Laramie Movie Scope: Titan A.E.

An animated feature in the Star Wars tradition

by Robert Roten, Film Critic [Strip of film rule]

June 18, 2000 -- "Titan A.E." is grand storytelling in the tradition of "Star Wars," where a small band of heroes save mankind from evil aliens, a boy becomes a man and is reunited with his father, in a way.

This animated feature from Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (the two former Disney guys who teamed up for a series of features, including "The Secret of NIMH" and "American Tail," is kind of a tweener. It's halfway between an adult movie and a kids movie. It has drama and romance like an adult movie and adventure and cute sidekicks like a kids movie and rock and roll music for the teens. It is really suitable for all audiences.

The plot borrows heavily from "Star Wars." Earth is destroyed by a hostile race of aliens known as the Drej. The Drej and their ships look like a kind of electric blue jelly; they are made of energy, not matter as we know it. Young Cale Tucker (voice by Matt Damon) is one of the last humans to escape earth before the Drej destroy it. His father, Sam, leaves Cale with friends while he blasts off in the top-secret Titan spacecraft. He gives Cale a ring and tells him as long as he wears it, there will always be hope.

The story moves ahead years and we find Cale working on a salvage operation. He is bitter because he believes his father abandoned him. He is recruited to join the crew of one of the last operational earth-built cruisers, the Valkyrie, by its captain, Korso (voice by Bill Pullman). Korso tells him that Cale has the secret of where to find the Titan and that the Titan is vital to the future of mankind.

Cale refuses to believe that mankind has any future. A few rag tag colonies of humans drift in space, living in the welded-together hulls of their escape ships. From one of the colonies, the Houston, came the lovely Akima (voice by Drew Barrymore) a pilot aboard the Valkyrie. Cale is persuaded to board the Valkyrie only after being chased there by Drej assassins. There he meets the rest of the colorful crew, Gune (John Leguizamo), the odd little navigator, Stith, the gunner, a kangaroo-like Mantrin (voice by Janeane Garofalo) and the first mate, Preed, an oily Akrennian (voice by Nathan Lane). As in the Star Wars universe, there are many species working together.

Cale and Akima fall in love as the crew go through a number of interesting adventures trying to find the Titan. It turns out they have a lot more than the Drej to worry about as they travel across the galaxy looking for the lost ship and its secret. It may not be an original story (there are also some elements borrowed from "Star Trek II"), but it is a good solid adventure yarn.

The animation is very good in this film. There are some chases, similar to the "Star Wars" chase through an asteroid belt. These sequences give the viewer a roller-coaster feeling of being on the ships as they maneuver through impossible mazes of obstacles. In one stunning sequence, the ship darts and weaves its way through swirling clouds of gas, accompanied by "wake angels," glowing manta ray-like creatures who ride the wake of a spacecraft like dolphins ride the bow wave of a ship.

"Titan A.E." is a significant achievement in animation. It utilizes state-of-the-art computer 3-D animation animation along with the old-fashioned hand-drawn stuff. All the characters, except for the Drej, are hand-drawn, two-dimensional characters, but much of the rest of the film is computer animated 3-D stuff. The destruction of the earth, for instance, is a highly-complex sequence of computer 3-D animations. The Drej energy weapon causes the earth to rotate faster and faster until it flies apart. But get this, it splits right along the earth's fault lines. Talk about doing your homework! A piece of it hits the moon and destroys it. Other pieces wipe out spaceships. The only trouble is, the hand-drawn two-dimensional characters look out of place in this three-dimensional computer-generated universe. They don't quite fit in.

Another unusual thing about this film is the soundtrack. It is all pop music by bands named Lit, Powerman 5000, Electrasy, Wailing Souls Bliss, Jamiroqual, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Splashdown, The Urge, Luscious Jackson and Texas. The music was selected to go with the various scenes and it actually seems to fit pretty well. I've seen this done before and it usually doesn't work this well. This film rates a B+.

Click here for links to places to buy this movie in video and/or DVD format, the soundtrack, books, even used videos, games and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

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Robert Roten can be reached via e-mail at .

(If you e-mail me with a question about this or any other movie or review, please mention the name of the movie you are asking the question about, otherwise I may have no way of knowing which film you are referring to)