The Titan

I was so intrigued to watch this movie, the trailer I saw made the film look awesome. The first twenty minutes or so I really enjoyed. I got into it immediately, the acting was really rather good, the story very interesting, but something seems to change, it's almost as if they switched directors or writers, as the film just turns into a real mess, it was hard to follow, almost every character was hard to like, and you find yourself asking 'what's the point.'

I'll applaud the acting, and special effects, the latter in particular were great, but overall there was just something about it that I didn't like, if I'm honest I was bored.

What was he going to do on his own on that planet?

Mehhh. 4/10

Just watched Titan and wow, it made me angry. I rarely write movie reviews, but this one moved me to action. Since Netflix no longer allows reviews on its site, here's my first IMDB review.

This crappy script is a waste of excellent acting talent and awesome special effects.

Kudos to the actors who did the best they could with an uneven script, faux-science, WTF scenes and progressively more stilted dialogue.

The movie isn't bad for the first 45 minutes. I had figured out it wasn't going to have a satisfying ending by that point, but I wanted to see how they'd spin it, so I kept going. The faux-science was fun to eye-roll over.

But then our hero soldiers finally go through the full metamorphosis (after a "what? why did they need surgery?" scene) and are unable to talk, change facial expressions, write, or in any other way communicate except by "sonar and touch".

And from that point, the script went completely into a FTW-WERE-YOU-THINKING tailspin. So many stupid actions in such a short time can make a movie-watcher dizzy.

The coup-de-grace was the final 18 minutes. It's like the producers said, "Let's just do a few disassociated scenes. No one is watching anymore, anyway." I lost track of how many times I said, "Wait, what?" So many times.

Netflix, fess up. Is this steaming pile of a movie, and your other original programming, the reason you no longer allow reviews? If you can't handle poor reviews, improve your quality management. Now you've forced people to find other public forums to air their opinions. That probably means fewer positive reviews (because why go to the effort when we liked the movie?), more negative reviews (because we want to warn people away from bad ones) and lower ratings (because we're mad about having to click to another site to leave the review).

In the near future, the world is overcrowded and its resources are dwindling. A project headed by Professor Martin Collingwood (Tom Wilkinson) proposes to populate the Saturn moon Titan with genetically altered humans. Lieutenant Rick Janssen (Sam Worthington) has brought his wife Abigail (Taylor Schilling) and son Lucas. As the volunteers get altered, some are dying while others are showing volatile signs.

Nothing happens for too long in this movie. Nothing ever happens behind Worthington's dead eyes. This could be a body horror but it does not do that. It really doesn't do much. I'm not a Worthington fan but I thought maybe Manhunt: Unabomber had given him new acting life. Sadly, this movie asks nothing of him and he gives them nothing. After his transformation, his alien face turns blank which is just as well. The emotional climax has no emotional content for him. This is a blank.

Training people to live on an uninhabitable planet because the earth is becoming... UNINHABITABLE. Say that again slowly. Why does he have to go to Titan? Why can't they just train his body to survive the new harsh weather on earth? I don't have a problem with the acting and special effects, I just feel like the story was not well thought out.

*Spoiler alert*

Actually, there isn't really much to spoil. This egg that netflix has lain, was spoiled from the get go. Derivative to the point of provoking fast forward, and this is coming from a long time sci-fi buff that's seen it all; Even I was bored enough to wish I was watching the other Titan. You remember....Titan AE, the cartoon? The casting of the action veteran, Sam Worthington, though not a bad choice for nearly any other movie, provided more of a distraction here, than attraction, given the voluminous invitations for comparison to his role in Avatar.

Speaking of comparison, and there are many valid ones that one may make, I found the episode: "Afterlife", from the Outer Limits Series, in which an ex soldier is given the choice of execution, or participating in an Alien DNA mutation experiment, to be more inspired and engaging.

There just isn't much here, and what there is, simply mashes all the wrong buttons. Including the 'eject' button. On a scale of 1 to...would you rather see it again, or go wingsuiting without a wingsuit....

I give it a solid 4 out of 10.