TITAN A.E.

TITAN A.E. (vt. PLANET ICE [US working title, 1998]). Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, dir. and among producers. USA: 20th Century Fox, Blue Sky Studios, Fox Animation Studios (prod.) / Fox and its subdivisions (dist.), 2000. Randall McCormick and Hans Bauer, story. Ben Edlund, John August, Joss Whedon, script. Blue Sky Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, SpFx. Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, featured voices.

+CGI and 2-D animation. See for the immense spacecraft Titan as an example of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"): where the STAR WARS death stars kill planets, this Titan brings Promethean life. The Martian machines in TOTAL RECALL (1990) rejuvenate Mars; the Genesis Project machines in STAR TREK 2-3 bring life to a planet that has never lived; the Titan goes even farther and first creates a planet from space ice and then brings life to it. There is also a «ring of power» that is clearly technological and almost magical in its ability to interface with the young hero's body—putting a map into his hand—and with the Titan. Note the generally po-mo ships of the good and neutral species vs. the mostly modern ships of the genocidal Drej; note also the appearance of the Drej: very elegant blue creatures of pure energy, but with subtle insectoid suggestions with the chief villain, plus suggestions with all of them of ghosts or even Death (cf. STAR WARS saga). Perhaps significantly, the non-Drej ships are Industrially solid, while the Drej ships are somewhat semipermeable, suggesting their «energetic» nature, ghostliness, and—just perhaps—a po-mo motif of dissolving barriers between organic and mechanical, Newtonian matter and energy, living world and spirit world, truth and betrayal; cf. and contrast ALIENS. Our sources: viewing this film, IMDb citation, and pre-release coverage by Mike Lyons, Cinefantastique 31.12/32.1 (June 2000): [16]-17. All films mentioned here are listed in this Category of the Wiki.