Titan:AE could actually stand for Titan: Almost Excellent…but not quite. Titan:AE is the animated science fiction outing by Don Bluth, the man behind The Land Beyond Time and Anastatia amongst other excellent animated movies. Titan: AE actually stands for Titan: After Earth since a race of glowing energy aliens completely destroys the Earth at the beginning of the film. Titan:AE’s hero, Cale, is the son of a scientist who developed a mammoth space vessel called Titan which is the only hope of reuniting the humans that escaped Earth’s destruction and have become scattered, gypsy like, throughout the galaxy. Cale’s genetic code makes him the only person left alive who can activate a map as to where Titan was hidden from the evil aliens. Once this map is activated it becomes a race between Cale and his comrades to find and save Titan and the evil aliens who wish to destroy it.
The visuals in Titan:AE are absolutely out of this world and are as good, if not better, then anything Bluth has previously done before. From the hydrogen trees on one world to the moon sized ice crystals surrounding another there is a constant visual stream of things to go “Wow!” over. From a visual point of view Titan:AE’s only weakness is that all of the aliens in this film are obviously based on Earth animals, kangaroos, moles, etc., and as a result are just a little too cutesy. This is a small weakness though and nowhere else do the visuals in this film disappoint.
Sadly though this can’t be said for the story which is wildly uneven in quality. At points Titan:AE is good enough to make George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, jealous. Especially after Star Wars: The Phantom Empire. There are plot twists and the occasional bit of dialogue in Titan:AE that will come as a pleasant surprise to even the adult viewers in the audience let alone the younger set. But in other places the film becomes simply derivative of the Star Wars series even going so far at one point as to actually steal a line of dialogue, “Would it help if I got out an pushed?” from The Empire Strikes Back. Then, sad to say, the film will suddenly veer off into a piece of writing that’s so atrocious it would shame all but the worst Saturday morning cartoons. It’s possible that had they made the film a bit longer; not a lot, but some, that they could have dealt with some of these problems, but instead they chose to leave plot holes standing that you could pull a hydrogen tree through.
Another weakness to the film is that while the alien good guys speak flawless English the alien bad guys speak a distorted language for which the film provides sub-titles. Sub-titles? In an animated film that small children, many of whom are too young yet to read easily, if at all, will be attending? Whose bright idea was that? Because of this I found myself having to explain much of what was happening to my five and four year olds which was distracting for both myself and them.
Still, Titan:AE is a good movie for kids and, with reservations, for adults who enjoy animation and/or science fiction. It’s not a giant of a film, but it’s head and shoulders over the majority of animated movies.
Average Grade: B+
