# Titan A.E. (2000)

### reviewed by
Mark R. Leeper

                                 TITAN A.E.
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper

                   Capsule: By rights this film should become
              a milestone.  TITAN A.E.  recreates much of the
              feeling of awe I had when the first STAR WARS
              film was released.  This is a space opera writ
              large.  In the 31st century aliens have
              destroyed Earth.  Humans and aliens race to find
              the spaceship Titan which holds the key to the
              survival of the human race.  That kind of plot
              can be a lot of fun if done well.  TITAN A.E.
              does it well.  Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to
              +4)

The year I got frustrated with animation was 1973. That was the year that two events coincided. One was the release of the French film FANTASTIC PLANET. The other was NBC running an animated Star Trek series in its Saturday morning line-up. The former had some fascinating images of strange animals and plants in an imagined world, but the script was obscure, static, and emotionally cold. Ultimately it was very disappointing. At the same time the animated STAR TREK TV series used limited animation and even more limited imagination in the artwork. As I told friends that in animation you have to put up 24 frames a second, but it is not like live action. You have complete freedom as to what you put in those frames. Somebody somewhere was making the decision that the images in those frames would be unimaginative and boring, that the alien world where Kirk was standing would be represented by a horizontal line at the bottom of the screen. Even with an example like FANTASTIC PLANET to show what could be done to show some imagination, nobody did.

When Japanese anime came along I thought that film was finally starting to use the potential of animated film. And it was a step closer to what I was looking for but in spite of its many advocates, I think anime cinema has turned into a colossal disappointment. The films are full of under-developed characters and over-extended chases and fights. If you do not care about the characters, you do not care who wins the fights. That brings seeing the film down to the level of watching professional wrestling. And in spite of claims to the contrary Japanese animation is not good. Generally in anime that animation is crude and jerky. What people are responding to is the occasional quality of the artwork.

TITAN A.E. much closer to what I had in mind. The is solid space opera in the classic tradition of writers like Gordon Dickson and Alan Dean Foster. In addition the animation is good and the artwork extremely imaginative. With the artwork, the humor, and the animation, there are no dead spots in the film. This is a film that you turn away from at your own risk. Do not go out for popcorn.

In the early days of the 31st century a discovery is made that could change the future for everybody on the planet Earth. Whatever that discovery was (and we never find out precisely) it threatens an alien race called the Drej. The Drej respond to the threat by destroying Earth in 3028 A.D. Only handfuls of people make it off the planet before it is destroyed. Scientist Sam Tucker arranges for his five-year-old son Cale to be taken to safety and then pilots the huge spherical starship Titan into space just in time to escape the dying Earth. Fifteen years later Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) is a piece of space flotsam. He is working in an interplanetary space dump with the dregs of several alien races. The shadowy human Korso (Bill Pullman) tags Cale for a mysterious mission to go and find the Titan.

So far it seems like a space opera primarily aimed at a teen audience. That is exactly what it remains, but then so was STAR WARS. The point is that it is space opera well done. The screenwriters are an eclectic bunch with Ben Edlund creator of the satire "The Tick," John August who wrote the surprisingly Generation X film GO, and Joss Whedon creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Three screenwriters is generally a bad sign, but three so different talents can make for synergy and one very rich screenplay. Here they have written a screenplay that has some depth. It has unexpected twists (August's forte), some good humor (likely from Edlund), and a good deal of fantasy imagination (which may have come from Whedon). They have bound in strong mythic elements (the quest, the son avenging the father) that, though familiar, should resonate with the audience. The film does owe a debt to anime, but the characters are much more developed and three-dimensional.

Where the writing has weaknesses it is in an emotionally weak ending which also rather stretches the credulity. There are loose ends left unresolved, an over-emphasis on fighting, and the Drej make a very flat and uninteresting villain. The other questionable command decision is to use a raft of name actors for voices where they are not needed. There are so many good but barely-known actors they could have used. And speaking for myself only, I come to a film like this not even knowing whose voices I will be hearing. I would rather not even recognize the voice and be saddled with connections to the actors' roles in other films.

Speaking of what is flat and what is three-dimensional, the animation is an uneasy mixture of the two. Most of the character animation is flat, but the hardware uses three-dimensional animation techniques. This occasionally means you have a flat face in a three-dimensional space suit. But more important than how it is animated is what is being animated. Perhaps George Lucas has finally been beaten in creating worlds and scenery rich in imagination. Even the artwork is full of novel ideas in the center stage and in the details. And making these spacescapes seem real may well be the best use to date of 3D animation techniques.

TITAN A.E. was produced and directed by the team of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, graduates of Disney animation studios. The two left because they saw different potentials for animation than did Disney's other people. They missed out on what is probably Disney's golden age of animation and frequently their films, while some were quite decent, seemed a step or two behind Disney Studios. Films like AN AMERICAN TAIL and THE LAND BEFORE TIME seemed to be only Disney-esque. The real creativity was from places like Disney's Pixar in the TOY STORY films and in film's like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE LION KING, and this season's DINOSAUR. And for animation technique, perhaps they are still a step behind. But in TITAN A.E. Bluth and Goldman have given us much more imaginative images and probably a better story. In a season when in short order we have DINOSAUR, TITAN A.E., CHICKEN RUN, and FANTASIA 2000 released, Bluth and Goldman have given us what may well deserve to be the STAR WARS of animated films.

TITAN A.E. is a film of images and imagination, perhaps the best space opera to come to the screen since the original STAR WARS. Weighing heavily the novelty of this film I give it a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. I am hoping this film is a bellwether of things to come.

                                            Mark R. Leeper
                                            mleeper@lucent.com
                                            Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper

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