All Nothing (Tout Rien) is a 1980 Canadian short film (11 minutes) directed by Frederic Back.
It is a parable about human greed. Your standard bearded God appears in the cosmos. With a wave of his hand he creates stars, planets, the Earth. He waves his hand again and creates birds, animals, fish, even evolving them from simpler to more complicated creatures. Then he makes humans, and things go sideways.
The humans, who are drawn very generically, point at all the various animals and complain. God tries to accomodate them. He turns the humans into merpeople, but the mer-humans grow jealous of the animals that live on land. God turns the humans into bear-people, but the humans are jealous of the birds that fly in the air. God then turns the humans into bird-people, but that doesn't work out either. Eventually God grows tired of the complaining and turns the humans back into ordinary naked humans. The humans, enraged at God, then start to get really evil.
Tropes:
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: When the humans first appear they are generic humanoid figures with no sexual characteristics whatsoever.
- Being God Is Hard: God just can't please the spoiled, selfish humans, no matter what he does.
- Creation Story: God makes the universe, makes Earth, makes all the birds and beasts and fish—but when he makes humans he runs into problems.
- God: He's a pretty easygoing guy, really.
- Grandpa God: God is drawn as basically the standard old man with a long flowing beard.
- Green Aesop: Humans have to live in harmony with the earth, not destroy it to satisfy their selfishness and greed.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The humans are jealous of every other creature and can't be satisfied.
- Humans Are Bastards: When God stops catering to the humans they get very angry. They take the advantage that they have over the animals, namely their brainpower and their ability to use tools, and use it to kill the animals. They kill animals for food, they kill animals so they can clothe themselves in the animals' skins and appropriate their beauty, they fish the oceans empty, they cut down all the trees. Then when God gets mad one of the humans flings a spear and kills God, hitting him right between the eyes.
- Kill the God: The orgy of destruction that the humans unleash on Earth ends with a human hitting God between the eyes with a spear and killing him.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: No dialogue, just action set to the music of Igor Stravinsky.
- My God, What Have I Done?: All the humans come to this realization together after killing God and turning Earth into an ashen wasteland. They finally start living in harmony with nature, letting plants grow again. Finally God comes back to life and makes a rainbow.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: When the humans are first created they have Barbie Doll Anatomy and the only thing differentiating the man from the woman is that the man is a little bit bigger. When the humans are transformed into various animals they all have tertiary characteristics to differentiate them—the bird-woman has a small comb on her head like a hen, while the bird-rooster has a larger comb and neck wattle.
