Titan A.E. (2000)

I saw Titan A.E. on its theater release and was duly impressed (along with the entire family that accompanied me), subsequently bought it on video, and have watched it a few times since then, including twice with my youngest son, who also really enjoys this movie. I've been suitably impressed with Don Bluth's often scintillating animation since The Secret of NIMH though I didn't recognize Joss Whedon's name yet. (I had an acquaintance who was a huge Buffy fan but my schedule kept the TV series below my radar.) So all I really knew of Titan A.E. was what I saw before my eyes: out-of-this-world scenery, well-above-average animation, a wry sense of humor and humanity, awesome surround-sound, and a kickass contemporary soundtrack (including It's My Time To Fly by The Urge, Cosmic Castaway by Electrasy, and Not Quite Paradise by Bliss 66). Titan A.E. felt targeted to true sci-fi fans and 11- to 16-year-old boys so it's no surprise it only recouped $23 million towards an estimated production budget of $75 million. I think the movie shows up its detractors well, however, since it was nominated for a Saturn award, three Annie awards, two Golden Reel awards, and a Golden Satellite award before it won a Golden Reel (for best sound editing). Our story begins as humanity is fleeing planet Earth immediately before (if not, for the stragglers, during) the catastrophic destruction of our planet. The exact motivation for the Holocaust-like vendetta pursued by the electric-blue Drej is unspecified though it's less related to what humanity "has done" so much as to humanity's recent and greatest discovery and to "what we can become." Ron Perlman is the voice of Prof. Sam Tucker, who accompanies the Titan project to a successful escape and remote hiding place. Bill Pullman is Capt. Joseph Korso, who once aided the Titan's escape and, 15 years later, locates Tucker's now-19-year-old son Cale (Matt Damon) to reveal him as humanity's last hope, since his father's ring bears a genetically encoded map to the Titan's location. Akima (Drew Barrymore) is Korso's tall Japanese-American pilot and Cale's love interest, marsupial-like alien Stith (Janeane Garofalo) is Korso's hot-tempered weapons expert, terrapin-like alien Gune (John Leguizamo) is Korso's engineer, and snarky lupine alien Preed (Nathan Lane) seems to be Korso's second-in-command. Such a cast of characters does not appear bland to me nor does the script seem remotely predictable. (Besides, calling anything predictable after the fact is pointless; you can only claim predictability if you write down your prediction beforehand and confirm it afterwards. How about those hydrogen trees? Or Preed's line "An intelligent guard -- didn't see that one coming.") Also far from pointless, the scene with the wake angels is my favorite. Titan A.E. is a wonderful PG-rated sci-fi film that can and should appeal to the whole family. 4.5 stars.