 Don Bluth is a name some of you may not recognize, but depending on when you were born, you will know of his works. An American tale, secret life of nymph, all dogs go to heaven, land before time. The first one, not the other million sequels that came out after it. The third one isn't actually that bad, though, Thumbelina, a troll in Central Park, and Fantasia. I'll admit, I haven't even seen all of these movies, but I still know of them and of Bluth's trademark style before I even started this essay. You can pretty much thank him for preparing children of the late 80s and early 90s to the disheartening, disturbing, and sometimes soul-breaking cacophony of world events that would happen over the next three decades. This man's movies are the reason why we keep on chugging along in this dark, dank, and depressing world. And while I may not have solid proof of this, I'm fairly certain that if you didn't feel anything, I mean an ounce of sadness when Littlefoot's mom died, you're probably a psychopath. So whether you know of Bluth or not, the man has had an entertaining legacy, starting as an animator for Disney back in the 60s, then moving on to direct his own animated films throughout the 80s and well into the 90s, but then it came to a complete halt in 2000, with the release of Titan A.E., and he hasn't made a single featured film since. Kind of a bizarre film to suddenly end on, considering just how cool its concept was. This movie is about an alien invasion of Earth, but instead of invading it, they blow it up, and that's in the first five minutes. Titan A.E. is a story about Kale Tucker, a young boy who witnessed the destruction of Earth, and watched as his father flew off into the far reaches of space in a ship called the Titan, and has never seen or heard from him in over 20 years. Kale has become a simple space drifter, who absentmindedly is watching the human race slowly fade from existence. A cosmic castaway, if you would. You see what I did there? But then the dredge, an alien species made up of pure energy who were responsible for destroying Earth come after him, and he is launched on an adventure of danger, betrayal, and self-discovery. Along the way he encounters a fun group of characters including Corso, a combination of Han Solo and Long John Silver, Akeema, a cold as ice pilot who keeps her hopes and dreams under heavy layers, Creed, a conniving trickster with his own interests at heart, Goon, a genius who is definitely a few screws loose shy of proper sanity, and Stith, an angry technician who looks like she's one day short of the eventual insanity we are all going to suffer under this self-quarantine business. The film was a big undertaking as the studio producing it wasn't Disney, but Fox Studios. In August 9th 1994 they had created their own major picture animation studio to try and get in on that Lion King money. Their first film Anastasia released in 1997 was met with good reception and decent box office revenue. It even spawned a well-received home video spin-off Bartok the Magnificent, so when the team went into production for Titan AE, they were completely unaware of what misfortunes lay in store for them. The production itself was fairly large, with a staff of 312 artists, technicians, and animators. Right from the get-go they tried their best to keep the film grounded in science with its visual design. When the Earth explodes at the beginning, the cracks that form are all the major fault lines of which they collected from satellite scans of the planet. They used photos of nebulas and gas clusters from the Hubble Space Telescope for reference, and due to the complex nature of the CGI mixing with the hand-drawn animation, many scenes were shot beforehand with live actors for reference material. The film was overall made up of 98% visual effects, which is very impressive for a animated movie, but it was also very expensive in time and money. There are some scenes like the opening, flying with the wake angels, or the final climax that have a majority of shots still hold up to today's animation standards. The climactic game of cat and mouse in the ice field is still one of my favorite scenes ever in a science fiction film. The level of detail and craftsmanship put into the scenes from the animators, the artists, and especially the sound designers is incredible. Upon his review of the film, Roger Ebert was a big fan of the sequence, saying the ice ring sequence is a perfect example of what animation can do and live action cannot. But from an overall visual standpoint, the film is definitely far from perfect. As I said before, these guys weren't working with Disney money. There were several scenes where the frame rate drops well below 24 frames per second and characters and objects move with a lag like motion. The dip back and forth between fluid frame weight and janky happens throughout the movie. There are times where the dredge queen looks like she's stuck in a PlayStation 1 cutscene. And just for reference sake, Disney released Atlantis the following year in 2001 with Treasure Planet following the year after. Now these aren't meant to be jabs of the film, just circumstantial criticism. The film did have a troubling development. The concept started out originally as a live action film with a script being passed around between different writers including Ben Endlin, Art Vitello, and even Josh Whedon. But after $30 million had been spent in early pre-development and no progress to show for it, many of the writers dropped out. The only reason this film actually got made was due to a sense of seeming kindness, if you want to call it that. The chairman of 20th Century Fox at the time, Bill Mechanic, gave it to Dom Bluth and Gary Goldman and their animation staff because it was either that or lay off the entire staff because there was no scripts for the studio to work on at the time. Once the project was set, they were given $75 million and 19 months to work on it. Even though Bluth and Goldman were not well-versed with the sci-fi genre, they did their best with what they had. But as I said before, they encountered many setbacks. Despite the initial act of trying to keep people employed, Fox Higher-Ups ordered several layoffs of the animation studio throughout the production. This resulted in many scenes having to be outsourced to different animation studios. The Wake Angels scene was outsourced to reality check studios, and the Genesis scene was outsourced to Blue Sky Studios, who eventually became Fox's animation homies as they went on to make the somehow successful Ice Age series. Despite all of these issues, they were still able to release the film on time. Initial reviews of it were decent from some. Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising it for its rousing story, largeness of spirit, and lush galactic visuals, which are beautiful in the same way photos by the Hubble Space Telescope are beautiful. Despite Ebert's encouraging words, the film was met with an overall mixed reception and opened to 5th place at the box office. It went on to make only $35 million total, which was less than half of its overall budget. 10 days after the film's release, the entire studio was shut down and Bill Mechanic was dismissed from the company. And Bluth and Goldman were out of a job. One could say that it might have been a result of what was out of the time, but when you see what it was beaten by, Mission Impossible 2, Big Mama's House, and Gone in 60 Seconds, it really makes me happy we moved on from 2000 cinema standards. Shaft wasn't bad though. A plausible case for the bad box office can be attributed to the absolutely terrible trailers. They were very misleading and painted the film as a young kid's movie, even though it clearly wasn't. It was more suited to young adults, not the young children that Disney had a market on. It probably didn't help that they used music from Creed in the trailer. Creed. Creed. Of all bands. Creed. The trailer was so poorly put together it delegitimized the quality of the film and people were turned away because of it. So why is this such a cult classic amongst my generation? I think it was because of the perfect art as perfect as can be, amalgamation of everything that was the late 90s and early 2000s. Dark and brooding tone? Check. Cool inventive, but still science-based narrative and visual style? Check. A cool bunch of characters with a great voice cast? Check. A soundtrack filled to the brim with grunge rock music that will forever date the film? You bet ya. While the film was certainly held back by some of its animation limitations, it definitely pushed the boundary for what was possible and cleared the way for another well-respected, but also underperforming science fiction animated film, Treasure Planet. The cast is also made up of some incredibly cool characters. Kale is a lone wanderer who gave up on humanity when his father went out for space milk and never came back. Corso acts as a seeming father figure to Kale, even though his reason for betraying the human race to the dredge is... odd. I mean, what else could they offer him? Sorry kid, world blowing up changes a man. He is a further representation of the fading will of humanity. Kale sees Corso as what he could personally become, which in turn motivates him more so to find the ship and save humanity. Akima, while sporting a pretty damn cool haircut, is a representation of the spark of hope that humanity still holds for a home. When Akima and Kale take refuge on a drifter colony ship, she shows Kale the hope that still exists amongst their species. While she may seem cold, she harbors a dream to rebuild what once was. Creed is probably my favorite Nathan Lane animated character, and that's even including Timon. This character is so damn shady, but at the same time self-sophisticated that you can't help but find him cunning, even if he is as slimy as whatever alien spinach they were trying to eat on that salvage barge. Stiff is... Well okay, to be honest, there isn't much about Stiff other than that she's just a really angry genocoroflo. Goon, however, is actually my favorite character in the entire film. Expertly voiced by John Leguizamo trying his best Peter Lorre impression, Goon is a strange little creature who is obsessed with science and discovery, who for the longest time I couldn't tell what his gender was. But this added an extra layer of bizarre fascination to the character for me. This weird little turtle human hybrid has some of the most heroic parts in the film as well, standing up to Corso and even almost sacrificing himself to save Stiff. His bizarre nature and design is interwoven throughout the film. Despite its failings, the one undeniable factor that Tinei has is this incredible unique visual design. For instance, the ship, the Valkyrie, is recognized as one of the most iconic spaceships in film history. Even though there are some people who haven't seen the film, they know of the ship. Bluth was able to incorporate his dark brooding but intriguing animation style into almost every asset of the film, whether it was the costumes, the character's looks, the weapons they used, and even the planet design. The first major planet they go on in their quest has an incredibly unique structure that is something I haven't seen in a while from any sort of sci-fi film. The artistic style of the movie definitely borrows heavily from other science fiction movies, books, or even comics, but they're able to meld themselves into something unique and to the point where I always want to know more about this world. I want to know more about the planets, I want to know more about the species. For a movie that's only 90 minutes long, it tries its best to embed you in this universe where humanity is the lowest factor. We are the outnumbered species. So we're introduced to all these different alien species and creatures that are unique and intriguing and interesting and you want to know more about them and that's the best part about this movie is that you want to know more about what you're watching. That's proper world building. Does it get it right all the time? No, of course not. There are parts where you want to know more about certain aspects of space life, whether it be the colonies, whether it be the spaceports, whether it even be actually how the universe works, considering there is this pure energy, hungry for genocide, weird blue alien species going out and killing people, you would like to know a little more. The film's lacking success also canceled the planned video game adaptation, which is a damn shame because this would have been a pretty cool game concept. Fox almost handled this film as badly as they handled another space narrative they had, despite how poorly they promoted the actual film. They had several prequel novellas written in preparation for the film, like this one here. It's not a bad story, I mean it's not groundbreaking and I honestly don't remember much of what happens in it but they had three of them for this movie. Both Bluth and Goldman have had small dabbels in different projects like Storyboarding for Games or short films. Bluth even ran an adult and youth theater trope called the Dom Bluth Front Row Theater at his own home until they were eventually able to lease out a small theater. But Bluth has never returned to mainstream cinema and I think it's purely because of his die-hard stance on hand-drawn animation. Most of the animation nowadays, it seems to me, that produced in the United States, has gone over to computer. Computer graphics is a style and it looks all right and if they tell a good story, I can sit through it. I certainly love Nemo and Tangled. Very very good. As soon as someone sees a successful picture done in CG, everybody else jumps in too because they want to make some money too. It feels kind of like puppets rather than the animation that I grew up with. I would rather see something that had the human touch in it a little bit more. I'll give the guy a lot of credit with sticking with his guns and trying to keep hand-drawn animation alive. It seems like he might be a bit difficult to work with when either studios are interfering or he just doesn't have much faith in the project. But when he's committed, he's committed and he has created some of the most unique and intriguing and long-lasting animation films of his decade. When the guy had the balls to tell Disney that they were too boring for what they were doing and went on to make something of his own, to the point where he was almost contending with Disney, the guy has left a lasting mark whether you like him or not. Which is why I'm actually kind of excited to see what he does with Netflix as they're producing an animated Dragon's Lair movie with Ryan Reynolds of all people. So here's hoping that he can keep the dying art of animation alive. I think animation has a way of dramatizing visually in a way that I know no other medium can do. Thank you guys for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed this. I've actually really wanted to talk about Tiny E for a long time. This is a movie that I've introduced to several people over the years and I never get bored of it. There are some people who make fun of me for still having the soundtrack and I don't really care. I love listening to the soundtrack. Admittedly half of the soundtrack's really bad. There are some songs that just are just terrible but the real big hits, the great hits are just fantastic to listen to. If you guys like this video leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe. Probably gonna try and do more of these essays considering what's going on and the fact that we can't do anything but if you guys like this video give me ideas of what you would think I would be interested to talk about. That's all from me guys. I hope you guys are being safe as you can be. Make sure to wash your hands and I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching the video. My name is Nits and you might remember me from the animated cult classic TV show Undergrads. It's been a while but I'm happy to say the click is finally getting back together in an all new movie thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. But we are still asking for your support. To see any and all updates about the upcoming Undergrads movie be sure to check out and like the Bring Back Undergrads Facebook page. And with any luck we'll see you guys soon.