National Geographic is celebrating the Fourth of July holiday by celebrating America in a new way with a beautiful new documentary series on Disney+, America The Beautiful.
Don’t expect to see any star spangled banners, but get ready for purple mountains majesty from sea to shining sea as the series focuses solely on the natural world of the North American continent, but also as it appears in today’s modern world. Confused? Don’t be. The series showcases, in stunning cinematography, scenes like a massive pod of dolphins in the Pacific Ocean with the Hollywood Hills in the distance behind them. Another sequence shows bobcats living on an abandoned ranch, or mountain lions and coyotes in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
Americans tend to have a very narcissistic way of thinking that they are the only living things around, but America the Beautiful is an absolutely gorgeous eye-opener to the North American continent that shows how truly small humans are in the grand scheme of things. It showcases beautifully the amazingly diverse creatures, weather, and landscapes of the continent. Everything from arctic tundras to arid deserts and humid swamps and expansive prairies. It’s all here, as well as the creatures that can be found in those environments.
Those animals are the stars of the show, and if you’re thinking of North America and only thinking of grizzly bears and bald eagles, you are sorely mistaken. Yeah, you’ll see those, but in entirely new ways you haven’t before. You’ll also see porpoises, sea otters, alligators, field mice, mountain lions, wolves, snakes, ants, hummingbirds, you name it. Some moments, like a mother bear crossing a gator-infested swamp with her cubs (something never filmed before) will even have you engrossed and on the edge of your seat.
The series is made up of six episodes, each one focusing on a different region of North America, but there is one episode that stands out as humans take center stage. This episode focuses on the work being done to conserve these environments and these animals that you’ve seen. Don’t expect huge almost-corporate agencies doing this though, but instead imagine one or two people doing whatever they can to help out. We see one young student picking up golf balls out of the ocean, a constant barrage coming from nearby Pebble Beach.
The animals and the human stories are wonderful on their own, but this series is true eye candy for any nature lover or cinephile. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and all of it is 100% real. High speed aerial shots were captured by a gyroscopic camera mounted to a fighter jet, and the production even get permission to go to areas rarely seen. Underwater shots truly take you and immerse you into what feels like an alien world and then you remember “that's not even a mile off the coast of the country in which I live.”
Well placed cameras also capture natural moments that have never been seen before, like that aforementioned bear moment in the swamps of the southeast. The cameras capture extreme weather across the beautiful landscapes, and they also accomplished the feat of capturing stunning footage of the Aurora in Alaska and bioluminescent creatures in moments that will keep your eyes fixed to your screen and your jaw unhinged.
The creative team set out to give this series a more contemporary and modern feel, and to do that they went with a different kind of narrator for the series, tapping Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther) to supply the voiceovers. At first I was a bit apprehensive, expecting more of the aggressive performances Jordan gave in movies like Creed. Fortunately, it was a pleasant surprise as he offered a warmth and sympathetic voice to the triumphs, tribulations, and tragedies that the animals experience throughout the series.
This holiday weekend, give yourself a few hours to take in the beauty of this series, allowing your eyes and mind to open wider to the truly diverse world that literally surrounds you. 4 out of 5. You can also check out a conversation I had with two of the executive producers of the series, Vanessa Berlowitz and Mark Linfield, below.
America The Beautiful arrives on Disney+ on July 4th.