Titan A.E.

I recently had a conversation with a friend in which we discussed the future of science fiction. We both agreed that just about everything that can be done with sci-fi has already been done, and science fiction film-makers will have to have more imagination than ever before in order to produce a film that doesn't suffer from the same old tired clichés that many films have suffered from since Star Wars changed the face of science fiction twenty years ago. You can imagine, then, that I wasn't expecting much of the new film Titan A.E. I imagined that it would probably be fun but forgettable and disappointing. How wrong I was!

Titan A.E. is the first full-length animated science fiction film to be produced in the United States in decades. It is eighty percent computer generated; the only elements that were done using traditional animation techniques being the actual characters. Although it is a 'cartoon', it is not just for children. In fact, its intended audience seems to be teenagers upwards.

Titan A.E. begins in the year 3028. Humankind has long been able to travel to the far reaches of the galaxy, but has always thought of Earth as home. When a vicious alien race, the Drej, attack Earth, they don't just want to destroy a few cities and take over the planet, they want to completely obliterate all of humanity. The Drej have such an advanced technology that instead of attacking the Earth with laser guns, they just grab it in a tractor beam and speed up its rate of rotation until it tears itself apart under the strain. Many of the fleeing human ships and even the Moon are destroyed in the process, but the most important ship, the Titan gets away. On board the Titan is the father of a little boy, Cale, who watches his dad leave from another ship, and feels abandoned by him. Fifteen years later (that's 15 A.E or 'After Earth'), Cale is a rebellious hotshot who doesn't seem to care about very much. He spends his time working at a salvage station, fighting with his colleagues and eating food that's still alive. When he meets Korso, a captain who worked with his father on the Titan project, he learns that a ring his father gave him on the day he left contains a genetically encoded map that only he can activate. The map is the key to finding the Titan and in an instant Cale's life changes from one of dull drudgery to one that all of humanity is depending on. At the same moment, the Drej attack and Cale and Korso begin their mission with a pilot called Akima, and the alien crew of a ship called the 'Valkyrie'.

The best part of the film is set inside a huge ring-system of ice crystals. The combination of crisp computer animation and powerful sound gives a real feeling of flying through a hall of giant ice-mirrors where the enormous crystals haphazardly crash into each other and splinter into thousands of shards.

If you think animation is for kids, think again. If you haven't already seen any of the amazing science fiction animation films from Japan, Titan A.E. will be a refreshing departure from what you're used to. And don't forget to see the original version, it's sure to be spoiled by being dubbed into Finnish.