So this is described as an “experimental documentary film” by Terrence Malick, and that makes it sound very highbrow and fancy, but: It’s a demo reel. It was made for IMAX, and it’s all just like gorgeous shots that tell a (very loose) history of the universe, and it should be showing on the TVs in a Magnolia store.

In content, it’s a mixture of CG and photography. Mostly you can tell what’s what: The trippy visuals in the beginning about the birth of the universe are CG; the drone shots of gorgeous scenes of nature — which no lie, could double as Apple TV screensavers — are photography. But every now and then there’ll be a nature shot where an animal is either possibly or definitely CG. Like, there are some dinosaurs that are definitely CG, and some weird fish that… who knows, there are real weird fish out there, but maybe it was cheaper to CG one in than to find a real one. I kinda don’t like the CG animals — they look a little cheap, and make this feel like that weird Netflix fake nature documentary about dinosaurs — but whatever, it’s not most of the running time.

Oh, and speaking of running time, there are actually two versions of this movie. The original IMAX one, which I watched, is 40 minutes and has Brad Pitt narration. (The narration is him basically speaking in a hushed voice all like “Where did life begin? Where did this beautiful voyage first start?” etc.) The later 35mm version is 80 minutes and has Cate Blanchett narration. I’m sure either is fine, but honestly, 40 minutes is already a bit longer than this really needs to be, so there’s probably a reason this is the one that you can most easily find.

As a serious movie, it’s just not, no matter what Malick says. As a demo reel with cool visuals, it’s great. About the only disappointment is that this version (on Mubi) was 4K, but only stereo and SDR — it really, really needs to be in HDR with Atmos, it would be absolutely amazing that way. But apparently there’s not even a 4K disc release and this is as good as it gets, alas.