Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Am I Missing Something?

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

I have always like two genres of movies better than all other genres (Historical Fiction/Drama & Sci Fi adventures). So it come to reason that I'd was interested in this one from the first time that I saw the previews.Then I seen it and discovered that this was more of a concept film than anything. ......And to be frank with you the concept doesn't sell! ! ! The movie takes place in a type of Neo-Futuristic landscape based on the 1930's. I though the story was actually good. and the acting was actually good. The musical score was actually good. but the fantasy- ish pulp fictionized comic book look of the film actual made it hard to watch.(at least it did for me) This film is worth watch one time ....it not going to become an instant sci-fi classic with you. Nor will this film generate enough interest that you'd want to see a sequel(trust me, If they make a sequel I will not bother to see it)This film will never rival/compete with other sci-fi films like the Star Wars, Alien(s), Starship Troopers, Matrix,Star Trek and other franchises seem to produce every time out.I'm giving it 4 out of 10 stars (And I'm only going that high with it because the acting & musical score are good)

Inspired by my recent viewing of 'The Rocketeer', I decided to revisit this retrofuturistic bit of dieselpunk as filtered through the lens of the 1939 World's Fair. It gets off to a really fun start, but it quickly trades giant robots and ray guns for a dull mystery story and lots of bickering couple stuff that drags on for a tad too long. But then Angelina Jolie shows up, and so too do more giant robots, and things pick back up a bit. Unfortunately it never quite regains its momentum, and all the early awesome is squandered, leaving a technically impressive, but somewhat hollow film.

Although it purports to be a homage to thirties adventure serials, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow is strangely cold. The film was entirely computer generated and as a result, it feels robotic. The actors do not interact convincingly with the environment; the marrying of CGI with reality is what makes CGI effective.Unfortunately the visuals aren't even particularly appealing. The soft focus effect is overdone and makes the actors look very fuzzy. Jude Law is obscured in shadow so much that we hardly ever see his face. In concept it's a nice idea but it was just taken to too much of an extreme. Some of the robots Sky Captain (Jude Law) battles are cool, such as the robots with wavy arms, but others are risible (the planes that flap their wings like birds). The film is only ten years old but already it feels dated. The short that the film is based on is actually visually accomplished; it was a bad idea not to release the film in black and white. Instead the film was shot in black and white and then like in colourised films of the past, layers of colour were added.There is a faint story: reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) teams up with old flame Sky Captain (Jude Law) to solve the mystery of famous scientists that are disappearing. Can they defeat evil German Dr Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier in hologram form)? And can Polly cope with Sky Captain's past love affair with Captain Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie, looking very odd and masculine)? All the CGI in the world cannot compensate for a weak story, which this unfortunately is. It's thin but the film spreads it even thinner. Essentially it's just Law and Paltrow running around in front of a blue screen, feigning fear at various robots that they can't see. There is the odd moment of humour- Omid Djalili is very funny in a cameo role as a friend of Sky Captain's and Angelina Jolie's 'British' accent that sounds Australian is certainly something to see. To be fair to Jolie, she adds some campness; however the film takes itself too seriously to allow for campness.I wanted to like the film because I love many similar films to this: Rocketeer, Dark City, Captain America. Dark City is particularly similar- a sci-fi film that has a strong thirties feel but is not literally set in the thirties (there's enough anachronisms in Sky Captain to make it a very alternative thirties). Whilst that film is not perfect, it has much more flair and imagination than Sky Captain does, without needing a blue screen for every shot.If entirely computer-generated films really are the world of tomorrow, it's a sad day.

No such film should be expected to be deep philosophical dives into various serious questions about human nature. Every such film, however, should be expected to deliver entertainment, at the very least worth the time it takes to watch that film. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow sounds and looks like something dreamed up while making the brilliant computer game series Fallout, yet it plays out like a cheap Easter egg: the covering is sweet chocolate, made with intent to please children, but if you don't care about it much the sugary surface is soon broken. But when the egg reveals itself to be hollow, no amount of candy can dry those tears of disappointment.This movie is all about that chocolate covering. Yet, no matter how hard the big-name actors act, the awe and fear and whatnot are just not conveyed as it is quite obvious that they don't see what we see, they see the monotonous blue screen. Not nearly as bad as in the Star Wars prequels, but setting a trend. And what they're trying to achieve with the visuals is really just a repetition of old pulp and film-noir, which was done well (and better than here) with smart lighting and set design back in the day. So no distinctive visuals like in Sin City, another film completely filmed with blue screen.So why all the fancy tricks? The story is simplistic, in a way that it resembles a dieselpunk story written by a 10-year-old. No surprise then that this film was a long lasting dream of the first-time director, Mr. Conran.The entire movie was shot in 26 days, Laurence Olivier was brought back from the grave thanks to modern technology, and Conran had his dream fulfilled with a plethora of homages and nods to those that came before him. All these things are nice, but random niceties don't make a compelling film. As proved by this film, they don't even come close.As is usual with highly personal projects, the makers have hard time distancing themselves from their work and thus can't see the flaws of their pet project. Sometimes it doesn't matter much, as for example Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is the same wretched brilliance that characterized the existence of it's creator, one Mr. Peckinpah.Sky Captain would've been helped by a Rick Rubin -like man behind the scenes, giving harsh directional advice and outsider feedback. Now it seems to think it's soaring, but only until someone turns off the wind machine.