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Don Bluth was one of the few animators who worked outside of Disney and had any kind of success with his various projects at different studios. But Bluth was also wildly inconsistent, often delivering films that had more unique parts and parts than they did complete and coherent wholes. Titan A.E. is no different, with a script coming from Ben Edlund, Joss Whedon and John August that somewhere took the best that each of those writers has to offer and shooting out hollow characters, hodgepodge story ideas and cliché beats, from the rest of Bluth’s body of work.
Having said that, while the story and characters are lacking, the visuals are stunning and there are moments of quite clever and unique creature/character/location designs. A thrilling sequence on a battle littered with large balloons filled with explosive gases is marvelous to look at, and the bat/bird hybrid creatures that populate the planet are very strange and original. Another stellar moment comes when the crew runs into a group of space whales, stingray-like animals that seem to leave a trail of stardust in their wake. The combination of CGI and hand-drawn animation throughout the film sometimes works cohesively and other times looks garishly slammed together. This sequence is a moment when the two merge together to create a truly beautiful, breathtaking piece of animation. It’s a pity that the rest of the movie couldn’t rise to the challenge of creating wittier, intelligent things to say or do throughout. But as a cult film, count me firmly in the category of people who think and look back at Titan A.E. with fondness.
