps even 60s -- set to music and narration.
You could get the same for free from youtube with the same level of educational value. Being shocking alone doesn't make a documentary or good documentary.