Why Titan A.E. is Still Awesome, 21 years on

So The Guardian has a surprisingly entertaining regular feature called Hear Me Out, where a writer attempts to defend a movie most people think is trash. They've done Confessions of a Shopaholic, Equilibrium, Deep Rising…and this week, they turned their gaze on a movie that is pretty near and dear to my heart. I'm talking, of course, about Titan A.E.

If you've never seen this utterly mad animated movie, here's a brief synopsis: “Set in the 31st century, the film follows Cale (Matt Damon), who was separated from his father when the planet was destroyed by the Drej, alien life forms that materialize as humanoid entities composed of blue energy. Cale’s mission is to locate the spaceship that holds the key to human survival, with the help of two other wandering earthlings, Akima (Drew Barrymore) and Korso (Bill Pullman)”

It's pretty easy to see why the studio thought this would do well. Look at that cast! Look at all these wild ideas! And this shit is animated?!? For the year 2000, this was revolutionary.

Unfortunately, Titan A.E. bombed, and bombed badly. It only grossed $36 million, which sounds like a lot, as most movie box offices do, but paled in comparison to the film's $75 million budget. The critics hated it, because they are critics, and nobody seemed to understand why an animated movie packaged as a kids film had such a serious, gritty story.

Now, I love Titan A.E. And after I posted the Guardian article on Twitter, I found out that I wasn't the only one. Just check out these responses.

I thought I’d take another look at Titan A.E. The Guardian article does a very good job of exploring the studio trials and tribulations around the movie, and why it bombed, but spends less time on why it's actually worth watching.

The Story is Sci-Fi as Fuck

It really is. At a time when animation was looked at as being specifically for kids, and cutesy Disney animals ruled supreme, Titan A.E. came swaggering along with a real story. It didn't flinch from serious issues, training an eye on colonisation, violence and genocide. It didn't give a fuck whether you were ready for it; the human race was on its last legs, and this movie was going to show you what that meant.

But don't get it twisted. Just because the story has some dark themes doesn't mean it isn't fun. It's ridiculously fun. It's this wild, trippy road trip of the movie that deploys just the right amount of action to keep things moving, without sacrificing the depth of its characters. It's often hilarious, thanks to genius characters like Gune (who we’ll get to in a moment). If I might be allowed one hell of a controversial opinion, I think it has a better story than any Star Wars movie. Don't @ me.

The Characters are Terrific

I'm not so much talking about the human characters. Don't get me wrong, they're fine. Damon does a pretty smooth performance as bro-dawg Cale, and although Drew Barrymore is very clearly not Asian, she does a passable job as pilot Akima Kunimoto. Bill Pullman is wonderfully gritty as the treacherous Korso. But listen: this is a big universe, and although we all want to see the humans saved from extinction, they are by far the least interesting species here.

We get to spend time with three aliens from three different species, and every one of them is an absolute joy. There's Korso’s right-hand operator Preed, who looks like what would happen if human fucked a fruit bat. He's deliciously oily and corrupt, at once both welcoming and slightly worrying. There's Stith, played by Janeane Garofalo, an angry munitions specialist who resembles a mutated kangaroo. And then there is my absolute favourite, one of the best aliens I've ever encountered: Gune. Played by John Leguizamo, he's the team's science expert, and he's a delight. Just watch the clip below. My wife and I still quote this to each other.

Oh, and how about the small parts! Ron Perlman, Tone Loc…hell, even Jim Breuer has a role here, as a cockroach cook who is on-screen for all of two minutes before being vaporised into goo, but who completely steals the show.

The Animation

The year 2000 was actually pretty good one for animated movies. You had The Emperor’s New Groove, The Road to El Dorado, and Chicken Run, along with…well, The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (fine, can’t win ‘em all). There are some great movies there, but if we’re talking animation, there’s no question in my mind that Titan A.E. beats them all. Over two decades on, it still holds up. It uses a mix of hand drawn animation with 3D computer graphics, and instead of coming off as cheesy or cheap, it really works.

This is a genuinely beautiful movie, with some incredible art. The alien planet filled with exploding gas balloon plants comes to mind, as does the joyous sequence where Cale and Corso race a group of space whales (really) through a nebula for fun. Shit, even as I'm writing I'm remembering cool little moments from the movie, like the zero-G building site that Cale works on when we join his story, or how the first scene on earth is lit in syrupy late afternoon sunlight, setting us up for the sucker punch when the planet is destroyed. And oh! I almost forgot the cat-and-mouse sequence in the ice field, where ships chase reflections of one another off the mirrored ice. Or how about the Drej themselves: terrifying beings of blue energy who own every scene they appear in. Not to mention the sight of their flagship rising almost silently through a gas cloud, a scene which still gives me goosebumps.

What I'm trying to say is, this movie cut absolutely no corners with its animation. Watching it now, I'm flabbergasted by how badly was treated by the critics. I've been a critic before, and I tend to go easy on them— I know what it's like to sit in judgement of others’ work, and the responsibilities it carries. Boy, did everyone whiff on this one.

The Soundtrack is BOSS

It would have been so easy for the studio to score a sci-fi movie with techno or ambient dance, which is exactly the kind of thing that clueless studio executives do, that didn't happen. Instead, what we have is rock. Not just any rock: the kind of grungy, over-the-top, slightly silly rock 'n' roll that you found in the late 90s and early 2000's. Lit, Jamiroquai, Texas, The Fun Lovin’ Criminals… I'm not kidding when I say this might be the only non-hip-hop album I listened to from 2000-2005. Even now, it slaps, especially the Lit tune they picked: Over My Head, which doubles as Cale’s theme song.

Weirdly, the one track most associated with this movie doesn't actually appear on the soundtrack. It’s Higher, by Creed, which is a great song in its own right and which appeared on the trailer. Again: watch this, and try not to get excited. Even if it is the most 90s shit ever.

Look: just watch this damn movie. You’ll like it.

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