I don’t know how I feel about this one. Maybe by the time I write this up I’ll talk myself into an opinion. The premise was ancient with no unexpected plot twists. The animation was crappy to just under acceptable. The voice acting was terrible and the music made me want to kill the first twelve people I saw. But somehow through all of that I still want to like it. I think it’s more of my own love of the premise that keeps me from hating this truly mediocre film.
It is one thousand years into the future, mankind has dabbled in space exploration and has been discovered by a race of energy beings that want to eradicate us not because of anything we have done but because of what we are capable of doing in the future. So far I like it.
The energy beings (I can’t remember their names so I’ll call them Trons because their animations looked like the old Tron movie) have found Earth and have come to destroy it. The guy in charge of the “Titan” project has to leave his son in the care of a friend because he has to get the Titan safely off the planet and hidden because it is the only hope for humankind. He gives his son a ring and says goodbye. The boy watches from a transport ship window as his father flies the Titan out just as the Earth is destroyed.
Ok, I still like the idea but the animation is wearing thin and the voice acting is killing me. The father talks like a 1920′s dogfighter pilot. Grandiose and a tad like Jon Lovitz doing the old “Masterpiece Theatre” bits on SNL. The other voices aren’t much better.
We break to fifteen years later. The boy has grown up as a salvage worker. Humans are a minority and he constantly being attacked by other workers because of his bad attitude. In one of his fights, he is rescued by another human who we discover was a soldier who served under the boy’s father. He takes the boy on to his crew on a quest to find the hidden Titan. The crew consists of a neurotic turtle, a lesbian kangaroo and a co-pilot dog thingy voiced by an evil Timon (Lion King). The hero’s ring is a DNA encoded map to the ship. Only he can wear the ring and he must be kept alive for it to work. In the battles that follow, the young kids are captured by the Trons and the boy is held captive while the girl is tossed overboard (in a cocoon so that she’s still alive… If you were throwing trash out the window, would you wrap it up all nice so that it could survive? No.) The crew finds the girl and rescues the boy. While doing so, it is revealed that the soldier and his co-pilot, evil Timon, are actually working for the Trons and are going to lead them to the Titan for profit. Ok, officially wearing thin now.
The boy hero and his girl fight to save the Titan. They escape the evil captain and evil Timon to one of the last human outposts. They rebuild a derelict ship to take off and find the Titan. I somehow have to wonder why none of the other humans volunteered to go with them and help… The Kangaroo and Turtle are unaware that their captain has turned to evil until they are set up in an explosion. Turtle realizes what is going on and saves Kanga but dies his own, withering, Yoda-like death. Finale of the movie, the kids find the Titan in an ice field and they have a little “Kal-el, Jor-el” moment when he talks to his dead father about how the Titan works. They need energy to start it up but when it does start, it will create a new planet, a home-world for humans. Bad guy breaks up the reunion and tries to kill the kid. The Trons have arrived just as the bad guy is starting to have a change in heart. He sacrifices himself so the kids can get the Titan started using the Trons as an energy source. Remember, they are energy beings. Convenient huh?
Surprise! Turtle didn’t die and now he and Kanga are joining the fight to help the kids. They get Titan started just as the Trons start their main attack. The Trons are absorbed and New Earth (planet Bob) is whirred into existence. That was the cool part, she asks him what he will name the new planet, he says, “Bob”. Who says he gets to name it? So just after it was brought into being, (I guess a week later or something?) they are standing on New Earth as Turtle and Kanga give a flyby with a “Whoohohoho” that just made you realize you were watching sub-standard writing the whole time. And the movie ends with the humans coming home.
It is a movie-going courtesy to all sci-fi that the “ship passing noise” and explosions in space are given a pass. But I wish they had used the “noiselessness” of space instead of all the CRAPPY music they used in this. It made the movie almost unwatchable. I liked the “used” space look, I dealt with the predictability of the plot, I even forgave the standard hero-in-peril, “give me the ring” scene. But that music was unforgivable. Overall I’d say it was watchable but just barely. Nothing I’d buy and nothing I’d ever watch a second time.
3 of 11 Skulls
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