Image courtesy of amazon.com
Hello, everyone. Around this time last year, I covered a childhood favorite of mine with Tarzan for its 20th Anniversary. In my previous review, I covered another one, Dinosaur, for the same reason.
The subject of this review is slightly different from those. It, too, is an animated movie, but rather than being animated in one format or another (be it hand-drawn like Tarzan was, or CGI like Dinosaur was), it’s a mix of both. Whereas Dinosaur was a combination of both live-action environments and CGI characters to inhabit them (thus giving it a photorealistic feel), this is a combination of mostly CGI animation with the main characters and a few environments being hand-drawn.
There is one other huge similarity, though, particularly with Dinosaur: It deserves way more attention than it initially received. While I do maintain that those two movies should be held in much higher regard than they are (although Tarzan kind of is, but not by much), something I maintain even more is that the subject of this review is one of three animated sci-fi movies by Disney* that are criminally underrated. Coincidentally, they all came out just one year apart, too.
Speaking of coincidence, this movie also focuses on survivors trying to find a new home. Instead of an area, it’s an entire planet.
Folks, for this one, we’re going into the future, where Earth is taken away by a threat that almost demolishes our entire society along with it... and no, it’s not the coronavirus.
As one of the taglines stated, “After Earth ends… the adventure begins.” Now, so does my review of Titan A.E., brought to us by animation icons Don Bluth and Gary Goldman.
The story begins in the year 3028, where the human race has perfected deep space travel and encountered a variety of different aliens. One species composed of pure energy, known as the Drej, discovers our latest creation called “Project Titan,” which is actually a spacecraft. They then begin attacking Earth.
However, Professor Sam Tucker, the head of the research team, is able to say goodbye to his son, Cale, before boarding the ship and making the jump to hyperspace. Meanwhile, Cale is on a separate ship.
As humanity is evacuating, the mothership reaches Earth and with just one energy blast, the Drej not only completely obliterate Earth, but also the Moon.
15 years later, Cale, now a salvage worker, is found by Joseph Korso, captain of a ship known as the Valkyrie and an old friend of his father’s. Korso informs Cale that Sam encoded a map to the Titan into his ring before handing it down to him.
The fate of humanity depends on the ship being found, as it might just hold the key to a new home.
What Worked: I’ll start with the voice acting here, like I did with Dinosaur. Whereas that one didn’t really have any big names in it, this one does, with at least one A-lister, and he’s playing the hero, appropriately enough.
Cale is voiced by Matt Damon, who by this time had established himself as an actor with Good Will Hunting** and Saving Private Ryan, and would go on to have many more high-profile projects, such as the Ocean’s Trilogy, the Bourne franchise, The Martian, and most recently Ford v Ferrari.
With his performance in this, he brings his own natural likable personality to Cale, making you sympathize with him as a character in addition to his motivation. You see this in The Martian as well, where he gives one of his best performances in recent years.
Another actor who is no stranger to sci-fi is Bill Pullman, who gave one of the best movie speeches ever as one of the best movie Presidents ever in Independence Day, as well as play Lone Starr (the parody of Han Solo) in one of his first movies: Spaceballs.
Even though you don’t get an awesome speech from him here, he still plays the authority figure very well, as evidenced by Independence Day. However, you can also tell Korso doesn’t have the best intentions. He’s not so much a villain, although at points you do feel like he is.
Going back to Bill Pullman’s performance, how he and Matt Damon convey their characters’ moral conflict actually feels genuine.
Then we have the crew of the Valkyrie. The biggest name of the bunch is perhaps Drew Barrymore, who voices Akima Kunimoto, the pilot who also comes to be Cale’s love interest over the course of the movie. This would be one of two great female characters she would play that year, as the movie she did right after this featured another.
She also plays off of Matt Damon really well, because they do have legitimate chemistry with each other.
Speaking of chemistry, the next recognizable talent in this plays Gune, the chief scientist, and that is John Leguizamo. You may be more familiar with him from voicing Sid in the Ice Age franchise, or even more recent work like John Wick. For a lesser known role, he’s still really good here. In fact, one of the best scenes actually involves him, which is in the finale. Be on the lookout for it. I’ll just say this: It has a very subtle, but clever, setup courtesy of solid writing, which I will get to in a moment.
The next one is the voice of Korso’s first mate, Preed, which is a slightly darker, but still relatively comedic, role than a more iconic character he voiced prior. That would be Nathan Lane, who you may instantly recognize as the voice of Timon in the original version of The Lion King. He still has that level of comedic timing here, and several humorous moments in this come from him.
Then we have Janeane Garofalo as Stith, the munitions officer. This wouldn’t be the last time she’d venture into animation, as she would go on to voice Colette, the female chef, in Ratatouille.
The last relatively well-known actor in the movie is also very prolific as a voice actor, and that is Ron Perlman as Sam. He has a great scene in the beginning of the movie, which is the one where he says goodbye to a 5-year-old Cale***.
It’s not just the cast that’s solid. As hinted at earlier, it’s the script. It has three writers, all of whom went on to have greater success. Although he’s second-billed, I’ll start with John August, who right after this, would go on to co-write two surprisingly good action movies, also starring Drew Barrymore. His most recent project was co-writing Aladdin with director Guy Ritchie, which ended up being another huge surprise for me.
The other two writers would collaborate on a sci-fi series which was short-lived, but went on to achieve cult status, called Firefly. The first writer credited is Ben Edlund, who was the producer on the show, and then the biggest name credited as a writer would go on to create it… Joss Whedon, who then went on to direct Serenity, the movie that followed the series. Of course, he would also direct The Avengers and its first sequel, Age of Ultron (both of which I have reviewed).
In hearing some of the dialogue, it does sound like something that would come from them, an example being the scene with Gune mentioned previously.
The two biggest things that stand out here are the same ones I said stood out with Dinosaur: The animation and the music.
The animation style is stunning here, especially in a scene in a ring of ice. It’s one of the two most visually impressive scenes in the movie. The hand-drawn animation holds up really well, and you can tell it’s in the style of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman if you’ve seen any of their previous work. Examples such as The Secret of NIMH, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Anastasia (the latter of which they did before this) come to mind. Of course, there’s also An American Tail and especially The Land Before Time. The animation for some of the characters, like Preed, is fantastic. It feels like something out of those movies.
Some other highlights with the hand-drawn animation include other environments, like a scene on Sesharrim, home of a bat-like species called the Gaoul. This includes another great action scene involving a chase through a forest of hydrogen trees. It’s also intense, because they have to avoid touching the trees, as they explode if you do.
The CGI animation is pretty solid, too, for the most part.
The other visually impressive scene is not long before the ice ring scene. It involves creatures dubbed “space angels,” set to The Urge’s “It’s My Turn to Fly.” It’s another great scene because the creatures themselves look excellent, and the song, in addition to fitting the scene, is quite good.
The music itself as a whole is really good, especially the score from Graeme Revell. Having heard it in the movie while watching it again after so long, I found this to be a pretty underrated score from him.
As for the soundtrack, while it could have used some bigger names on it, it’s not bad. It does have some groups who might be familiar. One of them is the band Lit; you might not know the name, but maybe you know the song “My Own Worst Enemy.” They have a song on here.
The biggest name on the soundtrack is Powerman 5000, who have had their songs featured in a lot of movies and video games, and still perform to this day. In fact, a fair amount of the groups on the soundtrack are still performing. Some even have a new album coming this year, and Powerman 5000 is one of them.
What Didn’t Work: There are some plot points that are kind of predictable, and some CGI shots that may not look great now. However, that’s not to say they were so jarring they took me out of the movie; they didn’t, because everything else still held my attention.
There is one other thing, but it can be considered a slight nitpick on my part.
I haven’t really mentioned this before, so now’s the perfect time for me to establish it: Whenever I hear an awesome song in a trailer, I appreciate it even more when it’s used in the movie, so that way I can discover the song for myself upon seeing the title in the credits.
Having seen this movie for the first time since it initially came out, I can confirm that this does not do that, unfortunately. It’s especially sad because there were three songs they used in the marketing, one very prominently, so you’d think they’d use it in the movie... but they don’t. For those who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s like myself, you may have fond memories of the song “Higher” by Creed. They used this song a lot in promoting this, only to not use it in the movie or even at least put it on the soundtrack. The latter would have been understandable, because they can’t use every song on the soundtrack in the movie. In fact, sometimes a song they still want to use they have no choice but to put in the credits. The other two songs were used in a different trailer, but both in the same one. I actually first discovered one of them because of it being used there.
The first of the two is “We Are” by Vertical Horizon, and the second is “Leave You Far Behind” by Lunatic Calm, which would be used prominently in the marketing for Spider-Man, and was also on the soundtrack for The Matrix.
Although it would have been nice to have at least the first two songs featured on the soundtrack, I can understand why they chose to use them in the promotional material. However, as awesome as these songs are, they did not really fit the marketing all that well here. They used the first two to try to establish the plot, and the third for an action scene. That’s what they were trying to do, but here is the problem: the trailers they’re used in give off two somewhat conflicting tones. The one with “Higher” feels like it was trying to sell this as a sci-fi movie about exploration and trying to find a new home, though it does have that to a degree. The one with “We Are” and “Leave You Far Behind,” on the other hand, feels like it was trying to sell this as a sci-fi action/adventure movie, which it also kind of is.
In some cases, they also used the trailer voiceover that was common around that time in addition to the music. The only thing that really succeeded at was making the conflicting tones that much more obvious.
In other words, it felt like the marketing team was not properly guided on how to promote this movie. It even applies to merchandise, too, because there was hardly any aside from novels and comics, and would have included a tie-in video game that was ultimately cancelled. It shows in how catastrophically this movie bombed, and it’s really unfortunate, considering how surprisingly good the movie itself is and how much it actually holds up.
It just goes to show that marketing and merchandise, like a movie’s runtime, are more essential to proper execution than one may realize, and should be commended when done right, because the final product ends up benefiting greatly from it. Sadly, this is a case study for “How NOT to Market a Movie,” or “Marketing a Good Movie Gone Wrong.”
Overall: Titan A.E. is one of those movies that flew under the radar, but didn’t deserve to. All these years later, it’s still criminally overlooked. It’s better than it’s given credit for, which is evident in the talent behind it. From a cast led by an A-lister like Matt Damon and a script co-written by Joss Whedon, to an impressive blend of hand-drawn animation and CGI animation from legends of the genre and very good music, this is something that should have a following. How and/or why it doesn’t, I have no idea.
If you’re a fan of sci-fi, action, animation, or even any of the particular talent involved, this should be right up your alley. For example, Joss Whedon alone has a fanbase of his own, particularly for his work in TV, like the aforementioned Firefly.
For anyone interested in checking this out that missed out on it the first time, it is worth a look. While it is a case of not being sold properly, it’s also a case of “Don’t Judge a Movie By Its Trailer.” There have been, and continue to be, movies that had marketing which was subpar at best and flat-out terrible at worst, but then they ended up being really good, and this one is no different. It’s one of the main reasons why the movie came and went upon release, and as a result, a main reason for it becoming so underrated, hence why it felt important to mention it. Had it played out differently, whether it did well or still bombed, it might have garnered more attention, perhaps enough to gain a following.
*This one was originally Fox, but now technically Disney owns it, too, ever since they bought them.
**For which he, along with co-star Ben Affleck, would win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
***Fun Fact: Young Cale is voiced by Alex D. Linz, who also voiced Young Tarzan.