Titan A.E. (Special Edition)
by Art Vitello, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
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DVD details
Actor: Bill Pullman, Drew Barrymore, John Leguizamo, Matt Damon, Nathan LaneDirector: Art Vitello, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Brand: Titan
Writer: Ben Edlund
Writer: Hans Bauer
Writer: John August
Writer: Joss Whedon
Writer: Randall McCormick
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-11-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Titan A.E. (Special Edition)
DVD Review: A look into the future that's stuck in the past. Science fiction without innovation imagination or risk.
Summary: 1 Stars
Titan A.E. should have been an epic movie full of thought provoking ideas. With talents like the legendary Don Bluth on animation, skilled sci-fi screenwriters like Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Ben Edlund (The Tick) writing the screenplay and stars like Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman and Nathan Lane doing voice over work and a [...]dollar budget the movie had all the elements of a hit. Unfortunately all these talented individuals failed to become successful when brought together on this project. Titan A.E. is an uninspired mess of a movie with a predictable story, dated looking animation, flat acting and primitive looking CGI. Thanks in part to the box office failure of this movie and several others like Treasure Planet and Atlantis, hand drawn animated movies are currently not being produced by American movie studios. A shame because there are so many great stories to tell using this art form.
Titan A.E. follows the story of Cale, a young boy in the year 3028 or something. Cale's father has built a spaceship The Titan, which can recreate an Earth like planet when activated. Big blue off the shelf computer generated aliens known as The Drej find out about the Titan and go to Earth to destroy it. During a final onslaught on the planet, Cale's father gives his son to an alien to care for along with a ring then gets on another ship. The Titan escapes along with a few million human survivors. Five-year-old Cale helplessly watches as the Drej blow up Earth and kill his father. So bleak, so boring so predictable.
Cut to fifteen years later. Cale a young man now, is working a crummy job at a space station. True to formula, he's angry and disillusioned drifting through life with no direction. After an unappetizing lunch of living creatures, Cale runs afoul of some human hating aliens. He's about to get pummeled when he conveniently he runs into Korso, a man who says he's been searching the galaxy for fifteen years for him on his quest to find the Titan. He activates a code in Cale's ring and conveniently the Drej head to the station to kill him. It would have been helpful to give the bad guys some character development here. I find it odd how the Drej found Cale at the same time as Korso but not for the past fifteen years despite being smart enough to blow up a planet. Cale and Korso shoot it out with the Drej to escape the space station, but the bug like cook who served lunch is a casualty of the assault. They hotwire a spaceship which gets damaged as it leaves the station and make a thrilling jump into space without spacesuits. Too bad this makes no sense scientifically. Their bodies would have exploded from the pressure before they asphyxiated.
The movie goes on in spite of this minor plothole. On board Korso's ship Cale meets the attractive Akima, who looks both hot and edgy along with other members of Korso's alien crew. The quest for the Titan begins and the slowly paced movie starts to get even slooower, changing into a ninety minute long chase where we watch Cale and Akima start a lukewarm romance, shooting, arguing between Cale and the crew, arguing between Cale and Akima, arguing between Cale and Korso, two brief scenes where nudity is teased, and just more arguing and shooting leading to Predictable plot twist #1: Korso is working for the Drej and plans on destroying the Titan when they find it. True to formula, Korso gets a change of heart and sacrifices himself and Cale activates the Titan after learning predictable plot twist #2: Drej are beings of pure energy and they would power the Titan when it recreates the Earth like planet. Cale figures this out in record time and recreates the planet calling it "Bob". The movie ends and I shed a tear as I watch an opportunity to make something truly innovative in the Science Fiction genre wasted by a bunch of people who have the talent to do much better.
Titan A.E. fails as a science fiction movie because of a poorly written script that has the plot and character development of a bad 1980's Saturday morning cartoon. Edlund and Whedon's weak screenplay plays everything safe and takes no risks in telling Cale's story. Movies in the Science Fiction genre always take risks exploring the worlds they inhabit and exploring the personalities of the characters who live in the universe. There was a story to tell here, but the writers focused on the wrong characters and the wrong plot points. The real story should have been with Cale's father not Cale. I wanted to know why he made the Titan and why was there a need to create a new Earth like planet. Could Earth have been overpopulated and scientists felt they needed a new world was the solution to handle the masses? Did the energy based Drej fear Earthmen exploiting their race as power source for the Titan? Perhaps Drej spies read about slavery in ancient American history texts and colonization of foreign lands during the colonial period and felt the need for a pre-emptive strike. These were deeper reasons for an intergalactic planet destroying war and should have been the focus of the movie's overall plot.
Production wise, Titan A.E. is subpar. Bluth's hand-drawn animation for Fox looks horribly outdated when put side to side with the work of other animators at the competing animated studios of Disney, DreamWorks and Warner Brothers in the same year. Bluth's backgrounds are often too dark and character movements over exaggerated. Bluth, true to his style over the past thirty years focuses too much on wide shots of flailing of limbs to express character emotion and not on close-ups of facial expressions to tell his story. Watch any of Bluth's Disney films (Robin Hood, The Fox and the Hound) or his 90's Fox films (Anastasia, The Land Before Time, An American Tail) to see how little his style has changed with the times. The CGI has no detail and doesn't blend into the backgrounds smoothly. The Drej and their ships look like they belong in another film not here in Titan A.E. Compare the animation in Titan A.E. to DreamWorks' Road to El Dorado released that same year. Road does everything Titan A.E wanted to do from a technical standpoint blending CGI and animation beautifully. Brad Birds' work on Warner's Iron Giant features a well-written story and is a brighter film with lively human characters and beautiful backgrounds. Disney's later efforts like Kim Possible and Lilo and Stitch have more engaging characters and utilize unique animated character designs. Titan A.E. with its looks and feels like a 1980's movie not a 2000 theatrical release.
Fox was setting up Titan A.E. to be a sci-fi classic that pushed the genre of hand-drawn animated films into the adult themed direction of Japanese Manga. Ironically, the failure of these "riskier" hand-drawn animated movies like Fox's Titan, A.E., DreamWorks Road to El Dorado, Warner's The Iron Giant, Disney's Treasure Planet and Atlantis halted the production of hand-drawn animated films in America for the time being. Because American studios and audiences continue to see hand-drawn animated films as children's fare filmmakers cannot push the envelope and tell the adult themed stories of their Japanese counterparts. Until American movie studios and audiences change their perceptions about hand-drawn animation, filmmakers will never be able to make hand-drawn animated movies with mature themes and expand the audience for the art form past small children.
Pass this one by at the video store. Adults looking for an adult themed animated movie should Pick up the far superior Heavy Metal or Castle of Cogliostro and preteens looking for a non-Disney animated film can pick up the superior Road to El Dorado, The Iron Giant or The Prince of Egypt.
Description of Titan A.E. (Special Edition)
Earth has been destroyed by an alien race and the surviving humans have fled. A young Earthling must fulfill his destiny, to find the space ship Titan.Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: PG
Release Date: 16-DEC-2003
Media Type: DVD
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