Although it's not a genre where every effort is universally enjoyed by all moviegoers, science fiction films are among some of the biggest hits known to the cinema. Part of their fun is that they show audiences a completely different world where nearly anything goes, the sky - or in this case, the universe - is the limit, and the end results are usually only constrained by the filmmakers' collective imagination and/or production budgets.
Thus, whenever such a film comes along and simply retreads and recycles material from previous efforts, the result is almost always something of a disappointment. Of course and to be realistic, with the plethora of such films and especially sci-fi novels, it's next to impossible for writers to come up with something completely unique that doesn't touch upon elements from previous efforts or even entire films or stories that have preceded it.
Even so, it's never fun to watch a film and think that you've seen the same storyline or individual scenes used in previous movies, but "Titan A.E." is one of those pictures. The latest non-musical animated effort from 20th Century Fox, the film may be a glorious and visually consumable piece of eye candy, but its story is certainly lacking in originality.
As written by screenwriters Ben Edlund (making his debut after creating the comic book "The Tick"), John August ("Go," the "Charlie's Angels" remake) and Joss Whedon ("Toy Story," "Alien Resurrection"), the film borrows and/or steals far too much material from other well-known sci-fi films and TV shows. For starters and most obvious, the basic, underlying plot is lifted directly from the old, but short-lived TV series, "Battlestar Galactica."
In that show, an alien race of computerized beings, the Cylons, attacked a colony of humans, resulting in only a small, rag-tag group of survivors who then searched for a new home and hope for their future, all while avoiding repeated encounters with the aliens and a human traitor who helped them. In this film, an alien race of energy beings, the Drej, attack and destroy Earth, resulting in a small number of human survivors who contend with repeated attacks by the aliens (along with a human traitor) while trying to find a top-secret project that could ensure a future home and hopeful future for them.
If that's not bad enough, the writers then steal the entire Genesis Project subplot from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," where a "fully stocked" planet can be created out of nothingness in an extremely short amount of time, as well as a cat & mouse/hide & seek sequence where one spaceship tries to find another that's hiding in an outer space phenomenon (a nebulae in "Star Trek II," a formation of floating ice structures here). There are also similarities to "Independence Day" and "Total Recall" and especially "Star Wars" where a young, but reluctant hero is entrusted with the survival of his people while overcoming the villains determined to exterminate them.
Unlike that film, "Star Trek II," or most any other well-made yarn, this one also suffers from lacking a personified and identifiable nemesis. Sure, a human finally comes along to fill that role, but until then, the villains are flat, dimensionless and consequently completely uninteresting beings. Imagine "Star Wars" with only the masked storm troopers and no Darth Vader and you'll get a sense of the problem here (that also hurt "ID4" and most of "Battlestar Galactica" despite the presence of John Colicos as the Cylon's human leader).
The film also suffers from lazy and sloppy writing where all logic is sucked from the proceedings as fast as debris into the vacuum of outer space. One of my cinematic pet peeves involves characters who are suddenly proficient at tasks or equipment they've never seen (as in "ID4" and "Battlefield Earth"). Here, that occurs in the big finale where characters not only know where everything is in a huge ship they've only just recently boarded, but also immediately know how to operate it and reroute its wiring/computer programming.
Other illogical moments include the question of why alien fighters are recalled one moment (presumably to get out of the way of a pending and fatal blast from the mother ship) but then reappear again in what can only be a continuity error, or why that mother ship doesn't destroy its main target when it first has the chance (as it did with the much larger Earth), instead of drawing out the action (in the old James Bond "I could kill you now, but it would be more fun to let you dangle for a while" mentality). Suffice it to say, there are plenty more from where those complaints originated (including a lame, rock soundtrack and accompanying montages used to showcase them), but the point has probably already been made.
Of course, and notwithstanding all of the previous problems, the question that begs to be asked (and answered) is whether the film manages to be any good. After all, it is possible for plunderous films to be entertaining and enjoyable in their own right, particularly if they put an imaginative and/or fresh spin on the material they've boosted from other pictures.
While much of this film's target audience of teenage males will probably answer the above with a resounding yes, for the rest of us the answer is that the film comes off as not much more than a mediocre and instantly forgettable experience. Although there are a few fun sequences to be had here and there, co-directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (who worked together on "Anastasia" and "The Pebble and the Penguin" as well as other animated films) don't do much to jazz up the proceedings and make the film stand on its own.
What the film does have going for it, however, is an impressive visual look. While the mixture of traditional hand-drawn animation and computer-generated effects & backgrounds isn't anything particularly new (films such as "Beauty and the Beast" helped pioneer such work), the 3-D graphics that permeate the film look great, thanks to the efforts of visual effects supervisor David Paul Dozoretz ("Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace") and his crew.
Unfortunately, the more two-dimensional looking characters don't always seamlessly mesh with their surroundings, occasionally giving them the appearance of "floating" across the backgrounds. While most of the human characters are drawn rather well, their accompanying alien counterparts often look more like what one has come to expect from the "Pokemon" films/cartoons, and one can't be sure if that's intentional (to appeal to the younger kids) or not.
Vocalization of the characters is generally okay with Matt Damon ("Saving Private Ryan," "Good Will Hunting") leading the way as the protagonist. His first foray into animated voiceover work, Damon is good but not particularly memorable. If and/or once viewers realize that Drew Barrymore ("Never Been Kissed," "Ever After") voices his female counterpart (unlike other animated films, her and most of the other performers' characters are not drawn to resemble them), they may have a problem with that, although she does a reasonable job if one can skip the visual connection (of the real-life Barrymore playing a character such as Akima).
Bill Pullman ("Lake Placid," "Independence Day") is the most aurally impressive of the performers as he voices the charismatic, but questionable captain. The rest of the performers - Nathan Lane ("Stuart Little," "Isn't She Great"), John Leguizamo ("Summer of Sam," "Spawn") and Janeane Garofalo ("Mystery Men," "The Matchmaker") - can't do a great deal with their characters, but Lane probably comes off as the best of that bunch.
While the film will probably play well to it target audience, it didn't do so with mainstream moviegoers during its theatrical release. Had the filmmakers paid as much attention to creating a fresh and original story (rather than lifting well-known elements from other sci-fi films & TV series) as they did to much of the film's look, the end result may have been more successful and enjoyable.
That said, the disc's technical merits are outstanding, and there's plenty of supplemental material (including running audio commentary by the film's co-directors and a large number of sketches and drawings in the still gallery) to keep fans of the film busy and happy for quite some time.
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