ReviewWire Review of Titan A.E.

Titan A.E. (2000)

Another Fascinating 2000's Sci-fi Gem Simply Put Into the Wrong Hands

[6/10 · 23 September 2021]

Titan AE is certainly one of the most unique movies ever made. Despite being a "family" movie, it is quite a bit more dark and violent than most and would nowadays likely earn a PG-13 rating despite being animated. Instead of trying to appeal to a younger female audience like most Disney musicals it was distinguishing itself from, in the words of Don Bluth, it was made to appeal to teenage boys. And it certainly succeeds in that regard. Titan AE is imaginative, epic, and hits all of those "cool" notes that make young millennials like myself gush with late-nineties and early-2000's nostalgia. The soundtrack is grungy and moody (and mostly pretty good, particularly "Cosmic Castaway"), reflected by the attitude of the flat protagonist who feels like a Pulp character with a nineties coat of paint applied over his toned and manly body. Taking place over a thousand years in the future, Titan AE vaguely explores what would happen if after the incredible utopia of Star Trek is ever achieved, humans were forced into a dystopia, cast adrift into space by a rival species afraid that we could surpass them. The premise is too incredible to just gab about, so I'll let the opening speak for itself. Unfortunately, like Disney's "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," Titan AE's greatest failure is not exploring its main premise deeply enough, in part thanks to the film's short runtime and nightmarish production history. It's easy to see why Titan AE was the flop that tragically closed the Fox Animation studio. While the animation is usually incredible aside from some painfully obvious hiccups and some CG that looks almost as bad as the crowd effects in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the film is so plot driven that we don't really get to know any of the characters. Events happen in a way that make it clear how hard it was to compress such a large story into a short 90-minute movie, resulting in plot holes and character inconsistencies that are hard to ignore to just enjoy the movie. But in between all of that, we get to visit some amazingly exotic planets and see some of the most creative alien designs ever put to screen. Like another one of the three animated sci-fi epics of the early 2000's (Titan, Atlantis, and Treasure Planet) Titan AE's core problem is that there isn't enough screen time to properly explore so many characters or ideas presented, resulting in a cluttered but still enjoyable mess that is carried more by its production values and potential for a new direction for animated films that sadly never caught on--mostly because these films miss so many marks, and CG films were already dominant by this point. Titan AE is a cool, refreshing animated twist with something of a sour taste; but once the viewer gets used to it, it goes down smoothly and becomes an enjoyable thrill-ride that one can watch again and again to stimulate the imagination and dream of what it could have been. Oh, and we get to see Akima from the back after she gets out of the shower. Western animation really was upping its waifu game to rival Japan in those days, wasn't it? ;-3.