Spectacular visuals (the ice field, in particular, is stunning) weren't enough to guarantee success for this expensive project that saw the end of 20th Century-Fox's attempt at prestige animation before it had even really begun. Shame, as this is approaching a minor classic and may be the closest Hollywood animation ever got to live-action presentation. If you like anime, science-fiction, action or animation in general, this is for you.

>>> Plot teaser

3025: Earth is no more, it has been destroyed by the Drej, aliens terrified by mankind's invention of a new machine known as the Titan. The remnants of mankind drift through the universe on the verge of extinction, until young Cale finds himself embarking on a journey of betrayal and danger in a mission to discover the ultimate truth.

>>> Principal cast and crew

◦ Matt Damon: Voice Talent: Cale
◦ Bill Pullman: Voice Talent: Korso
◦ John Leguizamo: Voice Talent: Gune
◦ Nathan Lane: Voice Talent: Preed
◦ Janeane Garofalo: Voice Talent: Stith
◦ Drew Barrymore: Voice Talent: Akima
• Director: Don Bluth
• Director: Gary Goldman
• Additional Sequences Director: Art Vitello
• Writer (Story): Hans Bauer
• Writer (Story): Randall McCormick
• Writer (Screenplay): Ben Edlund
• Writer (Screenplay): John August
• Writer (Screenplay): Joss Whedon

>>> More comment

Sadly, this feeling of things not being quite as good as they should be is characteristic of Don Bluth's directorial career and one wishes that some of his talent for bringing personality to his animation (Bluth is one of the all-time great hand-drawn character animators) carried over to his direction.

Curiously, they never advertised it as coming from the writers of [Komodo], [Speed 2] and [Charlie's Angels]. Wonder why?

Still, quite why it didn't catch an audience isn't clear. 20th Century-Fox put out a decent advertising campaign with a spectacular teaser way in advance. Bluth was coming off his most financially successful movie ("Anastasia", also for 20th Century-Fox). The subject should appeal to the anime crowd (probably DVD's most lucrative market but not cinema's). This is Bluth's best movie (by some way, for me) and will probably be the last creative output for one of the 20th centuries greatest animators. It combines good ideas, agreeable sci-fi clichés (making a planet is easy by the looks of things), a script that occasionally delivers rather useful dialogue ("An intelligent guard, who'd have thought?", "Planet Bob" - usually courtesy of Joss Whedon), generally excellent animation (the character animation is overdone at times with people's mouths, heads and arms all over the place but when it settles down, it is excellent), a good soundtrack and genuinely stunning visuals. Now, if that doesn't get the award for the world's longest sentence, I don't know what will.

The most eye-catching scene is probably the ice crystal field. This is nicely reminiscent of the classic Star Trek encounter between Kirk and Khan at the climax of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and, while it's not as good as that scene (indeed, that is one of the all-time great sci-fi climaxes), it looks amazing, is well directed and is a very strong scene.

Another scene reminds you of the classic "Star Wars" escape from the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon. During this final battle sequence the Drej ships even blow up into simple vector patterns that look just like the ones used in the classic 3D "Star Wars" arcade game. It ties in nicely with the design of the bad guys, the Drej. The movie bad guys are gleefully (and no doubt purposefully) reminiscent of "Space Invaders". It seems appropriate then that the video game "Halo" and others seem to have borrowed the monsters from this movie and simply re-coloured them.

The cast is okay. The best thing that can be said is that the voices don't overwhelm the animation (unlike a lot of Dreamworks and Fox contemporary CG animation). Matt Damon as our hero Cale starts pretty badly but settles into it. Drew Barrymore's voice doesn't quite fit her Asian character. Bill Pullman probably fits best as hero Han Solo-alike Captain Korso. John Leguizamo provides an agreeably eccentric voice for the mad scientist character while Nathan Lane does well by not doing a funny voice for his right-hand-lizard. Overall, the cast do a decent job but they could all have been done by other people to just as good effect.

>>> Unwritten movie rules

• Unwritten movie rule: when transforming any vehicle from a scrapyard to working order there is always time for an amazing custom paint job, especially if they are in a rush.

• Unwritten movie rule: in sci-fi movies, making planets is a piece of cake.

>>> DVD commentary

Directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman provide a pretty decent commentary but considering how involved Bluth is in encouraging new animation talent (see www.donbluth.com/academy.html), it is surprisingly light on tips and tricks in creating some of the animation effects. However, when he does elaborate (for example, he talks about the need to go beyond the technical ability to animate and to understand subtext in order to create character). The commentary does seem to indicate that the pair were a little dissatisfied with the movie and would have preferred to have spent more time (another year, in fact) on it (they joined the project after 18 months or so and spent almost two years making it). One thing they keep moaning about is the subtitles for the Drej. Personally, I think they can look back and be rather more pleased with their accomplishment. It's not the overlooked classic Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant" is (if you haven't seen that, go watch it immediately) but it certainly didn't find the audience it deserved. Ironically, "Titan A.E." is a more ambitious and better film than all the subsequent Fox animations delivered through subsidiary enterprises (including "Ice Age" and "Robots" and the partially animated "Monkeybone").

>>> DVD extras

Featurette (Fox Kids The Quest for the Titan): 4:3. A brief simple making-of that doesn't outstay its welcome and tells you everything you would want to know. You may be surprised as the amount of live action reference is required for a film like this. Indeed, the movie credits a dozen or so live-action reference actors and half-a-dozen stunt people! The doc closes with a short segment where the key personnel talk about what they hope to have achieved in the movie and I always find that a little depressing on projects like this which clearly took a lot of effort, ambition and thought but didn't find an audience.

Music video for Over My Head by Lit. Reasonably entertaining song (but only just not annoying) with some good integration of movie visuals and the band. The piece of debris they play on as it floats through space is particularly well done.

Deleted scenes: all the deleted scenes are presented in 4:3 and combine low quality final footage with full line animation for the characters and, generally, low-res CG backgrounds. None of the deleted scenes have any commentary from the directors.

Deleted scenes (Green Drinks): an expanded scene from the one left in the movie just has a bit more dialogue and exposition.

Deleted scenes (Akima's Escape): this adds an escape sequence onto the scene where Korso meets Akima in prison. They used the music from "Men in Black" as a placeholder. Not obvious why the sequence would be deleted. It's not very long, it contains your standard prison break-out cliché ("Go on! Get out of here!") and ends in what would have been another spectacular explosion (probably, that bit isn't complete).

Deleted scene (Ice Crystals original cut): now this isa midly interesting deleted scene where we get an alternative version of what is probably the best scene in the movie. This original version sees the Cale and Akima's ship's power faltering and the pair just sitting there not doing a fat lot. In the final version, it is cleverly replaced by Akima's tactical and piloting skill. The final version works better.

Deleted scene (Final Battle original cut): As far as I could tell, this sequence is basically unchanged in the final movie, just a little fleshed out with a few more explosions and the like. The music for this deleted scene is from "Speed" and "Total Recal". The movie version is better.

Trailers: 4:3. There are two theatrical trailers and two TV trailers. The theatrical trailer are both excellent, spectacular and cool. The TV trailers are bad featuring dialogue such as "will take you to a world you've never seen" (which means you have) and this is "extreme".