Titan, A.E.: the 20th Anniversary

The Blind Eternities forum

Posted on May 29, 2020, 12:23 p.m. by DemonDragonJ

This year is the 20th anniversary of Titan: A.E., the final (thus far) film by Don Bluth, a director and animator who was very prominent in the 1980’s and 90’s. Bluth’s films were some of my favorite films in my childhood, because they were not mainstream; they were going against the mainstream of Disney and Warner Bros. at that time. Many films intended for younger audiences contain dark and serious material, but Bluth was not shy about having his films be depressing and angsty; they had happy endings, but the journey there was often long and difficult, with the protagonists feeling crippling despair and isolation along the way.

Titan: A.E. was very different from any of Bluth’s previous films, as most of them had small-scale plots and featured anthropomorphic animals as their main characters, but this film had a grand and epic plot (the entire planet Earth is destroyed within the first ten minutes of the film) and focused mainly on human characters, but it was no less dark, with a post-apocalyptic atmosphere and humanity struggling to survive with the grim realization that they were now an endangered species. The entire film is an epic sci-fi adventure very akin to Star Wars or Starchaser: the Legend of Orin, and I feel that it has a well-written story and a great cast of characters that make it an underrated gem of cinema.

Titan: A.E. has been released on DVD, but not blu-ray, which is unfortunate, since the film is very visually impressive and would certainly look spectacular in high-definition, and also very odd, since nearly every other Don Bluth film has been released on blu-ray (and I own most of them), so I naturally am hoping for such a release, at some point in the future.

Since the release of this film, Don Bluth has not been very active in the film industry (although he is quite old, by this time), which is very unfortunate, since I feel that the industry needs more avant-garde filmmakers to go against the grain, since far too many animated films today feel too homogeneous and formulaic.

What does everyone else say about this subject? How do you feel about this year being the 20th anniversary of Titan: A.E.?

Dromar39 says... #2

I enjoyed watching it when I was younger. Haven't watched it in years though.

May 30, 2020 6:36 a.m.