Titan A.E. (2000) (Movie Review)

    Back in 1999, there was one up-coming sci-Fi blockbuster that was on everybody’s mind, and it was a little film called “Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace”. I was just a young kid at the time, at the height of my “Star Wars” craze, and was beyond hyped for the film. After months of waiting, and waiting … we finally sat down in the theater to see it … and something unexpected happened.

I was suddenly caught off guard by a trailer for a different Sci-Fi adventure film called “Titan A.E.”, which was to premier the following year. Afterword’s, while I liked “Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace” just fine, and continued to watch it as a kid ... it somehow just didn’t match the expectations I had going in ... but that “Titan A.E.” certainly looked like it could. Sure enough, the following year I watched “Titan A.E.”, and it absolutely felt closer in spirit to what I wanted from an outer space, “Star Wars”-esk adventure. The movie itself under-performed at the box office, and received mix reviews from critics, but that didn’t mater to me, because I was in love with this film. It became one of my first DVD’s of the new decade, I listened to the soundtrack frequently when I played video games, I had the poster hung-up in my room, and I collected several “Titan A.E.” toys, which I mingled with my “Star Wars” action figures. Needless to say, I was viewing “Titan A.E.” as one of my favorite movies … but has it held up after almost two decades? Is it still just as great as I remember, or has it gotten worse, and if so … could I see past my own nostalgia goggles?   

   The movie kicks off with one of my all-time favorite pre-title-card openings from any Sci-Fi or animated picture, and it’s one high mark in the film that absolutely holds up. At the dawn of the thirty-first century, mankind develops a massive space craft called “The Titan”, which has the power to create a planet out of the collected energy from certain quadrants of space. This development frightens a race of aliens called the Drej, who are made of energy themselves, and see the Titan as a threat to their own existence. 

Thus, they rain-down upon the humans without warning … and completely nuke Earth, with only a handful of colonies escaping. While we’ve seen Earth under attack, and planets blowing-up in other Sci-Fi pictures, it had never really been seen on this big a scale before ... at least I never saw anything quite like this at the time. The visuals, the build-up, the tension, the music … it’s like a mini-epic, and it both scared and thrilled me to see as kid. Amidst the evacuation, we see the lead scientist of the Titan bid farewell to his son, as he hopes to launch the ship, but it gets damaged during the invasion, and is herald into the unknown reaches of space ... leaving both his son and the rest of humanity without a home. 

    Fifteen years later, the boy named Cale has grown into a young man, and lives in a refuge station with all that’s left of the human race. After joining a band of pirates, he discovers a map that can lead him to the very ship his father engineered … and more importantly, give the human race a home again. Thus, the adventure is on, as our band of hero’s journey across space to find the ship, and re-colonize the human race before the malevolent Drej get to it first. 

Those are some high stakes for an animated family adventure, and I distinctly remember watching this as a kid, and being completely engaged in the driving goal off our main hero’s. Looking back, the film at times admittedly feels like a cut-and-pace work of other Sci-Fi plots, but I still feel the formula is executed just effectively enough, and with some distinct merits that are entirely its own. The screenplay was written by one Joss Whedon … famous now for writing and directing “The Avengers”, but had his hands in a number of Sci-Fi adventures that revolved around renegades going on missions in space, including “Alien Resurrection” and his “Firefly” series. You can certainly feel his touches in the script, which help give the film some dimension. One little scene I love is when our hero’s try to breakout a friend from prison, but first they have to outwit a guard. In a refreshing turn of events, the guard is actually smarter than your typical cliched lookout that can easily be fooled, and it makes for a nice change-up. 

  There's also an amusing moment when a silly bug-alien gets roped into a chase scene, and it looks like he'll be the obligatory comedic relief ... only to get gunned down. Actually, the film isn't afraid to get a little violent at times, as characters get a little bloody, and there's even an on-screen neck-snap. The movie is also directed by animation legend Don Bluth, along with his longtime partner Gary Goldman. Both are great talents credible for “The Secret of NIMH", "Anastasia” and “The Land Before Time”, but this marked very different territory for the two to work in, as neither were really into Science Fiction, nor had they done anything quiet this adult in tone ... at least sense the early 80's. Regardless, they were eager to take on an animation project that didn’t feel like a Disney knock-off, and both their talents really shine in the character animation. There’s great detail put into the character features, and they convey a great deal of personality through their movements and expressions … if only the script was as good at fleshing out its characters.

   The big difference between “Titan A.E.” and something like either “Star Wars” or even “Gradians of the Galaxy” is that the characters from those films had more of a universal appeal that can reach an audience beyond Science Fiction fans. The characters in “Titan A.E.”, while not awful, are still very one-note tropes you see all the time in Sci-Fi. You got the hero with a bad attitude, the surrogate father figure with a dark side, the brooding pilot who secretly has a heart of gold, the intelligent well-spoken first officer who’s secretly a villain, the clueless scientist, and the cranky weapons technician. In some respects, this film is responsible for introducing me to the concept of anti-hero’s in space, along the same lines as the crews from “Cowboy Bebop”, “Firefly” and the aforementioned “Gradians of the Galaxy”. Also, despite being a one-note crew, I can still coast on Don Bluth’s quality character animation, as well as a solid voice cast. We have Matt Damon during his early rising star status as our main lead Cale. Bill Pullman is in top form as Captain Korso, who becomes the figurative John Silver, betraying our main hero, but still has a soft spot for him. Nathan Lane is spot on as the deceptive first mate named Preed, and it’s a treat to finally have him play a straight forward villain, as opposed to his usual shtick as the ego driven protagonist. 

   I’ve personally never been a fan of John Leguizamo, but he displays a great range of vocal talent and charisma as the comedic relief named Gune. There are also some noteworthy vocal talents in some of the minor roles, including Janeane Garofalo, Tone Loc, Jim Cummings, and my absolute favorite being Ron Perlman as Cale’s father. Even in a minor role, Ron Perlman is one of those talents who can always leave an impression. At last we have Drew Barrymore as the rebellious pilot named Akima, who matches her tough-girl attitude with the passionate hope that things will one day get better. Needles to say, I think Drew Barrymore delivers the sharpest vocal performance. Of course, sense she’s the female lead she has to form a relationship with our hero, and while they don’t have much in terms of romantic chemistry, they do still work as a fun buddy pair with opposite personalities.
      

   The universe of “Titan A.E.” is a vast one, with the potential of further exploration, and it makes me wish the film could be a pinch longer, with more visits to unique alien worlds. There’s a great scene when our hero’s visit a planet populated by mysterious Bat-like creatures called the Gaoul, who are so elusive, that no-one even knows what they look like. Then we have our villains called the Drej, who make for awesome alien designs. If H. R. Giger designed the Stormtroopers, this is probably what they’d resemble. They also make for a unique race, as their made of pure energy, and they convey a sense of both excitement and menace whenever they’re on screen. Their leader, the Drej Queen is likewise another inspiring creature design, and despite not getting much screen time, she still makes for an exciting villain with a commanding presence. Granted, there’s regrettably little else to the Drej, other then cool looking villains, but they still make for unique creatures that genuinely feel as alien as they get.

   The action sequences make for some riveting eye candy, and fit right in with my love of laser gun shoot-outs, and space-ship chases. All the elements culminate together in a terrific, fast-paced speeder-boat chase on the Gaoul’s home world, in which hydrogen trees are used as explosives. There’s also just enough variety to the action, that each sequence can stand as its own separate highlight. 

Perhaps the best set-piece of all is a nail-biting cat and mouse game between two space ships in a large space field of floating icebergs, called the Ice Rings of Tegrin. In my opinion, this whole sequence is the greatest spaceship chase sense the original Asteroid chase from “The Empire Strikes Back”. It captures the slow-moving tension of a submarine hunt, laced with the absorbing eye candy of these giant shards of ice colliding into one another. Also, unlike asteroids, these ice shards have reflective surfaces, making it challenging for the characters to tell a real ship from reflection. Naturally, we get an explosive final battle between the Titan and the Drej mother ship, which balances its bombastic laser cannons with some white knuckled fist-fighting.  

   For as fast paced and action packed as the film gets, it still gives the movie time to just have moments that feel lived-in and real. There’s a great little scene in which Cale meets a family of human refuges who are playing soccer, and using a sports card to imagine themselves on a real grass field. It’s an important moment for Cale to see hope in the human race, as this poor family are using all they have to look past a ship full of rusted spaceship wholes. My favorite scene of the whole feature is when our main lead Cale gets the chance to pilot the ship through a massive gas cloud, all while getting the attention of these glowing blue mantaray creatures called “Wake Angels”. It’s a dazzling sequence, and it completes an arc in which the surrogate father allows him to finally take the wheel … something he’d been denying Cale the opportunity for ever sense the opening of the film. Of course, the scene could have been stronger if it was paired with an instrumental score, as opposed to the song called "It's My Turn to Fly", performed by The Urge. I actually like the song fine, but I also feel a scene of this sort could have benefited from something quieter, and more atmospheric.  

   On that note … lets talk about the soundtrack. I was somewhere between ten and eleven years old at the time I first saw this movie, and for a while, I loved the music in this film. They weren’t traditional song numbers, and sounded closer to the hard rock music the older kids were listening to. Needless to say, the majority of these songs … well, kind of suck. Most of it is that early 2000’s equivalent of “tame heavy metal” for young teens, but it’s not real heavy metal, and thus it has no appeal to either side. Just listen to Lit’s "Over My Head" to get an idea of the time and demographic this music is trying to appeal to. There are some select songs which I have some fondness reserved for, namely Texas "Like Lovers (Holding On)", and Electrasy “Cosmic Castaway”, but even those could be brushed off as dated products trying to appeal to a decade’s demographic. I have to admit, I genuinely love Bliss 66’s “Not Quiet Paradise”, as that song has stuck with me through the years. Also, Creed’s “Higher” was used in most of the marketing for the film, and while everyone seems to have the same feelings for Creed … I can’t help but have a soft-spot for that particular song, and it’s always tied into my nostalgia for this film.    
    

   Visually, the film is gorgeous, and the animation mostly holds up after nearly two decades. This was the age in which 3D animation was beating out traditional 2D artistry, and “Titan A.E.’s” ambitious visual design tried to find a happy merging of the two. The characters remain traditionally hand drawn, but they move and interact with 3D environments, with CGI creatures, vehicles, and digital outer-space elements. 

 Some of the shots have not aged well at all … namely the closing shot with two animated characters standing on a digital rock surface, but a good 85% of it still looks amazing. A part of me wishes this could have been the future of animated pictures, as it advanced the technology, while still keeping traditional 2D animation alive. Although, I will admit, it doesn’t look quite as perfect as the fully CGI animated features of today. The movies design of out-space itself is beautifully detailed, and it’s still one of my favorites in all of Sci-Fi cinema. There’s never a blank canvas, with little dots twinkling in the background … every shot of space is filled with colorful cloud formations, gaseous anomalies, detailed backdrops, vast nebulas, and it’s visually on par with the beauty and wonder of the photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. I took an Astronomy class in collage, and I distinctly remember this film was used as an example of how there’s so much more color in outer-space then what can be seen by simply looking up at the night sky.

   In the end, while I wouldn’t write “Titan A.E.” off as an underrated masterpiece, it still has a secure spot ranked among my personal favorite animated pictures … just for different reasons then most others. It’s a movie solely for fans of the Science Fiction genera, or long-time followers of Don Bluth’s animated pictures. Objectively viewing the film as an adult, I will admit that “Titan A.E.” is far from perfect, and the script can admittedly be a mess in spots … but even with that said, I still have a great deal of fondness for the film. 

It’s a movie that left an impression on my childhood, and it fits right in my wheel-house of laser shooting, Sci-Fi adventures through space. The stakes are high, the action is thrilling, the animation is stunning, and it’s still to this day one of my favorite outer-space designs I’ve ever seen on film. There’s nothing more to the movie then strait forward Sci-Fi tropes and eye-candy, but it’s done just well enough that it continues to leave me with a highly satisfying experience. The films universe is multilayered, yet perfectly contained in one movie, and it’s just a rare treat to get the thrill of exploring a vast universe without tying into a larger film franchise. To date, this was the last movie to be directed by Don Bluth, and in my own personal opinion … I think he went out on a high note. Granted, this isn’t a movie that comes to mind when I think of traditional Don Bluth, but it still carries his signature animation strengths, and it adds some variety to his filmography. I often use “Titan A.E.” as a counterpoint to the argument … “you only like it because it has "Star Wars" in the title”. Well, this movie doesn’t have “Star Wars” in the title, yet I personally still love it, and enjoy it just as much as any other “Star Wars” movie.

Thanks for reading my review of Fox’s 2000 animated Sci-Fi venture “Titan A.E.” … and continue to enjoy the movies you Love!