I'll be the first to admit, this is not one of Don Bluth's best films. First off, I was not impressed with the story. Halfway through this movie, I fell asleep. The characters were so poorly developed you couldn't help but not like them. This is at a point where story telling in animation has gone downwind. The actual animation graphics weren't too bad in my opinion, but it's not enough to save this film from disaster.

Avoid this one at all costs. It's not worth it.

I'm going to allow myself to be strict with this one, because Titan A.E. falls into an unfortunately rare and daring category for which I try to hold high standards: American sci-fi animation. While there are some exceptions, such as The Iron Giant, Lilo & Stitch, and others, for the most part anything that's sci-fi and (at least partially) 2-D animated was originally made for a Japanese audience. I do like some anime, but I dream of a day when animated sci-fi masterpieces can belong to nations other than Japan.

Titan A.E. enters the competition, takes two or three bold steps, and falls flat on its face. At the beginning of the movie, I was thinking, "Hey, this animation is really smooth! The lip synching is perfect! And they've taken a new variation on the old End-of-Earth scenario!" I would have written an excellent review for it, then and there. Problem is, I proceeded to watch the rest of the movie.

Alien space-opera characters that really don't have the Disney or Pixar appeal make cheesy Star Trek reruns look like Arthur C. Clarke. Relationships and interactions that could possibly develop into something interesting skip the "develop" part and leave you wondering what happened. The climax is less interesting than the rest of the movie. The alien bad guys have no intellectual motivation, and you can't relate to them at all. The film's creators make an excuse for this by making the bad guys a race of living embodiments of energy. But anyone who's taken a physics class could tell you that energy doesn't float around in shiny blue beams and sparkles.

By the end of the movie, the "Who," the "What," and the "Why" have vanished so mysteriously you could write a crime novel about it. The "How" is still trying to conglomerate in your head, but there's so much disorganized information that it just kinda bumps around and explodes, much like the "ice asteroids" in the movie that I'm pretty sure were supposed to be exciting. The only question that remains concrete is the "Where," which might have something to do with the fact that the entire story is about moving from one location to another.

I think I've said enough. Titan A.E. is not "terrible" as far as story and construction, and the animation is great, but to me it's an ultimate disappointment. They could have, and should have, done a much better job. Shame on you, Titan A.E.!

After 'saving' classical animation with his debut feature, 'Secret of NIMH', Don Bluth just seemed to run out of vision. To the point, I'm afraid, that I've missed a few of his films. If this one is a return to form of sorts, it sounds like I didn't miss much.

I'm sorry, but to me 'Titan' is a boring, confusing film filled with unmemorable characters and more illogical plot events than any SF movie since Star Trek V. I was well and truly sick of it well before the end. I first watched it with a friend, and I seem to remember that at one point I asked him to stop the tape and explain what character X was suddenly doing in location Y. In fact I think it turned out that character X was actually character Z and I hadn't noticed. This may not be Bluth's fault, but I'm going to blame him anyway.

Points to him for trying a departure in style, with an adventure/action based SF story. However, despite it being more kid-oriented, I think Disney did a better job with 'Atlantis'.

one of my favourite movie and the second best Bluth & Goldman movie. This movie brang a new kind of animation and in spite of its failure at the BO and what people can say, this movie is a precursor and shows again the genius of Bluth !

I think I remember seeing maybe one trailer for this film, I don't think it was advertised very well. Balto had the same problem and I believe that's one reason such a great movie flopped. The same thing happened to this film. I don't know if it was actually due to bad promotion, or just the time it came out. If I remember correctly it came out just before, or a little after X-Men, and most people will pick live action over animation any day. So even though this film flopped horribly in the box office, and it killed Fox's animation department, it was an enjoyable movie.

The story is good, but riddled with plot holes. I guess that's one reason several books and comics were released before the movie came out, to fill in some of those holes. Anyways, many things that should have been explained simply weren't. The story seems a bit rushed from scene to scene because of this. The movie could have been maybe thirty minutes longer and still been interesting. Although there are many problems with the story, it was still keeps the viewer interested, I think. I believe it's also the first PG rated Bluth film, due to quite a few action scenes where the characters bleed and a couple "nude" scenes that don't show much.

The characters were all pretty good. Cale, the only one I found a bit flat, was a typical young adult. He was a complainer and arrogant. Akima was somewhat a goody-goody at times, except when they gave her a gun, then she really kicked butt. Korso was a flip flop. That's the best way I can think of to describe him, but he was still a pretty cool character. Preed was one of my favorites. He was interesting and different from what I've normally seen for a sidekick. Stith and Gune were secondary sidekicks for the most part, Gune being comic relief.

The animation is great. It's definitely up to Disney standards. All the characters were well designed, especially some of the alien characters. Bluth used a mixture of 2-D and 3-D, and was intentionally made to look 3-D throughtout the whole film. Sometimes it looks a tad out of place, but for the most part, it looks ok. The score is pretty much non-exsistent and hard rock songs are sprinkled throughout the film, but for once I actually enjoyed most of them. XP

Overall I quite enjoyed this film, despite its major flaws. The characters were fairly interesting and so was the story, even with as many plot holes as it had. I'd recommend it to any sci-fi fan.

A partial save after the disaster that was Anastasia. Titan A.E. is Don Bluth's grittiest film ever, if not his best work. It caters to adult sensibilities and surprisingly works. There's on screen blood, lots of firefights, and people get threatened with very real violence, and not the sort of violence you'd see in Disney movies. However it never "shows off" its adultness nor does it let mayhem get out of control and prevent it from telling what it needs to tell. The story is riddled with plot holes that almost kill this movie. Like why the Drej decided to spare Akima. Or why Cale could escape from his prison by parting the electrical fields. However all the elements of a good sci-fi film are present here. The characters are very interesting and often quite funny. My favorite character is hands down the fiery Stith. The final scene with the ice crystals is a pure knockout. The CGI, like always, sticks out like a sore thumb, but the animation is actually first rate. All in all, a flawed but entertaining movie.

To paraphrase another review I once read: inspite of bad music and a plot so full of holes it looks like swiss cheese... I actually like this movie. It sounds strange but it's true.

Good stuff: Computer animation integration. I had major problems with Bluth/Fox's last film "Anastasia" but either it was just generally better or the action was so fast I didn't notice. And there is definitely action--lots of it. One thing this movie has in spades is eye candy... from the energy-based Drej to a boat race through a forest of exploding hydrogen trees. It's also a much grittier film... much more than North American audiences I think will be use to in animation.. people get shot, they bleed, they even die. Good guy/bad guy dynamics are even more complicated... there's a great plot twist in the film which I won't detail since it really picks things up when they start to lag. Oh, and Janeane Garafalo (Stith) is still my hero.

Bad stuff: Let's start with the music. You know that electric-guitar heavy music in the trailer? Well, it's everywhere in the film and it gets bloody annoying after a while... I mean, bless Bluth for not throwing in some singing aliens, but really leave the 80s rock in the past where it belongs... ugh. Then of course there's those nasty plot holes... it's funny, the film feels surprising long for an animated outing but I felt at the end so many of those holes could have been filled in with just fifteen more minutes of backstory and explanation.

Overall though I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed the film. Don't expect the Secret of NIMH or Star Wars or something, but it's generally a good piece of work.