Director/Photography – Noah Luke, Screenplay – Gil Luna, Producer – David Michael Latt, Music – Tim Carlos & Mikel Shane Prather, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Production Design – Paul Bianchi. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Erin Coker (Admiral Allison Quince), Jack Pearson (Max Reece), Michael Paré (Citizen Prime Ortiz), Neli Sabour (Heidi Quince), Jenny Tran (Kim Costa), Natalie Storrs (Saoirse Parker), Justin Tanks (Mark Morales), Scott Williams (Afreetijima), Anthony Jensen (Captain Jowers)
Plot
Earth is dependent on the planet Titan to obtain needed water supplies. However, the latest shipment has come under attack by alien rebels. Earth leader Citizen Prime Ortiz sends Max Reece to persuade Admiral Allison Quince to command the ship The Providential on a rescue mission. There is bad blood between Reese and Allison after he became involved with her sister Heidi, but Allison agrees when she finds that Heidi was aboard the attacked ship. Arriving on Titan, The Providential comes under attack by the rebels. The crew try to affect a rescue of the stranded party, repair the ship and stop the rebels attacking Earth with an antimatter bomb.
Since the early 2000s, the low-budget US production company The Asylum has become identified with their output of Mockbusters – films that come out with titles intended to mimic those of big-budget releases in the hope that people will mistake them or not look too closely. In between these, they essentially created the Gonzo Killer Shark film, as popularised by their bad movie hit Sharknado (2013), and have made an assortment of monster films and disaster movies.
I had made the assumption that Attack on Titan was a mockbuster take on James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), as their subsequent Battle for Pandora (2022) was, however this does not appear to be the case. Nor is the film connected to its namesake, the Japanese manga Attack on Titan (2009-21) or the anime series Attack on Titan (2013) and two live-action films Attack on Titan (2015) and Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015) that were adapted from it. While there have been US plans to conduct an English-language version of the manga, Attack on Titan just appears to be a general Space Opera made because The Asylum felt like it and with no connection to anything else.
Attack on Titan is competently made, nothing more than that. The Asylum have been working on B-budgets long enough now that they can pull of some quite amazing work in the technical department. The effects scenes here of the ships in flight, alien combat, the mining operation on the planet and the space station are extremely impressive – easily comparable to work in some mainstream films.
Michael Paré as Earth leader Citizen Prime Ortiz
The main problem with Attack on Titan is a murky plot. I had difficulty following the basic set-up to do with mining on the planet Titan, something to do with the Earth needing water (which shouldn’t be a problem that requires going to another planetary system as there are masses of it out there in Saturn’s rings and assorted comets), and of the pact with the aliens and rebel factions. It felt like everything had been written in a hurry with no script editor to come in and polish it for small things like making it readable or comprehensible for an audience. The lead actors are okay but much of the latter sections of the film with the crew running around the mines and affecting a rescue dissolve into them throwing a babble of jargonese at each other without us being able to make any real sense out of what is happening.
Noah Luke had previously worked for The Asylum as a cinematographer. He made his directorial debut with Jungle Run (2021) and went on to direct Battle for Pandora (2022), Moon Crash (2022), Thor: God of Thunder (2022) and Doomsday Meteor (2023) for them.
