Cast (voices): Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane, Tone Loc, Janeane Garofalo, John Leguizamo
Directors: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Producers: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, David Kirschner
Screenplay: Ben Edlund and John August and Joss Whedon
Music: Graeme Revell
U.S. Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Titan A. E. represents an ambitious attempt by co-directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman to fuse traditional animated techniques with the latest in computer graphics, and to present it all through a plot that owes more to Japanese anime than to classic Disney. The result is a mixed bag, characterized by some obvious high points and equally apparent flaws. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, Titan A. E. is an engaging experience that tops Dinosaur for the best animated adventure to reach theaters thus far this year.
The story certainly boasts more complexity than that of Dinosaur. Instead of relying solely upon visual splendor, Titan A. E. takes the time to develop a reasonably interesting plot and populate the cinematic canvas with well-defined characters. Admittedly, the movie's scripting fails at the end - a rushed and somewhat jumbled series of events that relies on an individual acting completely out-of-character - but, for about 80 minutes, Titan A. E. can claim something that few recent animated features have been able to highlight: an intelligent screenplay.
The year is 3028, and Earth has been destroyed by the merciless attack of an alien race known as the Drej. There are survivors, although the ragtag bunch of humans is scattered to the far corners of the quadrant, and the Drej, bent on genocide, pursue them doggedly and seemingly without reason. For humanity, there is hope, however, in the form of a giant spaceship called Titan, which was successfully launched before the planet's destruction. But it is lost in deep space and only Cale, the young son of the Titan's captain, possesses hidden information about its location.
In 3042, Cale (voice of Matt Damon) is a young man living an aimless life on Salvage Station Tau 14. It is there that Captain Korso (Bill Pullman), an old friend of Cale's father, finds him. Korso has assembled a motley crew that includes a beautiful navigator, Akima (Drew Barrymore); an indolent first officer, Preed (Nathan Lane); a short-tempered weapons expert, Stith (Janeane Garafolo); and a brilliant-but-erratic scientist, Gune (John Leguizamo). Together, they have one goal: find the Titan, and they need Cale's help to do it. Although initially reluctant to join Korso's quest, Cale has a change of heart when he learns that the Drej are out to get him because they, like Korso, need the information he is in possession of.
In essence, Titan A. E. (the "A.E.", incidentally, stands for "After Earth") is a tale of the indomitability of the human spirit - sort of the same idea conveyed (badly) in both Independence Day and Battlefield Earth. So, despite a fair amount of violence and the presence of some cold-blooded aliens, the overall message is a positive one, and the final fifteen minutes are full of feel-good moments. The romance between Cale and Akima is well enough developed that it doesn't seem like a throw-in.
Titan A. E. is interesting for a number of reasons outside of the most obvious - that it presents 90 minutes of solid, family-oriented entertainment. For Fox Animation and its 61 year-old veteran animator, Don Bluth, this represents the much-anticipated followup to 1997's Anastasia, the first recent challenge to Disney's cartoon superiority. However, while Anastasia was very much in the Disney mold, right down to the plucky heroine and song-and-dance interludes, Titan A. E. is unlike anything the Magic Kingdom has produced. Borrowing heavily from Japanese anime, the film ventures into an area that mainstream animated features have avoided: science fiction. And the results indicate that this may be an ideal format for future space operas. In fact, some would argue that George Lucas' new Star Wars trilogy is only a step away from animation.
The movie is a combination of hand-drawn elements and CGI. The traditional aspects are pretty conventional, and not up to the level of recent Disney efforts (Tarzan, for example). The computer stuff is cutting edge, and looks great. There is an inherent problem, however, in that the two styles are noticeably different and don't always effectively merge together. For example, in the wake of an impressive CGI sequence featuring spaceships and exploding objects, the less-detailed characters appear cartoonish. The reason is simple - the computer generated sequences involve three-dimensional objects while the traditional animation is flat. The problem isn't unsolvable, but Titan A. E.'s approach needs improvement.
Titan A. E. is action-oriented, with a number of high octane space chases and battles. The standout sequence occurs during the closing half-hour, when two ships are playing hide-and-seek in a field of giant, collapsing ice crystals. Not only are the visuals stunning, but there's a human element as well, because, by this point, we have come to care about the characters, so the sense of danger is genuine. Some of Bluth and Goldman's backgrounds are as impressive as the computer-generated foregrounds, featuring arrays of deep colors and brilliant detail. Despite technique mismatches, Titan A. E. is still a nice piece of visual candy.
When it comes to the audio elements, two words can describe Titan A. E.: loud and raucous. Although there are no Disney-style songs, the film features a few hard rock numbers (although no one on screen actually sings) that come across as forced attempts to (a) heighten the movie's appeal to MTV-watchers and (b) sell a soundtrack. The many sounds in space prove that Bluth and Goldman are not interested in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 approach of technically accurate silence. The vocal characterizations are all effective, with high profile actors such as Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Pullman all sounding pleasantly anonymous - we don't immediately associate their voices with their real-life faces.
Animation, especially of the non-Disney variety, is gradually moving in a more adult direction. This trend was evident in The Road to El Dorado, where we saw animated naked buttocks (something also shown briefly here) and were presented with none-too-subtle sexual innuendo. Titan A. E. slides a little further down this slope, offering non-cute violence and blood. Such "innovations" may only be baby steps in the direction of Heavy Metal and countless Japanese features, but the payoff is evident: more challenging stories with interesting characters. In a year that has already seen the failure of several big-budget science fiction movies (Supernova, Battlefield Earth), Titan A. E. could end up being the space epic to reckon with.
© 2000 James Berardinelli