Titan A.E.

TITAN A. E. / (2000) *** (out of four)

"Titan A.E." is like a giant looming over movie animation landscape; it is one of the most visually bracing family fantasy adventures to come down the pike in years. The film's animation is wonderfully spectacular, visually enticing and entirely convincing. Directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman enthrall the audience with a sweeping sense of atmosphere and action. This is the kind of cartoon that is mature to the level in which the characters and set designs could have been replaced with live action filmmaking without changing the movie's perspective.

The production takes place twenty-eight years after the third millennium. Planet Earth has been demolished by a cruel species called the Drej, who fear the potential intelligence of the human race. Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) is a young man working as a space dump attendant who believes his father abandoned him when he was a child. Cale doesn't know it yet, but he holds the key to the survival of the human race with a genetically coded map on his hand showing the course to the hidden position of a special spacecraft called the Titan.

Cale meets a young woman named Akima (voiced by Drew Barrymore), who cherishes conventional memorabilia of her late planet. She and her captain, Korso (voiced by Bill Pullman), and the navigator, Gune (John Leguizamo), set out to locate the vital Titan before the evil Drej can exterminate it along with mankind's future hope of existence.

Instead of our traditional, well-developed bad guy that posses serious threats to the protagonist's mission, in "Titan A.E." we receive something of a different sort: an underwritten alien race whose motives and backgrounds are unclear and undeveloped. The movie seems to know of this, however, therefore the film wisely switches villains in the second act. The story provides an interesting twist that supplies us with solid and comprehendible antagonism.

This movie's plot feels somewhat pieced together from previous science fiction fantasies like "Star Trek," "Star Wars," and "Lost in Space." John Whedon, Ben Edlund, and John August vividly detail a story that moves along steadily, but occasionally stalls to build momentum for the character's purpose for achieving goals. There is a scene on a spaceship holding Cale in captivity that feels trite and dual, but the film quickly rejuvenates itself with an exhilarating chase sequence. The film's plot would have been more involving if we knew more about the characters. They seem pretty interesting but we never really get to know them because the filmmakers were more concerned with special effects, a common misconception both animated and live action films.

This production is engaging and well animated; "Titan: After Earth" is smart to jolt a appropriate about of energy into its action scenes and contains sufficient amounts of style and wit to satisfy younger audiences as well to hold the attention of the older, more sophisticated viewers. It is not every day a cartoon is able to do that.

Saw this on DVD, missing it completely at the cinema. Which was probably what happened to the audience for the film, as it was difficult to market for any target group. Having seen it, it's apparent that lot of very hard work went into producing it.

I can compare it to a few other sci-fi animated films of recent years...

As ground-breaking as The Last Starfighter was in its day. Though not pure animation, Starfighter showed off what even early CG could do in terms of gimbal-free animation of spaceships and vehicles.

Much, much better than Final Fantasy, as the action is genuinely epic. The story goes places and uses the chosen technology very nicely. Titan is not a boring film.

Very similar to Disney's later production of the Treasure Island book. Disney appeared to have cribbed one or two scenes from Titan A.E. Not nice.

Graphically, it's up there with Iron Giant, using finely animated CG figures mixed with traditional cell animation. The scene where we first see the older Cale Tucker (in space, cutting up junk) is very impressive.

But something bugs me. There was something missing. Iron Giant gave me a sense of wonder, which was achieved by some great character acting, clever pacing and a wonderful story line. At no point was I "taken" by what I saw on-screen while watching Titan A.E.

I think Titan tripped over itself in the drama department more than a few times. Along with the latest Star Wars films, it tumbles along without stopping up and letting the audience know what the characters are feeling. The actors have to have the skills to enable the audience to feel, to immerse. Without that, the action has a risk of becoming incomprehensible.

Pretty, fast-paced, intriguing. But I wish someone would use these toys to produce something great, something big.

Something wonderful.

Titan A. E. was a tragic victim of 'studio sidelining' where a film is shafted in favour of a bigger and 'more viable' product; in this case, it seemed Fox was focusing its efforts on X-Men in getting adequate promos and licensing deals to make that movie soar at the box office. Titan A. E. was sporadically promoted besides the occasional tv spot, but the tie-in campaign proved very moot compared to tentpole Disney films at the time.

Titan A. E. also has the distinction of being Don Bluth's latest feature film, as his in-development Dragon's Lair film still hasn't been released. It sucks, because Don always had a knack for blending pathos in with slapstick comedy that few animators dared to balance as well as he did (with the likes of Secret of Nimh, American Tail, Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven); and it would have been nice seeing that trend continue into the 2000s and beyond. Sadly, it hasn't seen another film of his yet, and fans of Don Bluth are still waiting for Dragon's Lair to become a movie. Hopefully the day will come soon when Bluth graces the world with another of his feature films.

This movie was also a nice refreshing change of pace from all the musical animated films that were nigh-omniscient thanks to the Disney Renaissance still rubbing off on the competition. Science fiction has only gotten stronger representation in animation recently thanks to the Spider-Verse films, and films like them and Wall-E owe themselves to films like Titan A. E. and The Iron Giant daring to give audiences something different and high-concept escapism in a field dominated by Disney Princesses and talking animals.

2000s animation was something of a crazy and difficult time for theatrical toons; the technology evolved rapidly thanks to PIXAR's films and Dreamworks' Shrek, and traditional cel-animation still had a foothold on television when it was dying out at the movies. And Titan A. E. is a fascinating window into that time for the animation industry, where the demands of audiences were changing and becoming very complicated, and it seemed like a case of it being too ahead of its time (who knows how a film like this would have performed in the 2010s or 2020s in a post-Spider-Verse world?). Hindsight makes it impossible to know if a failure could have had a 'second chance' at success given the proper promotional material, or if it was always gonna play out the same way regardless.

7/10 IMDb points. 3.5/5 stars. Titan A. E. gives us a glance at a simpler time for animated cinema; and how sci-fi animation has continued to refine itself thanks to the likes of it and others daring to defy Disney.

Titan A.E is a story set in a post-earth era (hence the A.E: after earth, which i thought was a nice touch). Its about the son of a scientist who is thrust upon him the quest of finding the Titan, the greatest ship ever built, and is humanity's last chance.

The movie begins with an awesome scene of the evacuation of earth, and caught me nicely off guard with some great 3D rendering of the Titan (when launched), and the escape ships. The imagination that went into some scenes in the movie, especially the cruising alongside the wake angels, and the ice rinks were fantastic. And the plot, though a bit unrealistic in terms of modern science, was thoroughly refreshing in concept. And its got just the right balance of action to move it quickly from a kids film to a good sci-fi show for slightly older audiences.

Titan A.E is a great film. It has a story that's original and neatly executed. It brought about some great 3D rendering in a time where animation was primarily 2D. Its got good character development with a nice twist in the middle. And its also got a fine soundtrack, which I love to listen to.

Go watch this movie. You will not be disappointed.

Filled with spectacular visions of other worlds, Titan A.E. brings us into the 31st century and into a whole new level of science fiction. The story is pretty simple, a race called the Drej feel the human race is a threat so they decide to destroy us. The only hope for the survival of the human species is a ship called the Titan. Only trouble is, no one knows where it is. The answer lays with Cale, the son of the inventor of Titan. Once Cale realizes what he's in for, we're off on an intergalactic roller coaster ride. We get chases in swamps filled with hydrogen trees and an imaginative hide and seek game in a field of ice crystals. Traditional hand drawn characters are blended in with amazing CGI renderings of planets, ships, and the vast emptiness of space with very good results. Sure there may be some clunker lines here and there but Titan A.E. gives fans of sci-fi what they want. Well worth the price of admission