Titan A.E.

The storyline of TITAN A.E. follows standard mythical canon: unlikely youthful hero from the boondocks is forced to follow his destiny and struggle against overwhelming odds to save his people. No surprises there, to be sure, but God is in the details, and the details is where this film excels. I can't say enough good about the animation and visual artistry--it's the best ever. Hopefully this will raise the bar for animated feature films. After forty-odd years, I have had enough of the formulaic Disney approach.

I would also give TITAN A.E. high marks for acting and for the musical selections in the soundtrack. This film should make a great addition to any enthusiast's DVD library.

I agree that the plot is rather holey, but I was so busy enjoying the film that I didn't notice at the time.

It's 3028 A.D. Earth is attacked by the Drej, aliens of pure energy. Hundreds of ships manage to escape before the earth is destroyed. Cale is separated from his father Professor Sam Tucker who saves the spaceship Titan. Sam gives him a ring which is a map to find Titan. Tucker was the lead researcher on Project Titan which is feared by the Drej. 15 years later, Cale is working on a salvage station with other aliens. Humanity is reduced to lower class citizens. Joseph Korso, captain of the Valkyrie, finds Cale and his ring to search for Titan, humanity's last hope.

The blend of traditional hand drawn animation and CGI works well mostly. The best is the ice crystal world. The hide-and-seek game inside the crystal is both exhilarating and visionary. In general, the story is a little too simplistic with questionable plot lines. Why would the father give the key to the ship to his son? Why couldn't the father do what the son ended up doing? If the father figure out how to build Titan, couldn't he build simple weapons against the Drej? Wouldn't it be simpler to build contraptions that sucks up Drej energy? The whole quest seems manufactured. The simple story has some rip-roaring fun. The characters are interesting. The evil aliens are formidable. The animation is interesting. I don't like the use of rock music. Overall it's a fun ride but not that compelling.

Titan A. E. was a tragic victim of 'studio sidelining' where a film is shafted in favour of a bigger and 'more viable' product; in this case, it seemed Fox was focusing its efforts on X-Men in getting adequate promos and licensing deals to make that movie soar at the box office. Titan A. E. was sporadically promoted besides the occasional tv spot, but the tie-in campaign proved very moot compared to tentpole Disney films at the time.

Titan A. E. also has the distinction of being Don Bluth's latest feature film, as his in-development Dragon's Lair film still hasn't been released. It sucks, because Don always had a knack for blending pathos in with slapstick comedy that few animators dared to balance as well as he did (with the likes of Secret of Nimh, American Tail, Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven); and it would have been nice seeing that trend continue into the 2000s and beyond. Sadly, it hasn't seen another film of his yet, and fans of Don Bluth are still waiting for Dragon's Lair to become a movie. Hopefully the day will come soon when Bluth graces the world with another of his feature films.

This movie was also a nice refreshing change of pace from all the musical animated films that were nigh-omniscient thanks to the Disney Renaissance still rubbing off on the competition. Science fiction has only gotten stronger representation in animation recently thanks to the Spider-Verse films, and films like them and Wall-E owe themselves to films like Titan A. E. and The Iron Giant daring to give audiences something different and high-concept escapism in a field dominated by Disney Princesses and talking animals.

2000s animation was something of a crazy and difficult time for theatrical toons; the technology evolved rapidly thanks to PIXAR's films and Dreamworks' Shrek, and traditional cel-animation still had a foothold on television when it was dying out at the movies. And Titan A. E. is a fascinating window into that time for the animation industry, where the demands of audiences were changing and becoming very complicated, and it seemed like a case of it being too ahead of its time (who knows how a film like this would have performed in the 2010s or 2020s in a post-Spider-Verse world?). Hindsight makes it impossible to know if a failure could have had a 'second chance' at success given the proper promotional material, or if it was always gonna play out the same way regardless.

7/10 IMDb points. 3.5/5 stars. Titan A. E. gives us a glance at a simpler time for animated cinema; and how sci-fi animation has continued to refine itself thanks to the likes of it and others daring to defy Disney.

Filled with spectacular visions of other worlds, Titan A.E. brings us into the 31st century and into a whole new level of science fiction. The story is pretty simple, a race called the Drej feel the human race is a threat so they decide to destroy us. The only hope for the survival of the human species is a ship called the Titan. Only trouble is, no one knows where it is. The answer lays with Cale, the son of the inventor of Titan. Once Cale realizes what he's in for, we're off on an intergalactic roller coaster ride. We get chases in swamps filled with hydrogen trees and an imaginative hide and seek game in a field of ice crystals. Traditional hand drawn characters are blended in with amazing CGI renderings of planets, ships, and the vast emptiness of space with very good results. Sure there may be some clunker lines here and there but Titan A.E. gives fans of sci-fi what they want. Well worth the price of admission

This can be a true revolutionary of all the animated films with its real eye-stunning graphics, a very imaginative sci-fi setting, more realistic-looking characters, and plenty of real action and yes, even some blood-spilling violence.

After years of churning out shots of sparkly-starry fantasy like Rock-A-Doodle-Doo, We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, and Troll In The Central Park, Don Bluth's crew finally comes up with a very gritty, mature science fiction story all about humans being hunted down by the evil aliens who are out to destroy the planet Earth altogether. So a very brave young engineer grimly launched an enormous project that his little son was to carry on when he finally grew up. But it just wouldn't be a very easy path for the young hero to accomplish this great feat that would give a long ray of hope to all the innocent humans hiding out in the outer space. But with the help of a very spunky young female co-pilot, a group of bickering aliens, and a hardened space veteran, he just might...even with all those dread monsters hot on his very tail!

Beautifully made, this sweeping space odyssey really takes GIGANTIC steps to break from all the traditional aspects of an animated film to introduce mouth-droppingly MAGNIFICENT visions of the distant future as well as a more adult approach to storytelling and animation, so it may take awhile for the casual viewer to get used to it...and one day truly appreciate the great changes that is taking place in the whole animation industry.