Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow



Imagine a hyperactive 10-year-old raised on a steady diet of classic comic books and science fiction movies trying to describe the perfect movie. “It’s going to have airplanes and submarines, and airplanes that turn into submarines, and giant robots and death rays and a spaceship and dinosaurs and dragons and lost valleys and mysterious islands and a shadowy figure for the bad guy. And elephants.”


"So that's what they make Chicken McNuggets out of."

That pretty close to the movie Kerry Conran has made with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The setting is 1939 (though despite the presence of the “Hindenburg III” and German scientists in the movie the work “Nazi” is never used), and perky New York City reporter Polly Perkins (Gwenyth Paltrow) is investigating the disappearance of a number of prominent German scientists. Just as she finally gets the name of the man behind the scheme, Totenkopf, New York is attacked by a battalion of giant robots. The only effective defense the city has is the mercenary Sky Captain a.k.a. Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) and his heavily modified Spitfire plane. Joe manages to fight off the robots and save Polly’s life. It turns out that Joe and Polly were one involved, but had falling out over infidelity and mechanical sabotage. Now they each have a piece of the puzzle of who sent the giant robots, so they agree to work together.


"Boy, it smells like the monkey house at the zoo around here. Did you notice that?"

The search leads them from aerial battles with robot planes through the streets of New York to Nepal and Shangri-La (which we’re told is also known as Eden and Shambala… and Rivendell, judging from what it looks like in this movie) to a certain uncharted island that should be familiar to fans of classic monster movies. The inspiration here is obviously Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and to a lesser extent Star Wars (1977), as well as the action serials that inspired both of those movies. There are a few scenes, mostly in Nepal, where Sky Captain almost reaches those heights of humor and excitement, but most of the time the film has to settle for just being fun and visually dazzling.


Military formations make Gwenyth Paltrow really happy.

And Sky Captain is visually dazzling. The whole movie was shot on a sound-stage, with almost all the sets and locations created digitally. It wouldn’t be true to say the effect is seamless, but the whole movie is so stylized that the artificial look isn’t a drawback. The whole film has an art deco look, and most of it is monochrome, because everyone knows the whole world was in black and white until the 1960’s. I loved all the robots and creatures and helicarriers and such, and the many shortcomings of the plot (like the two super-important vials that Polly inexplicably keeps a secret, and when it’s explained what they are it doesn’t really explain anything) didn’t bother me too much. It doesn’t look like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is destined to be a big hit, but as a cult item for movie fans it’s pleasurable enough.

Posted: Wed - September 22, 2004 at      

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