The Titan Review
By: Nik S
Director: Lennart Ruff
Producer(s): Ben Pugh, Fred Berger
Starring: Sam Worthington, Taylor Schilling, Tom Wilkson
Production Company: Motion Picture Capital, 42, Automatik, The Amel Company
Distributor: Netflix, Voltage Pictures (in association with)
Runtime: 97 minutes
It's the nearby future, some odd thirty or forty years, and earth is slowly starting to die off due to a nuclear war that destroyed Los Angeles. Air Force pilot Rick Janssen (Worthington), his wife Abigail (Schilling) and their son are relocated to a NATO base where Rick has been chosen to be in a earth relocation program. Rick, as well as the other men and women chosen for the program, have been picked for surviving in harsh conditions that would have killed any average person. The program is led by a state-sanctioned scientist (Wilkson) who puts his work above the livelihood of his test subjects. They endure injections and unwarranted surgeries that alter their bodies and mental health so that they can be able to populate Titan, Saturn's moon that has enough nitrogen to accommodate humans. As the subjects begin to change, they begin to go mad and either die off or kill the ones they love.
Worthington is by no means new to the sci-fi genre, being of Avatar fame. However, he comes off really lifeless and bland throughout the whole movie. This is a role he's used to, military man who through a government-funded project gets turned into an alien, but he does nothing to make it exciting at all. All the emotional weight of the movie rests on Schilling, who is faced with trying to make the best out of a horrible situation. She does well playing the worried wife who is able to see all the red flags that her husband can't (or refuses to). Wilkson does a really good job as the scientist who values his research over human life, but towards the end of the film it starts to feel played out and expected.
The stilted acting can't be blamed on the actors alone, since the material they're working with is full of old cliches and plot devices that are ran thin. The climax, which should have the audience's hearts racing, ends up being the biggest let down of the entire film. There are a lot of times the film seems like it is going to go in one particular direction, then decides to drop it in order to drive on the with the main plot. The film makes it seem like Worthington's character is going to develop some kind of romantic relationship with a fellow test subject (Emmanuel from Game of Thrones) or one of the test subjects becoming a roid-rage fueled nightmare, yet nothing really comes of it. The ending seems to carry no weight to it at all and just kind of ends without a burden attached.
Most of the movie is just watching Rick undergo experiments and the slow changes into becoming some alien hybrid. There's a lot of science mombo-jumbo to explain why things are happening but it just seems like exposition that really isn't needed. There was plenty of moments to allow for great character development or let side characters shine through, but that was put to the side to focus on the evolution of Rick. I'm a big fan of 80's body horror movies and this film could have the same potential for that if things were done right, but what we got instead was a tasteless movie where the hybrids look like deflated marshmallows.
Director: Lennart Ruff
Producer(s): Ben Pugh, Fred Berger
Starring: Sam Worthington, Taylor Schilling, Tom Wilkson
Production Company: Motion Picture Capital, 42, Automatik, The Amel Company
Distributor: Netflix, Voltage Pictures (in association with)
Runtime: 97 minutes
One of the oldest tropes in science fiction is that our planet is dying off due to pollution and overpopulation and humanity's last option is to terraform a new planet. The Titan wants to spice up that formula by instead trying to change the humans to match the new world's atmosphere. The film is directed by Lennart Ruff, who primarily directed short films, and written by Max Hurwitz. Production on the film started in the last quarter of 2015 and was originally had Voltage Pictures with the main distribution rights to multiple countries. In February 2018 Netflix was reported to pick up worldwide distribution.
It's the nearby future, some odd thirty or forty years, and earth is slowly starting to die off due to a nuclear war that destroyed Los Angeles. Air Force pilot Rick Janssen (Worthington), his wife Abigail (Schilling) and their son are relocated to a NATO base where Rick has been chosen to be in a earth relocation program. Rick, as well as the other men and women chosen for the program, have been picked for surviving in harsh conditions that would have killed any average person. The program is led by a state-sanctioned scientist (Wilkson) who puts his work above the livelihood of his test subjects. They endure injections and unwarranted surgeries that alter their bodies and mental health so that they can be able to populate Titan, Saturn's moon that has enough nitrogen to accommodate humans. As the subjects begin to change, they begin to go mad and either die off or kill the ones they love.
Worthington is by no means new to the sci-fi genre, being of Avatar fame. However, he comes off really lifeless and bland throughout the whole movie. This is a role he's used to, military man who through a government-funded project gets turned into an alien, but he does nothing to make it exciting at all. All the emotional weight of the movie rests on Schilling, who is faced with trying to make the best out of a horrible situation. She does well playing the worried wife who is able to see all the red flags that her husband can't (or refuses to). Wilkson does a really good job as the scientist who values his research over human life, but towards the end of the film it starts to feel played out and expected.
The stilted acting can't be blamed on the actors alone, since the material they're working with is full of old cliches and plot devices that are ran thin. The climax, which should have the audience's hearts racing, ends up being the biggest let down of the entire film. There are a lot of times the film seems like it is going to go in one particular direction, then decides to drop it in order to drive on the with the main plot. The film makes it seem like Worthington's character is going to develop some kind of romantic relationship with a fellow test subject (Emmanuel from Game of Thrones) or one of the test subjects becoming a roid-rage fueled nightmare, yet nothing really comes of it. The ending seems to carry no weight to it at all and just kind of ends without a burden attached.
Most of the movie is just watching Rick undergo experiments and the slow changes into becoming some alien hybrid. There's a lot of science mombo-jumbo to explain why things are happening but it just seems like exposition that really isn't needed. There was plenty of moments to allow for great character development or let side characters shine through, but that was put to the side to focus on the evolution of Rick. I'm a big fan of 80's body horror movies and this film could have the same potential for that if things were done right, but what we got instead was a tasteless movie where the hybrids look like deflated marshmallows.
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