Film

Fantastic Planet

Name: Fantastic Planet
Genre: Animation, Science Fiction
Released: 1973
Cast: Gérard Hernandez, Jean Valmont, Jennifer Drake, Yves Barsacq, Jeanine Forney

Alien contact
Strange

A hallucinatory piece of 70s French animation where tiny humans are kept as pets by giant blue aliens who regard them as charming vermin. Told in Roland Topor's collage-like, faintly grotesque style and scored with woozy psychedelic jazz, it's less a story than a fever dream about scale, power and extermination. Slow, strange, and genuinely unforgettable — best watched patient, maybe a little stoned.

TMDb rating

3.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love animation that feels like a fever dream painted by someone who distrusts every empire, where strange hand-drawn worlds carry a sharp argument about power and pets.

Skip it if you need quick pacing or conventional characters, since this drifts through long, dreamlike stretches with little dialogue and an odd, stilted rhythm that can feel like homework.

What it asks of you: At seventy-two minutes it stays patient and strange, so you settle into its painted backdrops, slow reveals and long silences rather than a plot that tugs you along.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Planet of the Apes1968

The original species-swap parable, and it still lands harder than most remakes: humans as livestock, apes as civilisation, and a hierarchy just as casually cruel as the Draags'.

But The politics are broader and the pacing creakier than modern sci-fi; some of the effects show their age.

Akira1988

Cyberpunk Tokyo rendered with the same hand-drawn density and body-horror strangeness that makes Fantastic Planet's world feel so alien — animation used to imagine, not just illustrate.

But The plot sprawls and the ending gets abstract fast; if you want tidy answers it will frustrate you.

District 92009

Aliens stuck in a slum, treated as vermin by the humans who should know better — the same cold anthropological eye Fantastic Planet turns on its Oms, filmed like a war zone.

But Shaky-cam docu-style shooting and sudden gore might jar if you came here for something more meditative.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Fantastic Planet

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

La Jetée1962

Made a decade before Fantastic Planet in the same French tradition of using science fiction as philosophy rather than spectacle — both trust silence and strange stillness to do the emotional work.

Told almost entirely in still photographs with a whispering narrator, this haunts you longer than films twice its length — a time-travel story about memory, loss and the end of the world.

But There's virtually no motion and no action; if you need images to move, this will feel like a slideshow.

Watership Down1978

Proof animation aimed at children can still gut you — a small, hunted population fighting for survival against forces far bigger than themselves, told with real teeth.

But It's frequently mistaken for a kids' film and traumatises accordingly; the violence is sudden and the tone rarely lightens.

Heavy Metal1981

An anthology of pulpy, druggy, wildly imaginative science-fantasy segments — proof Fantastic Planet wasn't alone in treating animation as an adult playground for strange ideas.

But The segments vary wildly in quality and the tone leans campy-erotic rather than philosophical.

The Congress2013

Robin Wright plays a version of herself sold into a digital afterlife, and the film erupts into hallucinatory animation halfway through — a sharp, sad meditation on bodies and ownership.

But The tonal whiplash between live-action satire and animated fever dream isn't for everyone, and it drags in the middle.

Mad God2021

Phil Tippett's three-decade stop-motion nightmare descends through a rotting industrial underworld with barely a word of dialogue — grim, hand-crafted world-building at its strangest.

But There's almost no narrative to hold onto and the imagery is genuinely nightmarish; not a relaxing watch.

Wizards1977

Ralph Bakshi's post-apocalyptic fairy tale mashes rotoscoped war footage into hand-drawn fantasy, another 70s animator smuggling real ugliness under a children's-book surface.

But It's rougher and cheaper-looking than Bakshi's later work, and the pacing wanders.

Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem2003

A wordless, candy-coloured space opera set entirely to Daft Punk's Discovery album — if you loved Fantastic Planet's trippy, near-silent storytelling, this scratches the same itch in a different key.

But There's no dialogue and barely any plot beyond the music-video conceit; it's mood over substance.

Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem poster

Baraka1992

Same wordless, painterly way of seeing life from outside itself — Fantastic Planet imagines an alien watching humans; Baraka is a camera doing the same thing to us, for real.

A wordless documentary, decades in the making, that drifts across humanity and nature with the same cosmic, slightly alien remove Fantastic Planet takes on its own species — gorgeous and unsettling.

But There's no narrative, no characters, no dialogue at all; it demands patience and a willingness to just look.

Sorry to Bother You2018

Same underlying machine as Fantastic Planet — an underclass literally reshaped by the powerful for their convenience — repotted into corporate satire instead of interstellar allegory, played for laughs until it isn't.

A telemarketer discovers his 'white voice' can sell anything, and the satire escalates into full body-horror by the end — scabrous, funny, and genuinely upsetting about what exploited labour becomes.

But The swing from workplace comedy to full-on grotesque sci-fi in the third act isn't smoothly signposted; it can feel like two movies stitched together.