The soundtrack to Titan A.E. was released on audio cassette and CD by Capitol/EMI Records on June 6, 2000, and featured 11 tracks by contemporary rock bands Lit, Powerman 5000, Electrasy, Fun Lovin' Criminals, The Urge, Texas, Bliss 66, Jamiroquai, Splashdown, The Wailing Souls and Luscious Jackson.
Score
Titan A.E.s score was composed and conducted by Graeme Revell. Although an official album containing the film's underscore was not originally released alongside the film, it was eventually made available for the first time on October 23, 2014, by La-La Land Records as a limited edition CD of 1,500 copies. The soundtrack contains 32 tracks and music cues, most of what Revell composed for the film, and includes two bonus tracks: an orchestra-only version of "Creation" and an alternative version of "Prologue" with a different opening.
Home media
Titan A.E. was released on VHS and a THX certified "Special Edition" DVD on November 7, 2000 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, which contains extras such as a commentary track by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, a "Quest for Titan" featurette, deleted scenes, web links, and a music video for Lit's "Over My Head". The region 1 North American version also comes with an exclusive DTS English audio track in addition to Dolby Digital 5.1 featured in most international releases.
Reception
Box office
Titan A.E. earned nearly $9.4 million during its opening weekend, ranking in fifth place behind Shaft, Gone in 60 Seconds, 20th Century Fox's own Big Momma's House and Mission: Impossible 2. The film then lost 60 percent of its audience during its second weekend, dropping to eighth place, with a gross of $3.7 million. The film grossed nearly $22.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $14 million in international markets, totaling $36.8 million worldwide. According to former Fox executive and future Illumination founder Chris Meledandri, who had supervised production of the film, Titan A.E. lost $100 million for the studio.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 51% based on 102 reviews with an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's consensus reads: "Great visuals, but the story feels like a cut-and-paste job of other sci-fi movies". On Metacritic the film has a score of 48 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film 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". He cited the Ice Rings sequence as "a perfect examine of what animation can do and live-action cannot". Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Titan A.E. comes through where it counts, in the big picture. It will fascinate anyone old enough to read comic books, and, with its dark undercurrents, sudden reversals and confrontation of an uncertain future, teens probably can identify with it." Robert Koehler of Variety praised the animation and felt the film was an improvement over Bluth and Goldman's previous film Anastasia, resulting in a "canny attraction for genre purists, hard-core ani-heads and the mass aud for galactic adventure."
Reviewing for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington stated "Despite its highly derivative story, this animated saga from the Don Bluth-Gary Goldman team is done with such visual razzle-dazzle, there's no denying it's some kind of a technological marvel: a modern lollapalooza concocted out of old-fashioned space opera elements." Richard Corliss, in his Time magazine review, felt the film has "the retro-pioneering spirit of recent [science fiction] movies" and praised the animation visuals. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote the film's "rudimentary narration does work up a certain amount of propulsion. But it's not the story that's the story here, it's the film's bravura visual look. Under the joint direction of animation veterans Don Bluth and Gary Goldman and influenced, connoisseurs say, by the style of Japanese anime, Titan A.E. does an excellent job of using computer-generated effects to create a vast and wondrous outer-space world."
Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave the film a mixed review, stating: "Despite some gorgeous sequences, including one set in a lake of glowing hydrogen 'trees,' Titan A.E. is bland. Although crammed with action, little of it produces roller-coaster thrills of adventure and self-discovery." Similarly, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly graded the film a C, writing the story and visuals were "unutterably bland ... Bluth had the right idea with those epic ice crystals, but it takes more than one F/X flash to create a universe. Titan A.E. is Star Wars pulped and mashed into flavorless kiddie corn." Dennis Lim, in his review for The Village Voice, dismissed the film, writing it is "suggestive of nothing so much as Saturday-morning TV: 2-D characters frolic in 3-D CGI spacescapes, but the handiwork is uninspired, the digi-chicanery obviously expensive but bland, the New Age odor off-putting, and the reliance on inspirational Glen Ballard power ballads fatal."
Accolades
Titan A.E. won a Golden Reel Award for "Best Sound Editing for an Animated Feature", and was nominated by the same organization for "Best Sound Editing for Music in Animation", and a Satellite Award for "Best Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media", losing both to Chicken Run. The film was also nominated for three Annie Awards, including "Outstanding Achievement in An Animated Theatrical Feature", "Effects Animation", and "Production Design" which it lost to Toy Story 2 and Fantasia 2000, respectively, and was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film at 27th Saturn Awards, but lost to X-Men, another film from 20th Century Fox. Drew Barrymore was nominated for "Best Voice-Over Performance" by the Online Film & Television Association for her role as Akima, but was beaten by Eartha Kitt from The Emperor's New Groove.
{| class="wikitable" width:100%;"
|-
! Award !! Nomination !! Nominee !! Result
|-
| rowspan=3| Annie Award || Outstanding Individual Achievement for Effects Animation || Julian Hynes (visual effects) ||rowspan=3
|-
| Outstanding Individual Achievement for Production Design in an Animated Feature Production || Philip A. Cruden (production design)
|-
| Outstanding Achievement in An Animated Theatrical Feature || Titan A.E.
|-
| rowspan=2| Golden Reel Award || Best Sound Editing - Animated Feature || Christopher Boyes, et al. (editors) ||
|-
| Best Sound Editing - Music - Animation || Joshua Winget (scoring/music editor) ||
|-
| OFTA Film Award || Best Voice-Over Performance || Drew Barrymore (Akima) ||
|-
| Satellite Award || Best Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media || Titan A.E. ||
|-
| Saturn Award || Best Science Fiction Film || Titan A.E. ||
|}
Cancelled video game
A video game adaptation by Blitz Games was planned to be released for the PlayStation and PC in Fall 2000 in North America, following the film's summer release (even receiving a mention at the end of the credits). Development on both platforms had begun in March 1999 under the film's original title Planet Ice, and an early playable version was showcased at the 2000 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
Novels
To tie-in with the film, two prequel novels written by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta were released on February 10, 2000, by Ace Books, the same day the official novelization of the film written by Steve and Dal Perry was released:
- Titan A.E.: Cale's Story – the adventures of Cale, ending with the beginning of the film. The book chronicles Cale growing up on Vusstra (Tek's home planet) for ten years and having to move to a different place every time the Drej attack. It also reveals how Cale became resentful of his father's disappearance and how he came to despise "drifter colonies".
- Titan A.E.: Akima's Story – the adventures of Akima, ending with the beginning of the film. The book chronicles Akima's life aboard drifter colonies and also reveals where she learned her karate skills, her friendship with Stith and her reason to find the Titan.
- Titan A.E.: Sam's Story – a three-issue comic book series telling the story of Sam Tucker, his crew and their quest to hide the Titan.