Titan A.E. is a 2000 animated sci-fi space adventure movie from Fox Animation Studios and Twentieth Century Fox. The title refers to the fictional Titan spacecraft that is central to the plot, with A.E. meaning "After Earth".

The film's animation technique combines traditional hand-drawn animation and extensive use of computer generated imagery. The film is in color, running 94 minutes in length and is rated PG for action violence, mild sensuality, and brief language. Its working title was Planet Ice.

Titan A.E. was not financially successful; after it made only $9,376,845 during its opening weekend, Fox Animation Studios was shut down. A video game in the works for PlayStation was cancelled in order to save money. It is often listed with The Lost Empire, The Spirits Within and Treasure Planet as an example of an animated science-fiction/fantasy movie that failed to attract an audience.

Plot

In the year 3028 A.D., Earth is under attack by the Drej, aliens made of pure energy. The Drej mothership destroys Earth with an energy beam just as hundreds of escape vehicles (as well as the secret Titan ship with Sam Tucker aboard) manage to escape with the last of humankind aboard. One of the escapees is Sam's young son Cale, who carries with him a ring given him by his father.

Fifteen years later, Cale (Matt Damon) works on a salvage station, eking out a rough life and hating his father for having disappeared aboard the Titan so long ago. Without a home planet, humans are constantly bullied and looked down on by other spacefaring races. A spacecraft captain named Korso (Bill Pullman) and his pilot Akima (Drew Barrymore), both human, seek out Cale and explain that he must help them find the Titan which holds a mechanism to save humanity. Meanwhile, the Drej want to find the Titan so that they can destroy it.

With Korso's help, Cale discovers that the ring his father gave to him contains a genetically encoded map to the Titan. Thus begins Cale's race across the universe with Korso and his ship and crew. But before long, Cale and Akima find out that Korso is searching for the Titan only with the purpose of handing it over to the Drej, and they narrowly escape him only to become stranded on a drifter station. The pair manage to repair one of the wrecked spacecraft on the station and use it to make their way to an ice field in which the Titan has been hidden.

Within the Titan, Cale and Akima discover that Cale's father had been one of the main architects in designing the craft. The designers, anticipating the destruction of the Earth, gave the Titan the ability to create a new planet and loaded it with the DNA of every living Earth species for the purpose of repopulating the new planet. Unfortunately, the ship's energy has been long since drained and it will not start up.

Korso finds and boards the Titan and confronts Cale and Akima, but after a confrontation with Cale, Korso falls into a pit. Cale grabs hold of Korso's hand trying to save him as Korso goads him to let him fall to his death. Cale refuses to let go, but he slips from Cale's grip and falls, presumably to his death. Akima and Cale then work together to defend the Titan against the impending Drej attack. Cale realizes that the energy comprising the Drej ships may be used to power up the Titan's systems, and they work to bring the vessel online. Korso shows up again, but unexpectedly sacrifices himself in order to bridge a jammed circuit breaker just as the Drej mothership fires a destructive energy beam at the Titan. Channeling the beam's power into its system, the Titan powers up and drains all the Drej energy, destroying the enemy mothership while it creates a new planet.

The film ends with Akima and Cale standing upon their newly-created world. Akima wants to name it New Earth, while Cale suggests naming it "Bob". The final scene is of the refugees coming to the planet labeled New Earth Bob.

Notes on the film

One of the reasons most commonly given for the financial failure of Titan A.E. is its poorly identified target audience. People were unsure, having seen trailers for the film, if it was intended for the older sci-fi fan crowd or whether it was pitched more at children. This confusion was further enhanced by the mixture of people used to write and direct the production. Joss Whedon who, at the time, was famous for the successful TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as for making contributions to films such as Speed, seemed to bring a much more mature and higher quality element to the script whereas Bluth and Goldman were more noted for creating PG or PG-13 children's cartoons such as The Secret of NIMH.

An odd element of the film was the mixture of traditional cel animation and advanced computer graphics (CGI). In several of the scenes - notably the interior of the Titan - the rough drawings are apparent but this can then be contrasted with the exceptional quality of the graphics during the Cat-And-Mouse sequence in amongst the Ice-Rings of Tegrin. The closing CGI images of the New Earth were widely panned.

The original idea for the film was to render all the characters and backgrounds in CGI as did The Spirits Within, but had to use traditional cel animation with CGI aliens and special effects due to cost concerns.

Many critics noted the similar storyline between this film and The Spirits Within in that both films end with a new and beautiful planet being created for the benefit of all mankind. They also pointed out that in both films humanity exists in refugee status due to an alien race.

Cast and crew

• Cale Tucker: Matt Damon
• Akima: Drew Barrymore
• Korso: Bill Pullman
• Preed: Nathan Lane
• Gune: John Leguizamo
• Stith: Janeane Garofalo
• Tek: Tone Loc
• The Cook: Jim Breuer

• Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman.
• Written by John August, Ben Edlund and Joss Whedon.

Soundtrack

Video games

Trivia

• Lit made a music video of Over My Head, featuring scenes from Titan A.E.
• The film is credited as being produced using CinemaScope, although it is a regular anamorphic film and does not use the long retired CinemaScope process which was notorious for causing visual problems with Animation films. As with his 1997 film Anastasia, Don Bluth insisted the CinemaScope credit be used.
• In the first scene when they arrived at New Bangkok, as the camera pans out, you can clearly see a Death Star-looking formation around the center of the space station.
• For the "New Genesis" scene, Blue Sky Studios created the entire CGI. Blue Sky is most remembered for films like Robots, Ice Age, and The Meltdown.
• The characters Cale and Akima originally starred in a PC video game called Broken Sword, the characters were changed slightly for their role in the film, Cale as lead character George Stobbart and Akima as the French reporter Nicole Collard.
• The theatrical poster depicted Cale running forward and firing a gun. However, this film was released during the fallout of the Columbine School massacre, and movie companies were coming under heavy criticism violence in films. As a result, for the home video release, an altered version of the movie poster was used for the box cover which depicted Cale in a similar pose, except instead of the gun, his hand was outstreched revealing the map.

The Digital Screening

• Became the first major studio picture to take part in end-to-end digital cinema. On 6 June 2000, at the SuperComm 2000 tradeshow, the movie was projected simultaneously at the tradeshow in Atlanta, Georgia as well as a screen in Los Angeles, California. It was sent to both screens from the Fox production facilities in Los Angeles via a private internet LAN line. ^*

External links

• White Paper (pdf) by Qwest communications about historic digital screenings
• IGN Information Page on the cancelled game

2000 films | Animated films | Computer-animated films | Science fiction films | Films directed by Don Bluth

Titan A.E. | Titan A.E. | Titanas po Žemės žūties | Titan A.E.