R E V I E W S
Titan A.E. (2000)
Voices: Matt
Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane, Tone Loc Studio: 20th Century Fox Review Posted: 6.22.00 Rating: 6/10
By Stephen.
"No distance left to run"
The worst thing about my experience with this particular movie was that it played in the smallest theater - tight seats and really small. Not a great place to see a movie like this. I missed the first 2 minutes as I had to get my friend who was playing games outside the theater. Back to the movie, Titan A.E. has a lot of hype among moviegoers already. All my friends want to see this movie and I told them, "Well, I asked you if you want to see it a little earlier but you didn't want to come along." The trailer showcases a lot of great FX shots, mostly all the action, which there is plenty of in Titan A.E.
Earth is under attack by the alien race called the Dredge. The people are forced to abandon their houses, separate from their loved ones, and leave in spaceships. One of these people is Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) and his father (voiced by Ron Perlman?). Cale's father is with the army and so is forced to stay behind, while Cale takes off into space with the last spaceship. Many years later, Cale works as an asteroid cutter in the salvage station Tau-14 for another, but friendly, alien race. He's an outsider at the facility as he's among just a couple of other humans there.
When a spaceship arrives at the facility, Cale takes an interest in Akima (voiced by Drew Barrymore), the ship's female pilot. With Akima is Korso (voiced by Pill Pullman). Their goal is to find Cale and protect him from the Drej, whose goal is to kill Cale. Once the Drej take over the facility, Cale escapes with Korso's help. This escape from the facility was the first major action sequence and it looked great.
On the run, Akima makes Cale aware of the map he was given by his father which will lead him to the Titan, a starship which contains the last survivors of the planet, and can lead them to a new Earth. However, the Dredge are in hot pursuit, and want Cale dead. BEGIN SPOILER. At one point, the Dredge capture Cale (and Akima) but he's able to escape. END SPOILER. And the rest of the movie goes from there.
I don't really consider myself a big fan of anime but Titan A.E. is as good as animation gets. Titan A.E. was called Planet Ice while in production, but I think Fox made a good decision to go with A.E. meaning After Earth, naturally. It's going to give Pokemon 2000 some competition, if not great competition. This definitely is Fox Animation Studio's best work yet. Directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman did a great job with special effects provided by Industrial Light & Magic.
The supporting characters in this movie were either good or bad. The Gune (voiced by John Leguizamo) was both. He's Titan A.E.'s answer to Jar Jar Binks. And he got pretty damn annoying sometimes, but he was also a funny character. Korso's buddy Preed (voiced by Nathan Lane), a tall alien of some sort, was mainly there to, well, be a smart ass and help out Korso and the crew. Toward the end, Titan A.E. becomes somewhat predictable as to what happens with two of the characters.
I'm not going to spoil the twist for you, but let me tell you that it's not too shocking, maybe just a little mean-spirited. During the last half hour of the movie, Cale and Akima find themselves in a village inhabited by other humans (I think they were refugees as well). They're on their own to find the Titan spaceship, which Cale's father safely hid. With the help of the villagers, Cale and Akima are able to take off into space and continue their search for the Titan.
The major plot is actually pretty good (quite original actually), the action is very much exciting and the execution of the film's visuals is very good. However, the middle segment of the film seemed to drag too long to get to the climax. Come to think of it, most of the dialogue was pretty contrived and too technical. It could've been more conversational, but it chose to go with cheese.
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