Fantastic Planet (; , ) is a 1973 French-language experimental independent adult animated science fiction art film, directed by René Laloux and written by Laloux and Roland Topor, the latter of whom also completed the film's production design. The film was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague. The film was an international co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia. The allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by French writer Stefan Wul.
A working title while in development was Sur la planète Ygam (On the Planet Ygam), which is where most of the story takes place; the actual title (The Fantastic/Savage Planet) is the name of Ygam's moon. Production began in 1963. Fantastic Planet was awarded the Grand Prix special jury prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, and in 2016, it was ranked the 36th greatest animated movie ever by Rolling Stone.
It is the first animated movie to be rated PG by the MPAA in the United States.
Plot
In the distant future, the gargantuan blue humanoid Traags (in French and Czech spelling: Draag) have brought human beings (who are called Oms as a play on the French word for "man", homme) from Earth to the planet Ygam, where they maintain a technologically and spiritually advanced society. The Traags consider Oms animals, and while they keep some as pets, others live in the wilderness and are periodically slaughtered by the Traags to control their population. Traags have much longer lifespans than Oms, but reproduce much less.
When an Om mother is tortured to death by three Traag children, her orphaned infant is found by Master Sinh, a key Traag leader, and his daughter Tiwa, who keeps the boy as a pet and names him Terr. Tiwa loves Terr and is careful not to hurt him, but, in accordance with her parents' instructions, gives him a collar with which she can pull him in any direction. She brings Terr to sessions in which she receives her education using a headset that transmits knowledge into her mind; a defect in Terr's collar allows him to receive the knowledge too. Around the time that Tiwa grows into her teens and first performs Traag meditation, which allows the species to travel with their minds, she loses some interest in Terr, who has become a young man and acquired much Traag knowledge. He escapes into the wilderness, stealing Tiwa's headset.
There he runs into a wild female Om, who cuts off his collar and introduces him to her tribe, which lives in an abandoned Traag park full of strange creatures and landscapes. Terr shows them how to use the headset to acquire Traag knowledge and literacy, winning the right to do so in a duel. The literacy they gain allows them to read a Traag announcement that the park will be purged of Oms, and, when the purge comes, some are slaughtered by Traag technology while others escape, joining forces with another tribe. They are attacked by two Traag passers-by and manage to kill one of them before escaping to an abandoned Traag rocket depot, much to the outrage of Traag leaders.
They live there for years, joined by many other Oms. Due to the knowledge acquired from Terr's headset, they manage to replicate Traag technology, including two rockets; they hope to leave Ygam for its moon, the Fantastic Planet, and live there safe from Traags. When a large-scale Traag purge hits the depot and many Oms are slaughtered, a group led by Terr uses the rockets to flee to the Fantastic Planet, where they discover large statues that Traags travel to during meditation and use to meet beings from other galaxies in a strange mating ritual that maintains their species. The Oms destroy some of the statues, threatening the Traags' existence; the genocide of Oms is halted on Ygam, and, facing a crisis, the Traags negotiate for peace. The Oms agree to leave the Fantastic Planet to the Traags for their meditations, and in return, an artificial satellite is put into orbit around Ygam and given to the Oms as a new home. This leads to an era of peaceful coexistence between the two species, who now benefit from each other's way of thinking.
Voice cast
Additional voices
French: Sylvie Lenoir, Max Amyl, Denis Boileau (Traag), Michèle Chahan, Hubert de Lapparent, Claude Joseph, Philippe Ogouz, Jacques Ruisseau, Madeleine Clervannes, William Coryn, Poupy de Monneron, Christian de Tillière, Christian Echelard, Jeanine Forney, Pascal Kominakis, Andre Lambert, Serge Netter, Yvette Robin, André Rouyer, Irina Tarason, Julien Thomas, Gilbert Vilhon, Paul Villé English: Nora Heflin, Marvin Miller (Great Tree Chief, Master Kon), Monika Ramirez, Janet Waldo (Hollow Log Chief)