Titan A.E.
(2000 movie)
This is one of those movies that I wanted to like but just couldn't. That's mostly because like so many movies and shows before it, it had so much potential that just kind of fizzled out and died. A big part of that is that this movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be, kind of like the Disney movie Atlantis. On the one hand, it wanted to be more of a serious grown up movie, and that's the part of it I liked and felt had potential to go somewhere. On the other hand, apparently somewhere along the way, someone decided this was a kid's show (probably because it's animated), so there was a lot of childish humor along the way, and to be frank it really gave off mixed signals. Just as an example, a character got shot by one of those fancy sci-fi laser guns that does pretty much whatever it needs to do in a particular scene, and in this case that was to reduce this character into a mass of green goo, which should have been a gruesome but instant death, but instead this character's mouth managed to survive long enough to say, "bulls eye." Then of course there's the scene where one character goes all mortal combat on the other and snaps his neck. For kids!
To be fair, though, not a whole lot about the movie really made all that much sense. Apparently humanity has developed this giant space ark they call the Titan, which has the capability of forming an entire planet out of nothing but giant ice crystals and cloning every other form of life that existed on Earth prior to some aliens showing up and blowing it up. This is where I, at least, feel not a lot makes sense, though this may be just due to a lack of a scene or something just to set things up. Because why would Earth ever develop the Titan, let alone have it all ready to go for a last minute escape? Sure, it could have been that the planet was overcrowded and they needed a colony to help ease that. It makes me wonder where they'd originally had in mind for this since they gave the Titan an FTL drive that gave it an interstellar capability. The ship ends up becoming humanity's last hope, but it would have been nice to find out more about why the ship was built to begin with, because it's also apparently the reason Earth was destroyed by the Drej, which are aliens made of pure energy. Apparently the Drej feel so threatened by the Titan that they decide to exterminate humanity, and the first thing they do is blow up Earth. I don't know how humanity knows this, but it's what we're told. I also don’t understand why humans seem to be able to understand what the Drej are saying when they speak, but they do, so I guess the Drej could have said something before they blew up the planet.
And that's just the set-up; the actual story doesn't make a lot of sense either. The story follows a character named Cale Tucker (seems to be a popular name in sci-fi), who we see as a small boy the day Earth died. His father was behind Project Titan and took the space ark off to some hidden location just in the nick of time. Fortunately he thought to give his son a magic space ring that had a map to where he'd planned to hid the Titan, and which also acts as the key which starts the Genesis Device-I mean the transformation sequence. So this is why his dad leaves the ship and ends up getting killed, apparently along with everyone else who had gone with him on the giant ship. That makes sense, as does the Drej's obsession with wanting to find Titan and blow it up, since they were apparently afraid of what it could do to begin with. This is where Cale comes in, because apparently the Drej have figured out he has a map leading to the Titan, and naturally they want it. This also apparently takes 15 years for them to figure out, but later we find out why, and it involves something else that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Which, speaking of sense, since the Drej want to find where the Titan is, one would think they'd want to capture him, and later on they try to and succeed. Except the first time they spot him, they try to shoot him, repeatedly, and they even manage to hit him a couple of times. This is where the magic sci-fi guns come in, though, as the same gun that reduced one character to goo just gives Cale a couple of flesh wounds that take like a minute to patch up.
Fortunately, this seemingly Han Solo type named Joseph Korso who shows up on his cool ship named the Valkyrie to rescue him. Naturally this isn't a coincidence, and it was all part of a plan to help the Drej to find and destroy the Titan. Now, I'm not sure if the Drej showing up was all part of the plan to get Cale to go with or not. Cale was somewhat reluctant to do anything that might get him killed and all, even if he's yeaning for a way to get out of the crappy salvage yard he calls both home and work. He's become very pessimistic, losing his planet and the only remaining member of his family (apparently) and all. So having the Drej show up just kind of lit a fire under his ass, quite literally. The thing is, as I mentioned before, they sure seemed to be doing their damnedest to kill both Cale and Korso. So, what, did no one tell the Drej foot soldiers about the whole "capture that human because he has the only key to the ship we want to blow up" plan? Later on it's more obvious that the Drej are just trying to grab Cale on their own, because Korso bitches about this to them after they managed to capture Cale and copy the map. This is also where the bullshit heel face turn takes place.
One of the other potentially good things this movie had going for it was the crew of the Valkyrie. They were a somewhat rag-tag crew that seemed like they could be interesting. Since Joss Whedon had a hand in writing this, it isn't all that surprising that this crew reminded me a little of Serenity's crew from Firefly, though this movie predates that series. The thing I liked about them was just how natural they seemed to be. They had some minor annoyances with each other, and their own little quirks, and that made them seem interesting. But while they had their own little conflicts with each other, none of them really seemed like they were just itching to kill each other. This is part of where the movie doesn't make sense, because that bullshit heel face turn I mentioned drastically alters two of the characters, who suddenly become evil. I understand that Korso and his first mate being in league with the Drej was supposed to be a surprise and all, it's just that their attitude and actions don't match up with everything that came before this heel face turn. Up to that point, Korso actually seems to genuinely care about Cale, and even indulges the young man by letting him fly the Valkyrie during this cool eye candy scene. The first mate, Preed, seemed like a somewhat sarcastic but otherwise likeable character up to that point, but suddenly he wanted to kill Cale along with his other crewmates, who have presumably been together as a crew for some time, and Korso seems to be in agreement with this. Not only does he not say anything when Preed mentions he's going to blow up the other two crew members who somehow aren't in the know on the whole evil plan thing, but he threatens and assaults those crew members before that, and during his whole bitch session to the Drej he mentions how he'd like to kill Cale, and then tries his damnedest to do just that. Also part of this heel face turn is that now Cale is suddenly the champion of humanity's continued survival while Korso is the pessimist who sees no way of beating the Drej or for humanity to survive beyond the near future, and really only cares about himself and getting rich. Of course at the end of the movie, Korso makes the heroic sacrifice to save the day because, surprise, Preed made another separate deal with the Drej for his survival provided he kill Cale and the rest of his crew, and this just makes Korso change his mind again for whatever reason.
Naturally there's also something of a deux ex machine in that whereas the Drej's weaponry has been devastatingly destructive up until now, the Titan can suddenly be jury-rigged to convert the energy of the Drej weapons as well as the energy of the Drej themselves to simultaneously power its reactors and make the new planet while killing all the Drej in the immediate area. As the movie ended, I couldn't help but note that this was just one ship, and it seemed entirely possible that more Drej could just show up later. I mean, the movie wasn't suggesting that this one ship and its fighters were the entirety of the Drej species, was it? Well, Wikipedia confirms this is the case, but given all the other face palm worthy aspects of this movie, it isn't all that surprising, it's just that it's stupid.
There were some other nitpicky things I didn't like either and I'd complain about, but this review is getting to be long enough as it is. The sad thing is, this movie could have been so much better. If it'd dropped all the kiddy comedy elements and had a plot that made more sense, it would have been a lot better. There's also the Valkyrie's crew, which had a lot of potential that just ended up being squandered. Rather than learn anything more about them or allow anyone other than Cale to undergo a little development, they were pretty much just there to set up a few jokes and to conveniently come to the rescue when Cale almost managed to get killed a few times. Oh, and the hot chick to fall into insta-love with Cale, you know, because. But just think of how much more interesting it could have been if the entire crew had been in on the deal with the Drej from the start. Sure, it wouldn't have been as much of a surprise when the evil plan was revealed, but there's a difference between surprise and just coming out of no where for no real reason. It also might have made the crew more sympathetic had there been a more realistic reason behind their deal that wasn't just about getting rich. Say they'd actually been nice and reasonable people to start out with and were forced into it somehow, and had to play along with the plan, all while actually kind of feeling sorry for Cale, and feeling bad about the whole betrayal of the whole human race thing? The crew could've even tried to keep him at something of a distance so they didn't get to know him too well in order to spare themselves some of the guilt. And if the hot chick, Akima Kunimoto, found herself being attracted to him in a not completely out of the blue manner, there even could have been a scene where the captain warned her against getting too close, to foreshadow the coming betrayal. Then it could have been a running theme to have Cale trying to figure out what the deal was, and seeming to make some progress with Akima or maybe even Korso at some points before being shut out again. You know, drama.
Also wasted were the Drej. They were some of the most alien aliens I've seen in a sci-fi, and they had the potential to be really interesting, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. Like if the movie had gone into their origin somewhat, and gave them some motivation for wanting to kill every single human being beyond just being ass hats. Unfortunately they just ended up being generic bad guys who were hard to kill, at least with normal hand-held laser guns, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. They even had a queen Drej who made typical bad guy speeches about killing every human being. And apparently all the Drej could fit on that one planet-killing ship from the beginning of the movie. Lame.
The voice talent was ok-ish. I did recognize a few of the voices right off the bat, but everyone sounded somewhat bland. I guess maybe since they'd read the script and decided to not even really bother putting any real effort into it. Speaking of bland, while the soundtrack is somewhat decent to listen to in its own, it also really dates this movie. I'd normally say something along the lines of doing something instrumental, but really the movie wasn't worth it. I'm actually not even sure why I bothered to mention it, other than that it kind of made me roll my eyes at times.
I'll throw this movie a bone, but really it's only because I feel a little sorry for it. Part of what sucks about this movie is that there was some really obvious potential there, and it just got wasted, which in some ways is even worse than if it'd just completely sucked. 3/10.
(2000 movie)
This is one of those movies that I wanted to like but just couldn't. That's mostly because like so many movies and shows before it, it had so much potential that just kind of fizzled out and died. A big part of that is that this movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be, kind of like the Disney movie Atlantis. On the one hand, it wanted to be more of a serious grown up movie, and that's the part of it I liked and felt had potential to go somewhere. On the other hand, apparently somewhere along the way, someone decided this was a kid's show (probably because it's animated), so there was a lot of childish humor along the way, and to be frank it really gave off mixed signals. Just as an example, a character got shot by one of those fancy sci-fi laser guns that does pretty much whatever it needs to do in a particular scene, and in this case that was to reduce this character into a mass of green goo, which should have been a gruesome but instant death, but instead this character's mouth managed to survive long enough to say, "bulls eye." Then of course there's the scene where one character goes all mortal combat on the other and snaps his neck. For kids!
To be fair, though, not a whole lot about the movie really made all that much sense. Apparently humanity has developed this giant space ark they call the Titan, which has the capability of forming an entire planet out of nothing but giant ice crystals and cloning every other form of life that existed on Earth prior to some aliens showing up and blowing it up. This is where I, at least, feel not a lot makes sense, though this may be just due to a lack of a scene or something just to set things up. Because why would Earth ever develop the Titan, let alone have it all ready to go for a last minute escape? Sure, it could have been that the planet was overcrowded and they needed a colony to help ease that. It makes me wonder where they'd originally had in mind for this since they gave the Titan an FTL drive that gave it an interstellar capability. The ship ends up becoming humanity's last hope, but it would have been nice to find out more about why the ship was built to begin with, because it's also apparently the reason Earth was destroyed by the Drej, which are aliens made of pure energy. Apparently the Drej feel so threatened by the Titan that they decide to exterminate humanity, and the first thing they do is blow up Earth. I don't know how humanity knows this, but it's what we're told. I also don’t understand why humans seem to be able to understand what the Drej are saying when they speak, but they do, so I guess the Drej could have said something before they blew up the planet.
And that's just the set-up; the actual story doesn't make a lot of sense either. The story follows a character named Cale Tucker (seems to be a popular name in sci-fi), who we see as a small boy the day Earth died. His father was behind Project Titan and took the space ark off to some hidden location just in the nick of time. Fortunately he thought to give his son a magic space ring that had a map to where he'd planned to hid the Titan, and which also acts as the key which starts the Genesis Device-I mean the transformation sequence. So this is why his dad leaves the ship and ends up getting killed, apparently along with everyone else who had gone with him on the giant ship. That makes sense, as does the Drej's obsession with wanting to find Titan and blow it up, since they were apparently afraid of what it could do to begin with. This is where Cale comes in, because apparently the Drej have figured out he has a map leading to the Titan, and naturally they want it. This also apparently takes 15 years for them to figure out, but later we find out why, and it involves something else that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Which, speaking of sense, since the Drej want to find where the Titan is, one would think they'd want to capture him, and later on they try to and succeed. Except the first time they spot him, they try to shoot him, repeatedly, and they even manage to hit him a couple of times. This is where the magic sci-fi guns come in, though, as the same gun that reduced one character to goo just gives Cale a couple of flesh wounds that take like a minute to patch up.
Fortunately, this seemingly Han Solo type named Joseph Korso who shows up on his cool ship named the Valkyrie to rescue him. Naturally this isn't a coincidence, and it was all part of a plan to help the Drej to find and destroy the Titan. Now, I'm not sure if the Drej showing up was all part of the plan to get Cale to go with or not. Cale was somewhat reluctant to do anything that might get him killed and all, even if he's yeaning for a way to get out of the crappy salvage yard he calls both home and work. He's become very pessimistic, losing his planet and the only remaining member of his family (apparently) and all. So having the Drej show up just kind of lit a fire under his ass, quite literally. The thing is, as I mentioned before, they sure seemed to be doing their damnedest to kill both Cale and Korso. So, what, did no one tell the Drej foot soldiers about the whole "capture that human because he has the only key to the ship we want to blow up" plan? Later on it's more obvious that the Drej are just trying to grab Cale on their own, because Korso bitches about this to them after they managed to capture Cale and copy the map. This is also where the bullshit heel face turn takes place.
One of the other potentially good things this movie had going for it was the crew of the Valkyrie. They were a somewhat rag-tag crew that seemed like they could be interesting. Since Joss Whedon had a hand in writing this, it isn't all that surprising that this crew reminded me a little of Serenity's crew from Firefly, though this movie predates that series. The thing I liked about them was just how natural they seemed to be. They had some minor annoyances with each other, and their own little quirks, and that made them seem interesting. But while they had their own little conflicts with each other, none of them really seemed like they were just itching to kill each other. This is part of where the movie doesn't make sense, because that bullshit heel face turn I mentioned drastically alters two of the characters, who suddenly become evil. I understand that Korso and his first mate being in league with the Drej was supposed to be a surprise and all, it's just that their attitude and actions don't match up with everything that came before this heel face turn. Up to that point, Korso actually seems to genuinely care about Cale, and even indulges the young man by letting him fly the Valkyrie during this cool eye candy scene. The first mate, Preed, seemed like a somewhat sarcastic but otherwise likeable character up to that point, but suddenly he wanted to kill Cale along with his other crewmates, who have presumably been together as a crew for some time, and Korso seems to be in agreement with this. Not only does he not say anything when Preed mentions he's going to blow up the other two crew members who somehow aren't in the know on the whole evil plan thing, but he threatens and assaults those crew members before that, and during his whole bitch session to the Drej he mentions how he'd like to kill Cale, and then tries his damnedest to do just that. Also part of this heel face turn is that now Cale is suddenly the champion of humanity's continued survival while Korso is the pessimist who sees no way of beating the Drej or for humanity to survive beyond the near future, and really only cares about himself and getting rich. Of course at the end of the movie, Korso makes the heroic sacrifice to save the day because, surprise, Preed made another separate deal with the Drej for his survival provided he kill Cale and the rest of his crew, and this just makes Korso change his mind again for whatever reason.
Naturally there's also something of a deux ex machine in that whereas the Drej's weaponry has been devastatingly destructive up until now, the Titan can suddenly be jury-rigged to convert the energy of the Drej weapons as well as the energy of the Drej themselves to simultaneously power its reactors and make the new planet while killing all the Drej in the immediate area. As the movie ended, I couldn't help but note that this was just one ship, and it seemed entirely possible that more Drej could just show up later. I mean, the movie wasn't suggesting that this one ship and its fighters were the entirety of the Drej species, was it? Well, Wikipedia confirms this is the case, but given all the other face palm worthy aspects of this movie, it isn't all that surprising, it's just that it's stupid.
There were some other nitpicky things I didn't like either and I'd complain about, but this review is getting to be long enough as it is. The sad thing is, this movie could have been so much better. If it'd dropped all the kiddy comedy elements and had a plot that made more sense, it would have been a lot better. There's also the Valkyrie's crew, which had a lot of potential that just ended up being squandered. Rather than learn anything more about them or allow anyone other than Cale to undergo a little development, they were pretty much just there to set up a few jokes and to conveniently come to the rescue when Cale almost managed to get killed a few times. Oh, and the hot chick to fall into insta-love with Cale, you know, because. But just think of how much more interesting it could have been if the entire crew had been in on the deal with the Drej from the start. Sure, it wouldn't have been as much of a surprise when the evil plan was revealed, but there's a difference between surprise and just coming out of no where for no real reason. It also might have made the crew more sympathetic had there been a more realistic reason behind their deal that wasn't just about getting rich. Say they'd actually been nice and reasonable people to start out with and were forced into it somehow, and had to play along with the plan, all while actually kind of feeling sorry for Cale, and feeling bad about the whole betrayal of the whole human race thing? The crew could've even tried to keep him at something of a distance so they didn't get to know him too well in order to spare themselves some of the guilt. And if the hot chick, Akima Kunimoto, found herself being attracted to him in a not completely out of the blue manner, there even could have been a scene where the captain warned her against getting too close, to foreshadow the coming betrayal. Then it could have been a running theme to have Cale trying to figure out what the deal was, and seeming to make some progress with Akima or maybe even Korso at some points before being shut out again. You know, drama.
Also wasted were the Drej. They were some of the most alien aliens I've seen in a sci-fi, and they had the potential to be really interesting, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. Like if the movie had gone into their origin somewhat, and gave them some motivation for wanting to kill every single human being beyond just being ass hats. Unfortunately they just ended up being generic bad guys who were hard to kill, at least with normal hand-held laser guns, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. They even had a queen Drej who made typical bad guy speeches about killing every human being. And apparently all the Drej could fit on that one planet-killing ship from the beginning of the movie. Lame.
The voice talent was ok-ish. I did recognize a few of the voices right off the bat, but everyone sounded somewhat bland. I guess maybe since they'd read the script and decided to not even really bother putting any real effort into it. Speaking of bland, while the soundtrack is somewhat decent to listen to in its own, it also really dates this movie. I'd normally say something along the lines of doing something instrumental, but really the movie wasn't worth it. I'm actually not even sure why I bothered to mention it, other than that it kind of made me roll my eyes at times.
I'll throw this movie a bone, but really it's only because I feel a little sorry for it. Part of what sucks about this movie is that there was some really obvious potential there, and it just got wasted, which in some ways is even worse than if it'd just completely sucked. 3/10.