Kaena: The Prophecy

Plot

The film begins with an alien ship crash landing on a desert planet. The alien survivors, known as Vecarians, are quickly killed by the planet's predatory native inhabitants, the Selenites. The ship's core, Vecanoi, survives, and from it sprouts Axis, a massive tree reaching up into space.

600 years later, a race of human-like tree-dwellers have evolved living in the branches of Axis. One of them, a young girl named Kaena (voiced by Kirsten Dunst), is an adventurous daydreamer who longs to explore the world beyond the confines of her village. Kaena's inquisitiveness is opposed as heresy by the village elder, who commands his people to stay productive and toil for the villager's gods (who are, unbeknownst to them, the Selenites living in the planet below).

Led by prophetic dreams of a world with a blue sun and plentiful water, Kaena eventually defies the elder and climbs to the top of Axis. There, she encounters the ancient alien Opaz (voiced by Richard Harris), the last survivor of the Vecarian race that crash landed on the planet centuries ago. Opaz has used his technology to evolve a race of intelligent worms to serve him and help him escape the planet. Upon learning of Kaena's dreams, Opaz enlists her help in retrieving Vecanoi, which contains the collective memory of his people.

However, Vecanoi rests at the base of Axis, where the Selenites dwell. The Queen of the Selenites (voiced by Anjelica Huston) blames Vecanoi for the destruction of their planet, and has spent most of her life (and sacrificed the future of her people) attempting to destroy it.

French cast

English cast

Production

The project started as a video game in 1995.

Reception

Kaena was a box office bomb and earned terrible reviews. The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The L.A. Times and The Boston Globe all agreed it was a lifeless, dull cartoon with an overly convoluted plot. There were unflattering comparisons to a much better-received French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville, and the similarly unsuccessful CG film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. A few nevertheless admired the visuals. The proportions of the main character drew comparisons to Lara Croft.