Flatland: The Movie (2007)

Based on Edwin Abott's book "Flatland", this is an animated film about geometric characters living in a two-dimensional world. When a young girl named "Hex" decides to "think outside the ... See full summary »

Directors:

Dano Johnson, Jeffrey Travis

Writers:

Edwin A. Abbott (book), Seth Caplan,

Stars:

Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell, Michael York

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Martin Sheen	...	Arthur Square (voice)
Kristen Bell	...	Hex (voice)
Michael York	...	Spherius (voice)
Joe Estevez	...	Abbott Square (voice)
Tony Hale	...	King of Pointland (voice)
Curtis Luciani	...	King of Lineland (voice)
Danu Uribe	...	Arlene Square (voice)
Garry Peters	...	Pantocyclus (voice)
Lee Eddy	...	Helios / Queen of Lineland (voice)
Robert Murphy	...	Pentagon Reporter (voice)
Shannon McCormick	...	Triangle Guard #1 (voice)
Seth Caplan	...	Triangle Guard #2 (voice)
Dano Johnson	...	Radio Triangle (voice)
T. Lynn Mikeska	...	Heptagon Mother / Queen of Lineland (voice)
Jeffrey Travis	...	Circle Priest (voice)

Storyline

Based on Edwin Abott's book "Flatland", this is an animated film about geometric characters living in a two-dimensional world. When a young girl named "Hex" decides to "think outside the box" (in a world where such thought is forbidden), her life becomes in danger and it is up to her grandfather to save her life.

---

Taglines:

A Journey of Many Dimensions

---

Genres:

Animation | Short

---

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Also Known As:

Flatland

Filming Locations:

Austin, Texas, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Flat World Productions, Susan Johnston Casting

Technical Specs

Runtime:

34 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Animator Dano Johnson made use of fractals in designing the colorful and geometrical sets and characters. Fractals can be described as non-integer or fractional dimensions, an appropriate addition to a film about journeys to universes of different dimensions.

---

Goofs

The end of the movie shows a hypercube surrounded by eight cubes, one of which is the center of Flatland's Area 33H, which is surrounded by six squares. Continuing the analogy, each square should be surrounded by four lines, and each line should be surrounded by two points, yet in the actual Area 33H, each square is only surrounded by one line and each line is surrounded by only one point. Similarly, the other seven cubes in Spaceland do not appear to be surrounded by any squares, lines, or points.

---

Quotes

Female Boss Circle: [to A Square, who is late arriving at the office] Get to your Square-icle! NOW!

---

Crazy Credits

The film opens with the following message: 'This movie has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your Spaceland screen. Certain elements from Flatland have been altered to be recognizable by three-dimensional beings. Any similarity to people, places or objects in our world is purely coincidental.'

---

Connections

Version of Flatland (1965)

User Reviews

A Wonderful Piece of Scientific Mythology

I loved how Dano and the production team got across very complex scientific concepts with a true, emotion-based Story with a capital "S". This is the kind of stuff we need more of.

I attended a talk at the 2012 Wisconsin Science Festival called "Science and Storytelling" and the presenter showed us a 30-minute film that was just like any other PBS documentary about a scientific concept. Sure, it had a loose narrative on how this discovery led to that breakthrough which led to this experiment, but that's not a STORY.

A story is what Dano Johnson has created with the FLATLAND films. A story has great characters, something at stake, and reversals of expectation.

The world of science doesn't have enough myths to its name -- but FLATLAND and FLATLAND 2: SPHERELAND are perfect contributions to that endeavor. As a storyteller/filmmaker myself, I found the FLATLAND films to be incredibly inspiring.