Customer Reviews

Titan a.E.

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(33)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

TITAN A.E. opened to high hopes for the budding Fox Animation Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. However, after being trashed by perhaps every critic with a brain AND a pulse, the film forced the studio to close its doors.

Not certain what it wanted to be, TITAN A.E. is one-part HEAVY METAL, one-part cheap scifi visionary, and one-part Disney ... but, alas, the parts do not add up. The vocal performances of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Pullman (could you find three more uninteresting voices?) sound as if they were phoned in on a Sunday morning after a very late, very drunken Saturday night party. The best elements of the film were literally ideas lifted from far better flicks, leaving TITAN A.E. perhaps the most unoriginal and uninteresting animated science fiction outing I've ever seen.

Avoid this one, unless you're in need of a sedative.

Many critics gave thumbs up to Titan AE, the animated feature from Fox Studios, and if I did not think much of it, my opinion should not deter fans of animation and/or science fiction. There are many people who are better judges of art than I am. How Titan AE stacks up as art compared to, say, The Lion King or A Bug's Life, I cannot know. I do know that, regardless of the creative process used, a movie must still work as a movie, and on that level, I found it lacking.

Titan AE begins with the destruction of Earth by a weird race of beings who seemingly are afraid that human beings have become too technologically advanced. A space commander gets his young son safely aboard one of the evacuation craft, and then he races to escape with a ship called Titan, the one that contains the secret the attackers are so fearful of. The story then jumps forward fifteen years. The commander never returned for his son as promised. The boy is bitter. He is a maintenance worker one of the spacecraft. Apparently the human race has found no place else to live and has been floating around the galaxy all these years. One day he is approached by a man and a beautiful young woman who say they need his help. As it turns out, the ring his father gave him all those years ago is a really a map that shows the location of the Titan. They stress to him that it is imperative that the ship be found. After much coercion, he reluctantly agrees to accompany them. The enemy is hot on their heels. The race has begun.

One critic described Titan AE as the movie Star Wars fans have been waiting for. I thought they were waiting for the fifth installment of the series, due out early next summer. Haven't we sat through enough imitations of these movies? Did we really need a cartoon version? This is not a remake, but it is obvious that Star Wars inspired much of the plot, as well as the visuals. Also confusing to me is why someone would chose a space epic as source for an animated movie. I realize that many of the most famous and popular comic book series are based either in outer space or on characters from beyond. Yet, since we obviously can't film anywhere else but here on Earth, much of what we see in a sci-fi movie is animated and computer generated anyway. To me, what the producers did was to spend a whole lot of money putting together a sci-fi movie that is all drawn by hand or otherwise. In front of these 'sets' they then drew in cartoon figures. It doesn't seem to me that that counts as much of a breakthrough for animated art...

I'm pretty openminded, but man, this movie really really stunk.

Don Bluth hit his peak with Dragon's Lair and The Secret of Nimh.

The art of this film had some interesting concepts, but really does not deserve all the acclaim it received. I found it comparable to a well drawn comic-book; but the emotional content of the characters was not believable at all.
The story, well, what can I say. Comic book level again.

My two stars for solely for the animation. Besides that, this movie lacked any kind of hook. I never grew to like any of the main characters particularly, the storyline was weak, and the ending was totally predictable. I wish we would've rented this one before we bought it, so we would've bought a real movie.

I don't believe there are any more limits as to what we can see at the movies. This animated film is not only gorgeous to look at, it also takes the viewer to worlds that can only be imagined in the most creative of minds. The cat-and-mouse chase around the ice rings of Tigrin is one of the most impressive movie sequences I've ever seen. Moreover, another sequence involving a high-speed chase through trees with balloon-like leaves filled with hydrogen gas left me breathless. It's too bad that besides this animated visual feast, there really isn't anything else offered by the film. The characters are uniformly boring and the dialogue must be aimed at retarded infants. The soundtrack is also peppered with pretty bad generic alt-rock. And I could not believe the size of the holes in the plot. The writers didn't even expend the energy to explain why the Drej are trying to destroy humanity, which, you would think, ought to have been a priority considering that it sets up the entire movie. I guess the writers' laziness can be kinda fun if you make a game out of trying to name all the movies that they rip off. But yeah, see it just for the "ice rings of Tigrin" sequence. And try to see it with full surround-sound. Wow.

Marketing strategy must have killed Titan A.E. The films tries too hard to appeal to both children......and older children. In its manic attempt to be "hip" (hero sports tattoo, heroine sports bright purple bangs, intrusive soundtrack featuring banal 80-ish style power-ballads), the gimmicks and innuendos become a distraction. In its attempt to be witty, it becomes sophomoric. Surprisingly, the voice talents (Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, Janeane Garofalo) all fail to breath life into the characters. Indeed, the old-school approach to the character animation clashes with this dark and dystopian tale. Some say the tale is a homage to everything from Star Trek II to Heavy Metal. But unfortunately, with five people hammering at the script, the logic gaps in the screenplay become another serious distraction. The animation itself is awesome. Bluth's immense team of animators has rendered giant, crystalline ice fields and hovering "hydrogen flowers" with a seamless ease; it's some of the most visually enticing work around. But so what? The filmmakers here had the opportunity to do something really original and interesting and instead they just chose to be "cool".

I'm always astounded when I see this dvd offered so cheap. It's usually thrown in the same budget bin with really bad movies.

To cut to the chase, the story is ok; not great, but not bad either. What really separates this one into the pile of DVD's that I like to watch are the stunning visuals and the even more stunning (DTS) sound. If you have a home theater, then this dvd will pay for itself in the first few minutes of the movie.

An indicator of the excellent sound on this dvd is that when I finally added a subwoofer to my home theater, the first dvd I put in to try out was Titan AE (and it left my whole family with mouths agape).

The story itself is fine, though it would have been better if it were developed more. There is a good story there, it's just not fully presented. Some of the secondary characters are very forgettable. In other words, it's pretty much on par with most SciFi movies. I could have written this same paragraph about any Star Wars or Star Trek movie. That may not be high praise, but it's no indictment either. It's SciFi; enjoy what it gives you and don't be overly critical.

Although I'm a fan of both "space opera" sci-fi and 'toons geared more towards the older crowd, I didn't find "Titan A.E." to be a particularly interesting or original melding of these two elements. On the story side, I found the whole "boy-man-destined-to-save-humanity" angle that the central character plays a bit derivative of, and not played out quite as well as such previous sci-fi messiahs as the 'Star Wars' trilogy's Luke Skywalker and 'Dune's' Paul Atreides/Muad'Dib. I also would've preferred they put a little more exposition into-- and explained with a bit more detail-- the period between the Earth's destruction and the commencing of the hero's search for the Titan. On the technical end of things: although the folks who put this together made an admirable effort to meld both 3-D computer animation and traditional cel animation together as seamlessly as possible, It rarely ever looked quite right. This lack of cohesion is especially noticeable in one scene where a cel-drawn character is walking down a CGI spiral staircase. Or was he walking UP it? See, the thing looks so odd I couldn't even tell which direction the guy was goin' on the staircase! How's THAT for a case in point, eh? Otherwise, the 'toonage was some of the most detailed and painstakingly-rendered I've ever seen in a non-anime feature.

But even though I found the story and animation less than stellar, I thought some of the deleted scenes in the bonus features section were moderately interesting. A few parts of these scenes were rough-drawn, giving the viewer a little window into the animation process and what the film's producers worked with before adding the finishing touches to the 'toonage. The feature-length commentary track featuring co-directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman also lets the viewer in on the more technical aspects of producing animated features in general and 'Titan A.E.' in particular. Sadly, I found their commentary so dry that I bailed out on them about twenty minutes into the feature. It also didn't help that they spoke in an almost hushed tone half the time, prompting me to turn the volume up just so I could understand them.

Also included among the special features were the usual trailers and TV spots for the movie, and a behind-the-scenes special on the making of the feature. My viewing of the BTS special made me come to the realization that I've become rather tired of most of these "making-of" featurettes that they throw onto most "special-edition" DVDs nowadays. About halfway through the show I realized I really didn't give two doots about how the animation was done, or the voice actors talking about the complexities of their characters. Immediately after making this realization, I bailed on the special and decided to go do something a little more productive-- like writing this review about the DVD.

And people say I'm a slacker...

'Late

Some of the most beautiful visuals of any movie to grace the screen. Should appeal to fans of Star Wars style action. Too intense for the wee ones though.