The Titan

Just watched Titan and wow, it made me angry. I rarely write movie reviews, but this one moved me to action. Since Netflix no longer allows reviews on its site, here's my first IMDB review.

This crappy script is a waste of excellent acting talent and awesome special effects.

Kudos to the actors who did the best they could with an uneven script, faux-science, WTF scenes and progressively more stilted dialogue.

The movie isn't bad for the first 45 minutes. I had figured out it wasn't going to have a satisfying ending by that point, but I wanted to see how they'd spin it, so I kept going. The faux-science was fun to eye-roll over.

But then our hero soldiers finally go through the full metamorphosis (after a "what? why did they need surgery?" scene) and are unable to talk, change facial expressions, write, or in any other way communicate except by "sonar and touch".

And from that point, the script went completely into a FTW-WERE-YOU-THINKING tailspin. So many stupid actions in such a short time can make a movie-watcher dizzy.

The coup-de-grace was the final 18 minutes. It's like the producers said, "Let's just do a few disassociated scenes. No one is watching anymore, anyway." I lost track of how many times I said, "Wait, what?" So many times.

Netflix, fess up. Is this steaming pile of a movie, and your other original programming, the reason you no longer allow reviews? If you can't handle poor reviews, improve your quality management. Now you've forced people to find other public forums to air their opinions. That probably means fewer positive reviews (because why go to the effort when we liked the movie?), more negative reviews (because we want to warn people away from bad ones) and lower ratings (because we're mad about having to click to another site to leave the review).

*Spoiler alert*

Actually, there isn't really much to spoil. This egg that netflix has lain, was spoiled from the get go. Derivative to the point of provoking fast forward, and this is coming from a long time sci-fi buff that's seen it all; Even I was bored enough to wish I was watching the other Titan. You remember....Titan AE, the cartoon? The casting of the action veteran, Sam Worthington, though not a bad choice for nearly any other movie, provided more of a distraction here, than attraction, given the voluminous invitations for comparison to his role in Avatar.

Speaking of comparison, and there are many valid ones that one may make, I found the episode: "Afterlife", from the Outer Limits Series, in which an ex soldier is given the choice of execution, or participating in an Alien DNA mutation experiment, to be more inspired and engaging.

There just isn't much here, and what there is, simply mashes all the wrong buttons. Including the 'eject' button. On a scale of 1 to...would you rather see it again, or go wingsuiting without a wingsuit....

I give it a solid 4 out of 10.

Not sure why this is getting a '1' from some reviewers... It can't be as god-awful as some films that truly deserve a very poor rating. Sure, it's no Godfather, but it has some merit. I'm thinking the worst '1' reviews may be from 15 year-olds expecting perhaps a lot of action (which this does not), or a lot of Sci-Fi CGI effects (some, but not a lot..).

At best, it's a reasonably entertaining view on what it would be like if we had to make plans to eventually leave the planet. There's some nice, slick futuristic settings as well. At worst, there's little 'action' or 'space action' and the like, as it all takes place on earth (mostly). This is high praise from me, as I love a good 'space' & 'space travel' Sci-Fi flick!

It definitely doesn't deserve a '1' (or a '3' or '4' for that matter) in my opinion. They make a decent effort at plot - though to be sure, there are a few spots where you have to suspend disbelief... The sets look authentic and look realistic & have a great look & good production value.

It's no 'Gataca' or 'Blade Runner' by any stretch, but it was reasonably entertaining & held my interest enough to watch it through.

So yes, many of its story elements have been done to death. Our Earth is no longer inhabitable because of a nuclear war, we look to the stars for a new planet to settle and make a new world, experimenting and genetically modifying humans to make a super-human, only to have it go wrong. But even though its been done to death, it wasn't necessarily bad, I found it to be very averagely done and honestly could have been and often has been done much worse. So while I wasn't enthralled by the story, it also wasn't a mess like many other films that use the same plot points, the story points were relatively well presented and I can only really describe it as average. Pretty much what you saw in the trailer is what this film is all about, not many alterations on the basic plot points.

Everything else was admittedly average but not bad. I like the cinematography, which I found to be the best part of the film, the camera use and the color scheme were at least visually pleasing. The acting was also very average, though the film has many good actors, their performances were not their best, but also couldn't be considered their worst, as I said, very average. The writing wasn't anything to be amazed about, dialog wasn't very engaging but that might be because I've seen many movies that have the same plot points as I mentioned above. So all in all a very average film, didn't find it bad even though the many plot points have been done to death. I would only really recommend this film if you have nothing better to watch.

Training people to live on an uninhabitable planet because the earth is becoming... UNINHABITABLE. Say that again slowly. Why does he have to go to Titan? Why can't they just train his body to survive the new harsh weather on earth? I don't have a problem with the acting and special effects, I just feel like the story was not well thought out.