The Best Sci-Fi Animated Movie Has Nothing To Do With Disney
The animation dominance of Disney throughout the 90s went mostly unchallenged, except for one man, former Disney animator Don Bluth, the creative genius behind The Land Before Time and An American Tale, who continued taking the fight to his former employer when no one else would. In the process, he created the two best non-Disney animated movies of the pre-Dreamworks era with the princess film Anastasia and, best of all, the sci-fi epic Titan A.E. In creating the latter, Bluth assembled a dream team of talent and helped push animation forward into the new millennium.
Pushed The Boundaries Of Technology
Created with a combination of hand-drawn art and computer graphics, Titan A.E. looked like nothing else on the market when it was released in 2000, and while that has done a lot for its reputation since, at the time, it was considered off-putting. The CGI lacked the usual warmth of Don Bluth’s animation style, and the silky smoothness of the hand-drawn characters looked out of place against the artificial backgrounds, but going back to it today, it’s easy to be impressed by the technical achievement.
Titan A.E. also pulled off a historic first by being the first digital movie release, years before Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones made industry waves with its digital release.
After Earth
While Titan A.E. is a technical marvel, the plot of the film also tried to do something different from what Disney was putting out at the time and told a slightly more adult sci-fi story. Set after Earth is destroyed (hence the A.E.), humanity’s only hope is with Titan, a massive spacecraft capable of creating a new planet for humanity. Its location is a secret, contained in the ring of Cale Tucker (Matt Damon), the son of the Titan project lead researcher, who struggles to make a life among the stars with the remnants of humanity.
The Search For The Future
The captain of the spaceship Valkyrie, Korso (Bill Pullman), is trying to locate Titan and brings Cale on board alongside the rest of the crew, including the amphibian Gune (John Leguizamo), the kangarooesque Stith (Janeane Garofalo), and the bat-like Preed (Nathan Lane). Through a series of betrayals, close calls, and a running firefight with the alien Drej, which fears the rise of humanity, the crew scours the galaxy for Titan’s resting place. Needless to say, it’s a little darker than what Disney was doing at the time with Treasure Planet (though that’s also a fantastic film).
A Massive Box Office Bomb
I, like almost everyone else, missed out on catching Titan A.E. in theaters because it didn’t last long on the big screen and brought in a disappointing box office of $36 million against a total cost of $100 million. The world wasn’t ready for the anime-influenced stylings of Don Bluth’s sci-fi vision, but today, it’s become a bit of a sleeper cult classic. The fantastic voice cast doesn’t hurt, as in addition to the crew of the Valkyrie, other major stars lent their voices, including Drew Barrymore and Ron Perlman.
Appreciated Today And Now On Streaming
REVIEW SCORE
Titan A.E. wasn’t appreciated in its time, but I find that, especially after consuming hundreds of hours of sci-fi anime, the world wasn’t ready. Though the plot is thin, it’s more like a Saturday morning cartoon than it is Gundam; it’s satisfying with some great visuals sprinkled throughout, but again, that might just be me being a sucker for the style of Don Bluth. If it was released on Netflix today for the first time, I think it would be a hit.
You can find Titan A.E. on Starz and Vido on Demand through Apple TV.
