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Titan A.E. was supposed to be a groundbreaking integration of digital and traditional animation from the true heir to the throne of Disney, Don Bluth.
Except by the time Titan A.E. was released in 2000, Disney and various Japanese studios had been experimenting for a decade with mixing traditional and computerized animation, and Saturday morning had at least three fully CGI cartoons, with a handful more that toyed with computerized elements. To add insult to injury, Bluth's integration was poor, both on its own and in comparison: fingers didn't hold objects, characters stepped into doors instead of through them, and so forth. When we first see the rotoscoping--classic rotoscoping, so blatant and clumsy it immediately brings to mind 1978's Lord of the Rings or 1981's Heavy Metal--it becomes painfully clear that this is "Don Bluth Does Digital!", a desperate attempt to stay relevant by a man clinging to the days when he was a contender.
But the problems go far deeper than style, to a serious lack of focus and commitment in the story itself.
Both the loss of Earth and the loss of the protagonist's father are rushed through so quickly that I don't even need to hide that with spoiler warnings. We're not emotionally invested in either the big picture loss or the protagonist's loss because it's over by the time the title appears, reduced to mere backstory: here's why they're in space, hey did you notice that ring? Where the movie really begins, Cale's fatherlessness and the loss of Earth are just how things are. Depending on the story, that could work just fine.
Unfortunately, the story the filmmakers want to tell requires us to feel sorrow forEarth That Was the lost home planet and father, the longing to belong somewhere, and the urgency to find Titan, and they never step in and give us a reason to feel any of that. We enter a world already made, with characters pretty much used to it, and it's hard to care. It's hard to believe the characters care, either. They seem more heavily invested in cynicism, sarcasm, and general postmodern asshattery than in their search and the story. The characterization is all over the place, at times so blatantly derivative that it feels like the whiniest Star Wars or Firefly fan-film ever, even though it predates the latter by two years.
That's partly because Firefly creator Joss Whedon was a screenwriter on this. Watch the film knowing this, and it becomes a wonderful example of how to completely fail to pull off anything Whedon. Titan A.E.'s complete lack of motivation for its characters? In Firefly, that comes across as depth and moral ambiguity. Whedon's trademark quirky rapid-fire dialogue became famous in Buffy*, to the point that it's something of a watershed program, but in Titan A.E., the dull delivery instead gives the impression filmmakers just couldn't decide whether a moment was meant to be dramatic or humorous. It's like Monty Python as recreated by a Bible study group, or worse, the pilot for the American version of Red Dwarf. They've got the script, they've got the plot, but they have no idea.
In the end, the problems transcend all of that: the movie just can't decide what it wants to be or who it's for. Where better storytelling and production might have pulled off an 'everything to everyone' open-ended approach, Titan A.E. doesn't have it: it is the film equivalent of that guy who thinks trying hard and giving a shit makes him look uncool, so he half-asses it and pretends that makes him hip. Yes, as a film, it's a douchebag.
But consider all of that and ponder with me this notion: should Titan A.E. be remembered not as a tired wannabe work by a former animation titan, but as a very, very awkward dress rehearsal for Firefly?
* Though you can catch hints of it earlier in Roseanne, where he also arguably laid the groundwork for Darlene's evolution from basic tomboy to realistic teenager.
Except by the time Titan A.E. was released in 2000, Disney and various Japanese studios had been experimenting for a decade with mixing traditional and computerized animation, and Saturday morning had at least three fully CGI cartoons, with a handful more that toyed with computerized elements. To add insult to injury, Bluth's integration was poor, both on its own and in comparison: fingers didn't hold objects, characters stepped into doors instead of through them, and so forth. When we first see the rotoscoping--classic rotoscoping, so blatant and clumsy it immediately brings to mind 1978's Lord of the Rings or 1981's Heavy Metal--it becomes painfully clear that this is "Don Bluth Does Digital!", a desperate attempt to stay relevant by a man clinging to the days when he was a contender.
But the problems go far deeper than style, to a serious lack of focus and commitment in the story itself.
Both the loss of Earth and the loss of the protagonist's father are rushed through so quickly that I don't even need to hide that with spoiler warnings. We're not emotionally invested in either the big picture loss or the protagonist's loss because it's over by the time the title appears, reduced to mere backstory: here's why they're in space, hey did you notice that ring? Where the movie really begins, Cale's fatherlessness and the loss of Earth are just how things are. Depending on the story, that could work just fine.
Unfortunately, the story the filmmakers want to tell requires us to feel sorrow for
That's partly because Firefly creator Joss Whedon was a screenwriter on this. Watch the film knowing this, and it becomes a wonderful example of how to completely fail to pull off anything Whedon. Titan A.E.'s complete lack of motivation for its characters? In Firefly, that comes across as depth and moral ambiguity. Whedon's trademark quirky rapid-fire dialogue became famous in Buffy*, to the point that it's something of a watershed program, but in Titan A.E., the dull delivery instead gives the impression filmmakers just couldn't decide whether a moment was meant to be dramatic or humorous. It's like Monty Python as recreated by a Bible study group, or worse, the pilot for the American version of Red Dwarf. They've got the script, they've got the plot, but they have no idea.
In the end, the problems transcend all of that: the movie just can't decide what it wants to be or who it's for. Where better storytelling and production might have pulled off an 'everything to everyone' open-ended approach, Titan A.E. doesn't have it: it is the film equivalent of that guy who thinks trying hard and giving a shit makes him look uncool, so he half-asses it and pretends that makes him hip. Yes, as a film, it's a douchebag.
But consider all of that and ponder with me this notion: should Titan A.E. be remembered not as a tired wannabe work by a former animation titan, but as a very, very awkward dress rehearsal for Firefly?
* Though you can catch hints of it earlier in Roseanne, where he also arguably laid the groundwork for Darlene's evolution from basic tomboy to realistic teenager.
