It’s rare that we get original stories from Africa. Here in the States, all we get are Caucasian stories going through massive race swaps, and what we’ve been asking for is anything original from that large and fairly silent continent. Finally, we have filmmaker Sayibu’s sci-fi action film, The B.A.T.U. Project: Adam the First.
After barely surviving nuclear war, the Earth is in bad shape and slowly becoming uninhabitable. After the Council of Nine brokered a fragile peace among the surviving nations, the African Space Federation set its sights on one final option: find another planet to inhabit, and their only hope is a man known as Adam. After a long trip across the galaxy, Adam (Bex) wakes up from space hibernation on Tiamat, a planet believed to be lifeless but a perfect alternative to Earth. Accompanied by his small android companion, Tindaana, he has a clear mission: determine whether Tiamat is the place where mankind can start over. He steps out in his spacesuit, surveys an alien landscape with no sign of people, and yet gets the uncomfortable feeling he’s being watched anyway.
“After barely surviving nuclear war, the Earth is in bad shape and slowly becoming uninhabitable.”
That feeling proves justified when Adam awakens the following morning, dragged from his ship by Bintu (Naa Ashorkor), an alien woman who does not take kindly to strangers. They can’t understand a word the other says, but Adam reassures her that he is not a threat. Bintu then takes Adam to the planet’s Life Tree. Adam touches it and begins to transform, but on the upside, the tree enables him to understand Bintu. She informs him that Adam is not the first of his kind to arrive here. Decades ago, a man known as The Emissary arrived with promises of hope, but soon became someone who could not be trusted.
As Adam heads back toward his ship, he is confronted by the Emissary. The Emissary tells him that he came before him to prepare the planet for man’s arrival, but there is one obstacle in his way. The Emissary and Adam must destroy the Life Tree if they are ever to save humanity.
At Film Threat, we talk about films like The B.A.T.U. Project: Adam the First all the time. The film comes from Ghana. And for years, we have been asking — begging, really — to see original stories from this region rather than watching Hollywood strip-mine familiar American properties and merely race-swap characters. Writer-director M. Sayibu has delivered a completely original sci-fi story that feels both authentic to his culture and futuristic. That alone deserves recognition.
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