Avatar-lite Netflix release The Titan is one you can miss.
Why Sam Worthington, scheduled for not one, not two, not three, but FOUR sequels to the Fern Gully remake would headline yet another languid jaunt down the rabbit-hole of human physiology and interplanetary population in this half-baked evolve-or-die sci-fi is beyond me.
Stuck on a military base due to some nondescript explanations of widespread famine or global warming or something that sound strangely like the first 20 minutes of Interstellar, Worthington’s Lt. Rick is drawn into an elite program that, against the strong objections of his wife (Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling), begins to change him.
What he is changing into is very unclear until very late in the piece, thanks in part to Tom Wilkinson’s deliberately opaque head scientist, who really should have been a little more up front. The film goes some ways to inject his character and proceedings with a familiar does of moral ambiguity, though his actions and those of others as depicted (against what at no times due to an, ahem, lack of atmosphere, feels like a pressing or urgent backdrop) leave little wiggle room.
This series of events would be much better placed in a B-movie forced into the creative constraints of a minimal budget that would too revel in rather than ignore the limitations of its central performer. In this respect, The Titan is too self-serious to be enjoyed as part of this or any other genre.
The final few minutes, all too late, capture some of the intrigue which this plot portends but goes very little way to redeeming its execution. A segment which could just as well have been the basis for at least the bulk of the film, given the budget allowed the filmmakers really missed an opportunity to take The Titan in a different and altogether more interesting direction.
Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel the only other forgiving aspect therein, you’d do better to look elsewhere than this tiring and predictable mess.
The Titan is now streaming on Netflix
FalkenScreen 