TITAN A.E.

'''Titan A.E.''' is a 2000 animated science fiction adventure film from Fox Animation Studios and Twentieth Century Fox. The title refers to the fictional 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. The film only grossed a total of $22,753,426 in theaters. A video game in the works for PlayStation was cancelled in order to save money. It is often listed with '', '', ''The Iron Giant'' and ''Treasure Planet'' as an example of an animated science fiction/fantasy films that failed to attract an audience.

Contents

Plot

Notes on the film

Prequels

Cast

Soundtrack

Cinematography, Influences and Music

The Digital Screening

External links

Plot

In the year 3028 A.D., Earth is attacked by the Drej, which are aliens made of pure energy. The Drej mothership destroys Earth with an energy beam just as hundreds of space vehicles (as well as the secret ''Titan'' ship with Professor Sam Tucker aboard) manage to escape with the last of mankind aboard. One of the escapees is Sam's young son Cale, who carries with him a ring given to him by his father.
Fifteen years later, Cale 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, surviving humans have been reduced to outer space drifters and are constantly bullied and looked down on by other space-faring races. A human captain named Joseph Korso and his pilot Akima seek out Cale and explain that he must help them find the ''Titan'' which contains a mechanism that will create a new Earth and therefore unite all of 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'', and thus begins his race across the universe with Korso and his ship and crew, including Preed, a wisecracking rat-like humanoid, Gune, an eccentric, green-skinned scientist, and Stith, a tough, hard-as-nails female weapons expert who resembles something of a kangaroo. Before long, Cale and Akima find out that Korso is searching for the ''Titan'' in order to hand it over to the Drej. They narrowly escape from him and Preed (who is revealed to be working with Korso), only to become stranded on a drifter colony. Cale and Akima 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, with Korso in hot pursuit.
Within the ''Titan'', Cale and Akima discover that Professor Tucker had been one of the main architects in designing the craft. The designers, anticipating the destruction of 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 world. Unfortunately, the ship's energy has been long since drained and the process cannot be activated.
Korso finds and boards the ''Titan'' accompanied by Preed, and confronts Cale and Akima, but Preed turns on Korso, having been promised his life and a substantial amount of money by the Drej in exchange for him killing Cale, Akima and Korso. A confrontation follows, and Korso kills Preed by breaking his neck, then fights with Cale before falling over a railing. 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 Korso slips from Cale's grip and falls, presumably to his death. Akima and Cale, joined by Stith and eventually Gune, then work together to defend the ''Titan'' against the impending Drej attack, and Cale realizes that the energy comprising the Drej and their 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, with Stith and Gune flying above them aboard the Valkyrie, and bidding their friends good-bye. Akima wants to name the planet "New Earth," while Cale suggests naming it "Bob." The final scene is of all the human refugees coming to the planet labeled "New Earth [Planet 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 were intended for the older sci-fi fan crowd, or whether it was pitched more at children. This confusion was further increased by the mixture of people used to write and direct the production. Joss Whedon, was, at the time, famous for the TV series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' as well as for making contributions to films such as ''Speed'', whereas Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were more noted for creating G-rated children's cartoons such as ''The Secret of NIMH''. Bluth later added to the confusion when he stated during an interview with HBO's ''First Look'', "This is not one of those cute, little kid musicals; this film is nothing but action." The film treats its soundtrack as a purely background element. However, the film garners a 68% "fresh" rating among users at Rotten Tomatoes and a "C+" at Box Office Mojo.
An odd element of the film was the mixture of traditional cel animation and advanced computer graphics. In several of the scenes (notably the interior of the ''Titan''), the rough drawings are apparent but this can then be contrasted with the higher quality computer graphics of the cat-and-mouse sequence 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, but had to use traditional cel animation with CGI aliens and special effects due to cost concerns.

Prequels

To tie in with the film, there was a series of prequel novels released, as well as a prequel comic book mini-series.

★ 'Cale's Story' told the adventures of Cale, ending with the beginning of the film.

★ 'Akima's Story' told the adventures of Akima, ending with the beginning of the film.
The Dark Horse Comics prequel comic told the story of Sam Tucker and his crew, and their quest to hide the Titan.

Cast

★ Matt Damon — voice of Cale Tucker

★ Drew Barrymore — voice of Akima

★ Bill Pullman — voice of Joseph Korso

★ Nathan Lane — voice of Preed

★ John Leguizamo — voice of Gune

★ Janeane Garofalo — voice of Stith

★ Tone Loc — voice of Tek

★ Jim Breuer — voice of The Cook

★ Ron Perlman — voice of Professor Sam Tucker

★ Alex D. Linz — voice of Young Cale

Soundtrack

# "Over My Head" — Lit
# "The End is Over" — Powerman 5000
# Cosmic Castaway — Electrasy
# "Everything Under the Stars" — Fun Lovin' Criminals
# "It's My Turn to Fly" — The Urge
# "Like Lovers (Holding On)" — Texas
# "Not Quite Paradise" — Bliss 66
# "Everybody's Going to the Moon" — Jamiroquai
# "Karma Slave" — Splashdown
# "Renegade Survivor" — The Wailing Souls
# "Down to Earth" — Luscious Jackson

Cinematography, Influences and Music

★ Creed's song "Higher" was played in many of the theatrical trailers for ''Titan A.E.'', but the song did not appear either in the movie or on the soundtrack.

★ The film is credited as being produced using CinemaScope, when in fact it is a regular anamorphic film and does not use the long retired CinemaScope process which was notorious for causing visual problems with animated 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.

★ The Tattoo on Cale's upper right arm bears a striking resemblance to the emblem of the "Terran Empire" from Star Trek

★ For the "New Genesis" scene, Blue Sky Studios created the entire CGI. Blue Sky is known for feature-length animated films such as ''Robots'', ''Ice Age'', and ''. They have also done a lot of live-action work, including the 'sliding' penguin in the movie ''Fight Club'', and the infamous talking fish on the HBO series ''The Sopranos''.

★ The theatrical poster depicted Cale running forward and firing a gun. However, this film was released during the fallout of the Columbine High School massacre, and movie companies were coming under heavy criticism for 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 outstretched, revealing the map.

★ Due to the high, rasping voice of his character, Gune, John Leguizamo developed problems with his voice during production, as stated in the movie's Fox Kids special "The Quest for the Titan," which can be seen on the film's DVD release.

The Digital Screening

Titan A.E. became the first major motion picture to take part in end-to-end digital cinema. On June 6 2000, ten days before the movie was released, 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 20th Century Fox production facilities in Los Angeles via a private internet LAN line. [1]

External links

★ White Paper (pdf) by Qwest communications about historic digital screenings

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★ IGN Information Page on the cancelled game

★ Human Body in Vacuum- science fiction