By Bonnie Burton
If Robot Chicken, Star Wars, Voltron and Power Rangers were all cut up into tiny little pieces then glued back together with love, satire and perhaps a little glitter, you might end up with the new sci-fi comedy show Titan Maximum -- debuting on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on Sept. 27, 2009.
Created by Robot Chicken producer/co-head writer/director Tom Root and Robot Chicken executive producer/co-creator/writer/director Matthew Senreich, Titan Maximum uses stop-motion animation to bring an '80s-inspired action cartoon to life.
Set 100 years in the future, Saturn's moon Titan is defended by Titan Force Five, an elite squadron of young, brash pilots whose spaceships combine to form the giant robot Titan Maximum. As the series opens, the team has been disbanded due to budget cuts, but must hastily reassemble when a former team member turns rogue and tries to conquer the solar system with an assault of giant monsters. Now, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a team of dysfunctional misfits commanding a rustbucket robot.
StarWars.com talks with the show co-creators and writers Matt Senreich and Tom Root, as well as the executive producer and cast member Seth Green, and the rest of the cast Breckin Meyer, Rachael Leigh Cook, Dan Milano and Eden Espinosa.
What was the genesis of the show?
Matt Senreich: This is one of those concepts we'd be thinking about for way too long, not thinking it could ever be a reality. So in casual conversation we pitched it to Adult Swim and they said, "That sounds like fun."
Tom Root: Just joking around we drew what our team would look like on the dry erase board here in the writers' room and Keith Crawford from Adult Swim came in one day and he liked it.
You realize you're implying that it's really easy to pitch a show to Adult Swim, right?
Tom: But then came the hard part.
Matt: As in the 30-page show bible! But we initially interested them with our nice drawing and a lot of made up mythology.
What kinds of sci-fi movies and shows have influenced you as your were creating Titan Maximum?
Matt: We're big fans and geeks of all the '80s cartoons like Battle of the Planets and Voltron, and we just wanted to create something in that vein where the world's most-trusted, elite fighting force is a bunch of stupid teenagers.
Tom: We grew up not only loving robots, but also all kinds of outer space shows with spaceships and battles. We talked a lot about the new Battlestar Galactica and how it got us excited about space and robots again.
Eden Espinosa: I'm a fan of Galactica too.
Seth Green: I was a big fan of Robotech.
Matt: We also had to one-up Clone Wars director Dave Filoni and integrate some CG into our stop-motion world a little bit. So we throw it back in Filoni's court, and let's just see if he can put some stop-motion into The Clone Wars now!
Are you proud that Titan Maximum may be the only sci-fi show on TV with the cheapest special effects?
Tom: Our effects look good enough that I don't know why more people aren't making awesome shows. We are on the thinnest of shoestring budgets here, and yet we tell the story we want to tell with the action we want in there and we have no money at all! We would much rather build something than create it on a computer because with our budget it's going to look better that way -- which is actually kind of fun because we get to have spaceships hanging all over the studio. We actually have models, and it feels like 1976 ILM around here.
Matt: Everything's bigger too. The models are at a different scale. Whereas on Robot Chicken the figures are eight inches, on Titan they're 12 inches, so the actual sets that they're in are ginormous. There are shots in this thing that are amazing as they're walking through it because the set is so detailed right down to the little scratches on the wall.
Since so much detail went into the puppets, does that mean we'll be seeing Titan Maximum toys on the shelves?
Matt: That would be awesome! Tell the toy companies to call us!
Tom: One of the things that we have as an incentive to toy companies is the spaceships were designed on the computer and we were able to print them out as physical models, so we have computer-designed models ready to go to molds for any company that wants to pay us a lot of money to make Titan toys.
How do you actors feel about how your characters look like in Titan?
Eden: My character is a hottie!
Rachael Leigh Cook: They show us things in advance so we can get a vibe for the character and possibly bring that over in the voice part you need to do.
Seth I was involved in the design process, so I was really happy the way my character Gibbs turned out ultimately. Instead of having a very villainy goatee, he has a slappy soul patch. He has traditional anime hair and an evil eye-patch.
