Blue Planet III review – David Attenborough still has the power to astonish - The Independent
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This week, Elon Musk unleashed onto the world his version of The Odyssey, seven minutes of AI slop depicting AI suns setting on AI ancient ruins and AI boats setting sail across AI seas. Not one second of it comes even close to being as visually compelling or emotionally resonant as the sight of a shrimp bobbing about in the ocean in Blue Planet III.
It’s not just shrimp. All marine life bob about in this astonishing third chapter of the BBC’s nature series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough as he continues the “journey beneath the waves” we embarked upon back in 2001 with Blue Planet I and again in 2017 with Blue Planet II. Almost a decade on, the rush of technology has been fast and, at times, devastating, but this documentary teems with the sort of colourful and vital life that artificial intelligence could never replicate – and to prove that, the series has deliberately included cloudier, less polished footage to counter claims of AI fakery.
Who needs it? Reality has plenty to marvel at. Even Attenborough, who has dedicated his life to discovering and revealing the natural world, seems never to have lost his deep well of wonder. At 100 years old, he still sounds like that young boy from Leicester who grew up obsessed with fossils. The ingenuity of a heavily pregnant dolphin has him positively floored as he relays how she has learnt to set a trap using a carefully placed sea sponge in coral. “One of the most sophisticated examples of trap-setting in the animal kingdom,” he marvels.
That said, some of nature’s mysteries remain shut off even to him – like that of the rough-toothed dolphins swimming off the coast of Morocco, a prehistoric species he readily admits we still know “nothing” about. Seven decades in the business, and Attenborough is still learning.
He’s also still got a way with words, and according to the director, was very much involved in the script for Blue Planet III. Observing hundreds of hungry sharks circling a dying humpback whale in her final days, Attenborough remarks of the great leviathan that she is “the fleeting oasis in a seemingly barren world”. At another point, he describes a sweet and docile tawny nurse shark as “more puppy than predator”. Bestowing animals with personality has always been key to the success of these documentaries; it’s as though Attenborough is casting them in their very own Hollywood blockbuster. When a mean-mugging hungry grouper fish enlists the help of a moray eel and a Maori wrasse to combine their individual strengths and catch prey together, it feels like the beginning of every Ocean’s Eleven movie. Likewise, the saga of a fish that feeds from the bum of a sea cow plays out like a comedy sketch.
Viewers love Blue Planet for the thrilling chase of prey vs predator; it was the nail-biting showdown between racer snakes and a baby iguana that captivated millions and spawned a whole genre of memes online. Thanks to technological advancements (it can be used for good!), that action is closer than ever, and there is plenty of white-knuckle watching this time around – though perhaps the toughest sequence to witness is a saga that involves no predator.
In Mexico, one turtle hatchling’s inaugural waddle to the water takes on Homeric proportions. What should be a two-minute journey turns into an arduous night-time voyage as it battles against mountains of plastic waste. And yet our teeny-tiny Odysseus presses on, summiting these peaks tirelessly – only to find another vaster obstacle in its way. In an effective bit of editing worthy of a Christopher Nolan film, the camera pans out from this close-up view to take in the beach as a whole, suffocated in miles of thick and treacherous seaweed that floats in on the waves, a relentless crush of kelp that eventually swallows our turtle whole.
The onset of despair is a familiar feeling when watching these documentaries, where nature is allowed to play out in its most brutal forms. Less familiar is the sight of a human hand intervening, scooping up our little hero and delivering him to the water. Conservationists, we’re told by Attenborough, rescue nearly all of the hatchlings on this beach. It’s a rare moment that human intervention is a good thing – albeit in remedying disasters of our own making.
As is the modus operandi of any nature documentary worth its salt, Blue Planet III is threaded through with the conservationist message that all this underwater spectacle and life is in grave danger, culminating in the story of the disastrous bleaching of coral. Attenborough’s voice, sonorous and soothing as it is, may as well be a foghorn sounding an alarm – the same one it has been sounding for the past three decades. At the same time, much of the message doesn’t even need to be said. The sight of two polar bears, a species that has become totemic in the climate change conversation, playing together in Norway says more than Attenborough ever could.
Blue Planet III could well be one of Attenborough’s final projects, and it would be a fitting legacy for the broadcaster: spectacular and moving, a call to action that manages to uplift even amid obvious catastrophe.
