Titan A.E.

Titan A.E. owes much to Star Wars – a shot of ship cannons firing on the Drej, the enemies of the film, is lifted straight out of A New Hope’s Death Star trench run. What Titan A.E. emulates best, however, is allowing its characters to grow in small moments. there are scenes that are completely superfluous to the plot, to the forward movement of the film. Yet, they become the most important parts of the film because they allow the viewers into the characters’ interior worlds. The scene where Cale chases space angels through what looks like celestial neurons – exploding through them as the cosmic heavens erupt in showers of pulsating light – allows us greater insight into who Cale is and what he aspires to far better than any expository speech or dialogue could have done.

Don Bluth’s films always engage with the wonder that we feel as children. These films always look us straight in the face and tell the truth: there is no shying away from Littlefoot’s mother’s death in The Land Before Time, or from the abandonment of Fievel in An American Tale, or Charles B. Barkin’s ultimate fate in All Dogs Go To Heaven. There is comfort somehow in the sadness that Bluth’s films portray – they tell us, as a great wizard once put it, that “not all tears are evil.”

Titan A.E. is a great addition to this collection of films. I often wonder why it was Bluth’s last film, as of yet. Perhaps computer-generated imagery hadn’t yet caught up to the images in his mind, or perhaps he said all he wanted to say. Either way, the world is a better place for having his films in it.