The Titan A.E. (2000) catastrophe

Don Bluth (b. 1937) wikimedia

Famed movie director Don Bluth and his friend, director Gary Goldman, surely had their hopes high for the future of 20th Century Fox Animation with the fabulously animated Titan A.E. (After Earth). After all, with the cast of voices of Matt Demon as the hero Cale Tucker, Drew Barrymore as his love interest Akima Kunimoto and Bill Pullman as Captain Joseph Korso the movie had the required popular stars. The animation of the Ice Planet is spectacular and there is enough action and emotional involvement to keep everyone in the audience interested.

So why was this such a box office bomb making barely half of its seemingly unlimited budget of 75 million dollars? Titan A.E. caused the immediate collapse of Fox Animated.

It has been suggested that the problem was in poor marketing that confused the target audience. Is this an animated post-apocalyptic science fiction movie or a Disney competition aimed at very young audience with some childish characters?


The glory of God

Image Sci-Fi Movies

I have another and much more serious theory why Titan A.E. was such a disaster.

The deepest problem is that the plot that does not give glory to God. Hans Bauer and Randall McCormick imagined a post-Earth world in 3028 where it is professor Sam Tucker who had the truly divine powers to device a machine that can create another planet instead of the one destroyed by the Drej.

The God of Israel who is the only real God there is says through prophet Isaiah

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this.
How can I let myself be defamed?
I will not yield my glory to another.
Isaiah 48:11 NIV 

The movie Titan A.E. is aimed at youngsters and young adults who are learning about the real world. It is corrupting the minds of these children as it does not give glory to God but instead elevates humans assigning them divine powers. (God has made as almost divine as Psalm 8 says).

So has the God of Israel no sense of humor then?

Is He really so jealous about His own glory that even an animated Science-Fiction movie, the words of a legendary pop singer or a Son of God like superhero capable of turning time back and raising a dead back to life can provoke His anger?

Fox Animation Studios is no more - it sank with Titan A.E. in 2000 A.D.
John Lennon (1940-1980) may have been more popular than Christ for Jesus never searched for the popularity of crowds.
Christopher Reeve (1952-2004) had to spend the rest of his life on wheelchair which he did splendidly but as disabled former Superman became also a global symbol of the fragility of us humans.

So my advise to Don Bluth and other gifted movie producers is: go and learn from Steven Spielberg how to give respect to God and how to glorify human spirit and achievement in a way that contains a dose of humility, as well.

"Abe" Spielberg is doing quite well, thank you.