LaserCrusader

For the record, movies don’t always flop because they’re bad. Some movies made during the same-ish time period like Treasure Planet, Iron Giant, and Cats Don’t Dance were really good IMO and deserved to succeed, only flopping because their companies more-or-less purposely screwed them over. 

Is Titan A.E. one of those films?? Well, no, but it’s not terrible either. Here’s the shtick. It’s got a lot of going for it, and honestly it’s interesting enough that I’d want to watch it again sometime. But it’s flaws kinda prevent it from being an actually good film.

The film is, in short, an early 2000s 2D-3D hybrid animated sci-fi film, with Don Bluth and some other guy directing (with Don Bluth being known for a fair number of notable films, with Secret of NIMH and Land Before Time as some of my favorites). It involves humans and aliens and the entire earth being blown up by genocidal aliens, and an adventure through space. Honestly, with my love of sci-fi, animation, and nostalgia for the early 2000s, this film sounds just like the kind of thing I’d like.

So what’s it got going for it? Production value for one. The visuals are honestly impressive for the time (the CG hasn’t aged well but again, impressive for its time). Also potential. They really had a lot of good ideas in this film. There’s some interesting alien designs and settings, some pretty good action at times, etc. Also they apparently made a bunch of those early 2000s alt rock songs just for the movie, and that’s great.

But where did it fail? Story and pacing, big time. At times they literally had all the right ideas but just couldn’t put them together in a way that was well-paced or even cohesive. Other times it felt like the plot and character developments were only done to fill some sort of checkmark like “and the plot/character development has to do this”, without actually doing the work to get from point A to point B in a way that’s cohesive and makes sense. 

Like literally, this is exactly how the character development is in this film. The characters are hardly established in any meaningful way and end up changing their tune without us actually seeing them go through some sort of change. Plenty of moments in the film just feel kinda forced while others awkward.

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The awkward pacing also applies to the animation. There’s a fair amount of jank that just makes the characters and interactions come off as awkward. It’s either in the way they move or the timing of the way they move. Sometimes characters even come off as over-animated, like they shouldn’t be moving as much as they should be for their particular line or action.

This may come in part from the difference between the aliens and the human characters. The aliens tend to be animated a bit more... lively, like they have a bit more freedom to animate the aliens with more exaggeration. This would likely look just fine on its own, but the humans don’t really have that same degree of exaggeration, so you have this juxtaposition of aliens with exaggerated movement and expression, and the humans being more subdued in terms of movement and expression. This is probably because they used live-action reference for a ton of the humans’ actions and possibly stuck too close to it. 

If it was either one or the other in terms of how they animated their characters, there would probably be less awkwardness. But because they had both, very frequently in the same scenes as one another, it just came off as awkward. The humans either seemed too subtle in expression or the aliens too exaggerated.  

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Speaking of which, alien designs were pretty good, though a bit hit or miss in some places. I feel like there was an overemphasis on just, grungy, ugly aliens with no color. These kinds of aliens are fine, but when ALL of your aliens are like this, it almost makes them seem all the same despite their design variety. They’ve all got the same sort of “ugly” going on. 

Also, one of the main characters, Stith, has incredibly disproportionate legs that are always bent in an awkward position and its... awkward. I thought she was crouch-walking when she first showed up due to being like really tall or something, but no, that’s her normal default state at all times. I think they kinda sacrificed some appeal for the sake of uniqueness, when perhaps a better balance could have been struck. In either case, with legs like those you’d think you’d have her use them in combat to show that they serve some sort of purpose other than looking weird. Honestly, it might’ve worked out better if they gave her a torso more proportionate to her legs, and maybe not quite-so-humanlike because she literally has boobs so it resembles a human-torso even more so. NOTHING meshes together. 

(This be the broad in question. Honestly as a character she was alright, but suffered from the usual problem of literally none of these characters being given a lot of depth. This is especially true for her and Gune, as they’re both supporting characters and thus given even LESS attention).

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Speaking of alien designs, the Drej, the main antagonists, are horrible. They’re basically these weird robotic-looking 3D models that are ENTIRELY BLUE and GLOWING. This is BAD because I can barely tell what they look like, and not in the cool “oh no its some eldritch horror” kind of way, more in the “wow I literally can’t tell what’s going on” kind of way. 

(This is a still image. Most of these times the guys are moving around or there are quick scene cuts. That’s not to even mention that I watched this on VHS, where the details likely got even more smudged).

Speaking of the Drej, as a threat...? They’re pretty poorly established in the sense of... what exactly their place is in the universe. Are they an empire? Are they some eldritch beings who destroy other species that get too advanced? What are their relations with the other species that aren’t humans?? Literally none of these questions are answered in any remote way because they never ever decide to establish ANYTHING.

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On that note, the plot as a whole is barely coherent. Like, when you REALLY think critically about it and its various twists and turns, it makes no sense. Nothing that should be explained is ever explained. Nothing that should be established is ever established. Nothing that should be foreshadowed is ever foreshadowed. Things like that.

Basically, it seems that they’ve put all of their time, energy and focus into making the film look amazing and being different and edgy, without giving a hoot about the story. The story itself is kinda standard in terms of overall structure, being a hero’s journey with the protagonist having fatherly abandonment angst (though with no mention of his mother anywhere, like not even once). This kind of thing isn’t new, but that isn’t a problem. What is the problem is that they didn’t put the story together in a way that’s actually good. 

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And on yet another note, the worldbuilding is almost non-existent in terms of the larger context surrounding the setting. Like it’s still got smaller details, like the main character working a crappy scrap-collecting job with a bunch of other aliens... but anything detailing the larger, surrounding context that actually grounds the smaller things to some sort of foundation is completely absent. Like oh hey, the Drej exist, but in what relation to everyone else? Oh hey, humans and aliens coexist, but how and under what circumstances, and what were things like before vs after Earth went boom? Oh hey, there’s a slave trade, but how legal is that crap?? Oh hey, are there any governments or authorities at all??? Etc., etc., these things are completely absent. The setting is vague and thus there is no larger context in which to frame our characters’ actions, or anybody’s actions for that matter. It doesn’t matter if your characters are saving the world or just chilling, not having an actual context for their actions and activities takes away a lot of the weight from their actions.

Like the first Star Wars did a much better job of actually establishing its overall larger setting, both through the things that it showed and the things it established through character dialogue (quite naturally I might add). All the smaller details have a larger overarching foundation that ties it all together. With Titan A.E. you get literally NOTHING that establishes what the overall larger setting is like, AT ALL.

And you don’t even need to reveal everything at once, or even everything. As long as you reveal some things in ways that are natural, in ways that build and flesh out your world, in ways that establish context and establish stakes, then yer doing something right and doing a lot more than Titan A.E.

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Okay but, overall, the film isn’t terrible. Like this is something I could feasibly watch again. The films I consider really bad are the ones I can’t stand watching again and hate the fact that I ever watched in the first place. 

As for more detail on what I liked about the film... aside from the overall spectacle being great, there were a few sci-fi moments that were cool. For example, when two of the characters needed to break out of an escape pod to enter the vacuum of space in order to reach the ship, one of the characters told the other to exhale, which is an often overlooked detail in the vacuum of space that holding your breath is actually a bad thing to do due to pressure differences between your lungs and the vacuum. They also used a fire extinguisher for course correction and propulsion, which is cool.

(Unfortunately, it’s very obvious that the characters were animated taking a deep inhale and holding it in. The lip-sync for the second “exhale” even seems to match “inhale” better. It seems likely that they animated the scene first and then discovered that holding your breath in space is bad, then changed up the dialogue and altered some of the lip-sync in an attempt to fix it but didn’t have the time to reanimate the part and just hoped people wouldn’t catch it).

Some of the characters had fun moments. Stith had her violent tendencies, Gune his... gooniness, and Preed just overall charisma and wit. The main cast wasn’t that bad, they just weren’t fleshed out enough. With the exception of the human captain Joseph Korso, who goes from decent guy to dirty traitor out of nowhere with no foreshadowing, and is a heartless bastard by the end of the film but gets a predictable self-sacrifice redemption that also kinda just comes out of nowhere because just earlier he literally expressed the desire to kill Gune and Stith off and just randomly became remorseful when he was about to fall off a cliff and protagonist boi still wanted to save his arse because they had some bonding time even though his true self seems really nasty and just... THEY WROTE THIS GUY LIKE A FREAKING LIGHT SWITCH, OKAY?!?!

Oh yeah, the film has the tendency to just sorta... forget characters for a hot second at times. One glaring example being captain jerknugget sacrificing himself to help save the human race, and afterwards is never shown nor mentioned again, like the characters don’t even reflect on him at all at the ending. 

Goodness freaking gravy, I can’t talk about the good points without mentioning where they went wrong. That’s kind of the case with the entire film. For every good thing there’s something else holding it back.

Honestly, something tells me this film’s production wasn’t exactly a piece of cake lol. Just skimming over the Wikipedia article on it is enough to tell me that they didn’t exactly have the best conditions for making this film any better than they did. A lot of its faults are likely due to development troubles rather than sloppiness, but faults are faults and honestly, I think part of it was prioritizing the film’s visual appeal over its story as if the former would compensate for the latter. Though they did apparently do a lot of outsourcing so maybe they just didn’t have the time? I mean, the entire film was literally just dropped on the animation studio like “here, we wanted to make a sci-fi movie but it didn’t work out so you guys give it a shot”. Honestly that plus whatever time constraints they had probably did it. 

In some paradoxical way, I still like the film despite slamming my head over the terrible writing and pacing. Is it the good parts of it? The potential? Or maybe my biases towards the genre, medium and time-period of the movie as a whole? 

In any case, if you want a good animated sci-fi flick from the early 2000s with an actually well-written story about an angsty guy with father abandonment issues and a journey through space with some assorted alien characters, watch Treasure Planet. XP

I had posted a lot of my thoughts on the after-credits scene in a previous post: https://lasercrusader.tumblr.com/post/681373160542781440/thoughts-on-sonic-movie-2-electric-boogaloo

But the sheer implications of this scene alone is pretty big, so let’s get into it.

The scene establishes right away that Shadow the Hedgehog was a product of a certain Project Shadow that occurred 50 years ago. This matches up very well with his original backstory, and I think that despite its dark nature, they will implement Gerald, Maria, and their untimely demises at the hands of the government. Why? Well, aside being central to Shadow’s character, we have Sonic and Knuckles to consider.

In this movie universe, Sonic and Knuckles are both characters that had lost everything at a young age due to some tragedy. 

Knuckles was driven by his anger towards Sonic and his duty to his tribe which led him to making some very big errors in judgement, which is similar to how Shadow was driven by his anger towards humanity and his perceived promise to Maria which led to him trying to fulfill Gerald’s revenge plan.

Meanwhile, Sonic had lost his only family due to people coming after him, similar to how Shadow lost his entire family due to people coming after him. The Echidnas wanted Sonic’s power, and the government feared Shadow’s power. Longclaw is wounded by an arrow while getting Sonic to safety and stays behind to ensure he escapes, which directly parallels Maria getting shot while getting Shadow to safety and staying behind in order to ensure he escapes. 

All three of these characters know what it’s like to be alone and not have anybody to share their grief and pain with. All three of these characters share common ground and experiences. It’s perhaps through these shared experiences that they come to understand each other and Shadow is eventually redeemed.

And where would Tails fit into all of this? His past experiences aren’t much like Shadow’s, but it’s possible that he’ll remind Shadow of Maria and that'll cause Shadow to open his heart a little. Only thing I could really think of, because otherwise Tails might get a little left-out in the character interactions. Hopefully they won’t leave our favorite two-tailed boi behind.

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As much as it’d be really awesome to see Shadow join the bro-squad with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, it’s very likely that Shadow will sacrifice himself to save the planet like he did in SA2, which will cut the bro-time pretty short.

And it was this that made me realize a possibility both amazing and dreadful. What if Shadow actually dies for good? What if he finally finds new family and friends, only to die in order to protect them?

It would be an insanely gutsy move to kill him off for good, but it’d give the story a lot of impact and weight, and it’d definitely throw the fans for a loop. Everyone would see his sacrifice coming but NOBODY would see its permanence coming.

Anyway, that’s only a possibility. There’s really no telling what they’ll do.

For all we know, they could bring him back in a miniseries where he’s recovered by GUN (with or without amnesia) and he becomes an agent for them, working alongside Rouge and Omega, and maybe even encounters the Black Arms and discovers more of his backstory or something. But that’s just me spitballing.

On another note, with the possibility of Jim Carrey retiring after Sonic 2, we face the possibility of Eggman not returning. While Shadow COULD be the sole villain of Sonic 3, I highly doubt they’ll go that route. Judging by Agent Stone being in the end-credits scene overhearing GUN talking about Project Shadow, it seems like they’re setting him up to replace Eggman if Jim Carrey decides to retire. 

One possible issue with that is that Agent Stone teaming up with the heroes to save the planet has a lot less impact than Eggman teaming up with the heroes to save the planet. Not to mention that even if Eggman was still around, the differences between movie and game Eggman still changes the nature of the team-up. Honestly, aside from Shadow’s character arc and sacrifice, there’s a lot of aspects of SA2 that they simply aren’t going to be able to capture, so it’s for the best that they deviate from it. They may just have Agent Stone be there to fulfill the role of “smart human controlling robots” or at least fulfill the role of waking up Shadow. And even if he’s teamed up with Shadow, he doesn’t really have the character depth for his interactions with the other characters to be particularly meaningful, so it’d be a lot better for Shadow to take most of the spotlight. 

In that regard, it’s not likely for Agent Stone to be a major part of any team-up, unless they decide to make his character deeper.

It’s ALSO possible that GUN will be the antagonist that Shadow teams-up with. Like maybe GUN awakens Shadow and puts him up against Sonic (because they still perceive him as a threat) while also gathering the Chaos Emeralds to keep them out of everybody else’s hands. Maybe GUN still fears Shadow and they plan on betraying him as soon as possible. Shadow willingly works for GUN but with the intention of betraying them, and as soon as he gets all the Chaos Emeralds he enacts Gerald’s revenge plan. There isn’t really anything to indicate this possibility as likely, but it’s interesting to think about.

Other thoughts concerning Sonic 3:

Will Rouge be a thing and will there be a Master Emerald shard-hunting subplot?

Will GUN frame Sonic for Shadow’s actions in order to keep Project Shadow secret?

Will the Space Colony ARK still be a thing?

How will they explain Shadow’s creation?

Will Tails get a mech?

City Escape? Low budget flights with no food or movies? 

How much SA2 are we talking about here?

Will Amy be a character at any point in time??

In the movie, one of Tails’ gadgets creates holograms of himself and others. This gadget was used in two major scenes, giving it quite a bit of emphasis. I was initially confused as to why this particular gadget existed, as there was no counterpart for it in the games...

BUT THEN IT HIT ME. They most likely took inspiration from Tails’ original inspiration, the kitsune. For those who don’t know, kitsune are multi-tailed foxes from Japanese folklore who are known for their intelligence and have various supernatural powers, with one of those powers being the ability to create illusions.

Things I particularly liked:

They incorporated some of the characters’ original backstories, like Tails being inspired by Sonic and Knuckles growing up as the last of his kind.

Tails and Knuckles’ characterizations were great. 

Tails was so freaking cute and pretty darn cool, and they successfully made him a nerd without sacrificing his other character traits. 

Knuckles was so freaking cool and surprisingly funny with his naivety; Knuckles was originally characterized as naive and gullible rather than stupid, so it’s cool to see this movie stay true to that idea.

There was a lot more focus on the Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman than the other characters. 

Actual lore and worldbuilding, and incorporation of some of the original lore with a very interesting twist on it. 

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles teaming up and then being legitimate bros by the end of the film. I could see them having an amazing friend/family dynamic. Seeing these three in action together was so hype. TEAM SONIC HYPE.

The mostly human segment involving veterinarian gal and her sister was pretty fun. The preceding shenanigans were also pretty fun.

GUN being a thing was particularly hype.

Super Sonic was really freaking hype.

Eggman references Sonic Adventure when he yells “CHAOS IS POWER!” upon harnessing the Master Emerald.

Sonic and Tails dancing together was amazing, as was the fireplace scene afterwards. SONIC FINALLY BREAKDANCES, and seeing Tails do it too is so cool, as well as seeing them have some legitimate fun together. Very wholesome.

The baseball scene was really great and wholesome.

The end-credits were a step-up from the original, having some great pixel art with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles looking fantastic. On the downside, they still use generic video-game sound effects, but overall the credits were really great. 

Tails’ full name was said at least once.

Sonic vs. Knuckles was pretty darn cool. Seeing Sonic get serious and go all out against Knuckles was pretty lit. Sonic using the spin-dash was awesome to see.

Though the fight choreography could be better, and honestly I don’t think they utilized the characters’ full potentials. Sonic should’ve learned by this point that he needs to use his speed to outmaneuver Knuckles instead of rushing head-on all the time. There was also a lack of any really stand-out moves that you would normally see from the characters, like Sonic’s kicks and breakdance style and Knuckles’ spirals, digging and uppercuts. 

Sonic using a move similar to his bounce move from Adventure 2 was really cool though. 

They remembered Knuckles likes grapes. That’s kinda cool.

It’s not a Sonic game/TV show/movie unless Tails crashes his plane at least once (jk, but it’s a fun running theme).

Tails is always cool in a plane, and it was cool to see the Tornado in some shape or form, even if it’s just a random bi-plane in-universe. Hoping Tails will get another plane by the third movie lol, maybe the Tornado 2?

Things I particularly disliked:

The soundtrack. Again with the soundtrack. As far as I could tell, there was literally no Sonic music except for Tom’s ringtone. Not even a leimotif. If something was there, it was either too subtle (which would defeat the point) or I couldn’t catch it in the mix of the voices and sound effects (which would probably mean it’s too subtle). The soundtrack itself was, aside from the licensed songs, generic movie orchestral arrangements. It not only lacked Sonic identity, it just plain lacked identity and didn’t really stick out at all. Contrast this with the soundtrack of Sonic OVA, which didn’t have any arrangements of game themes but were still very much Sonic in their style, had a lot of identity, and accentuated many moments.

One missed opportunity was Sonic turning Super Sonic. It was an awesome moment, but that’s usually where the awesome music is supposed to kick in; something that would stick out and make the scene even more memorable. But the music wasn’t anything special, so the moment didn’t hit as hard as it could’ve.

Apparently the composer explains his reasoning for lack of Sonic music as: “In an interview with Polygon, Junkie XL shared that it was not possible to rely solely on video game music in the film because it didn't help enhance the story. ‘It would sound too small for the big action scenes, it would not cover enough emotion when Sonic is all alone in his cave and he has no friends. There's a lot of that to it[.]’”. I strongly disagree with this. The games from Adventure-onward used music to great advantage for their stories, and even without the Adventure-era, it should still be possible to at LEAST work in some motifs.

And theoretically speaking, you should be able to remix songs to fit scenes. Ech. 

And associating certain themes with certain characters would’ve been cool, so you could interweave their leimotifs throughout to accentuate certain moments. ECH.

Like seriously though, the teaser for Sonic 2 incorporating the Emerald Hill scene really got my hopes up. 

Source for the above quote: https://www.newsweek.com/sonic-hedgehog-2-soundtrack-1696304

Tails doesn’t get a whole lot of action scenes, and when he does finally enter the fray directly at the end, he mostly relies on a laser gun with only a handful of other moves. Would’ve been cool to see a bit more variety from him, considering the gadgets he had in his in bag and in the games. 

As for being actually able to throw hands directly, I could see that being a thing in the third movie considering he’ll have spent time with Sonic and Knuckles.

No Metal/Mecha Sonic, and with Shadow being introduced so early, it’s unlikely we’ll see a robot Sonic doppelganger (unless the TV series does something). Though with Knuckles being an antagonist for much of the film, it might’ve been too clunky to incorporate. 

Only new Badniks were the Buzz Bomber-based ones. Not too big of a deal but eh.

Kinda feel like the human characters stole some of the spotlight from Tails and Knuckles during the climax when they save Sonic. It was still a good moment for those characters, but it kinda came at the expense of Tails and Knuckles who were straight-up absent that entire scene until Eggman nearly killed Sonic and his adopted parents. Would’ve really sold Tails’ and Knuckles’ bond with Sonic further if they were the ones to come to Sonic’s rescue.

Things of note that I have no freaking clue:

The end credits scene with Shadow the freaking Hedgehog. I knew that with GUN being a thing, Shadow would inevitably follow, but I didn’t think he’d be introduced so soon, nor did I think they were going to stay as close (as far as I can tell) to his original backstory. This could have wide-reaching implications. I’m still iffy on what will amount to some adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2 happening so soon, but if they execute it right they could introduce the heart of Shadow’s character and story to a whole new audience. 

Though the question is, will they manage to pull it off? SA2′s story is pretty dark, and comparatively speaking the films haven’t gone that far yet. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that they brought Shadow on so soon because he’s the second-most popular Sonic character. But who knows, maybe they know what they’re doing.

How the heck are they going to adapt Sonic Adventure 2? Is Rogue going to be a character? What about Amy? Will Adventure receive an adaptation?

It’s possible that the Sonic TV series could adapt Adventure by having Sonic, Tails and Knuckles travel to other worlds, which is how they could meet people like Amy and Big without them coming to the human world. Though it’d be kinda hard to have Gamma be a character if Eggman isn’t going to be around after Sonic 2.

I freaking swear if they don’t play Live and Learn at some point during Sonic 3-

Hopefully the 3rd movie incorporates SA2 music in general. 

The Master Emerald was created after the Chaos Emeralds, which seems to maybe match up with the lore, but in this case it was created FROM the Chaos Emeralds... interesting. And then the Master Emerald breaks and the Chaos Emeralds come out. Cool. Then the Emeralds go flying off after Sonic de-transforms. Cool. But then Knuckles repairs the Master Emerald (which is really cool as it references the Adventure series), but then the Master Emerald is now its own thing and we don’t know what it does but it’s still important...? A lot of things there weren’t really clarified but, I guess the exposition for those things will come next film.

Eggman teleports with the Master Emerald’s power, i.e. Chaos Control. I almost wanted to blurt out “HE CAN USE CHAOS CONTROL!”

Kind of wondering if they’ll ever incorporate Tikal’s prayer. 

A little bummed they seemingly aren’t going to adapt Adventure.

Sonic and Knuckles probably have innate Chaos powers due to their lightning motif.

Speaking of such, I'm still not a huge fan of the lightning stuff and still think it would’ve been cooler if their portrayals were closer to the games (where Sonic’s speed directly translated to force, which allows him to literally weaponize the air and gives him a wind motif, and also gives him reasons to limit his speed in certain situations). There’s a lot of cool potential there that simply won’t be capitalized on.

If they’re adapting Sonic Adventure 2, then chances are they’ll also give Tails his mech, which would be cool, but I’m afraid that Tails may not get an opportunity to just straight-up throw hands. I swear pretty much every film or TV adaptation of Tails (except Sonic OVA) sleeps on his ability to throw hands. But who knows.

Annnd that’s probably it. Glad I got that out of my system. I really like the two movies and think they’re pretty good, but I still think they could be a lot better. I’m hoping someday there’ll be some Sonic film media that really embraces all the things that make the Sonic series so cool (aside from Sonic OVA which already kinda does that), but as far as major motion pictures go, these movies are doing a lot of things right. They’re also introducing some interesting takes on the characters that we likely wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I’m really looking forward to where they’ll take Sonic, Tails and Knuckles’ character dynamics in the future. It seems they’re setting them up to be real bros, and that’s something that would be really cool to see.

To be quite honest, that’s probably one thing the mainline series is missing: delving deeper into the interpersonal relationships of these characters, and a glimpse of what they’re doing on their off-time. I wouldn’t want the games to have Sonic, Tails’ and Knuckles’ relationship exactly like that of the movies, but it would be cool to see some mainline material go more in-depth with them. I think even the mainline versions of the characters have the potential to be bros, though obviously it wouldn’t be the same as the movie versions.

Okay, that’s actually probably it. I definitely look forward to watching it again. I honestly can’t appreciate movies fully if I’m watching them in the theater, so I think the second time around may be even better. XP