Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Review
by : Trey Stone
Do you remember
your history of the early twentieth century? It was a time
of turmoil, with Europe roiling with the last great modern
clash of European powers, and the emergence of the United
States as a superpower? Do you remember stories of the Great
Depression, where economic forces collided to send the US
and the world into the dumper after the heyday of the Roaring
Twenties? Organized crime? The emergence of the FBI as a true
national force? Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal?
The dark stirrings of nationalism and vengeance in Germany?
Mounting aggression from Japan?
You do?
Ok, do you remember
masked heroes? Dastardly villains? Exotic gadgets? Mysterious
powers? Hidden temples? Lost civilizations? Eldritch artifacts?
Things mankind was not meant to know?
Those who are
familiar with the pulps, and the subsequent films, know of
the above. Pulp heroes, kind of a subset of superheroes, but
generally lower powered and of a different sort of “feel”,
have graced fantastic literature for quite awhile. And in
recent movie history, last couple of decades, we’ve
had a lot of them, some crap. The better ones, IMO, include
The Phantom, The Shadow, The Rocketeer, The Mummy and the
top of the list, the Indiana Jones films. Sky Captain and
the World of Tomorrow steps into this somewhat difficult arena,
with a whole new vision, composed of a daring combination
of computer animation and live action footage.
Jude Law plays
the namesake hero, Sky Captain Joe Sullivan, a mercenary combat
pilot who leads an organization for hire, of trouble shooters,
pilots, soldiers, explorers and hi tech specialists. Polly
Perkins is a New York City newspaper reporter and a long time
sometimes girlfriend of Joe, and is on hand when a mechanical
menace besets New York City in the form of giant robot and
mechanical ornithopter attacks. She goes to Joe looking for
answers, and ends up tagging along in his quest to discover
the menace who is sending the machine attacks and why. The
attacks are also tied to a group of scientists formerly of
an organization called Unit Eleven, who are being picked off
one by one.
Why?
Sky Captain and
Polly head out, in a world spanning adventure that takes them
to mysterious Tibet, to a British Sky Fleet (Angelina Jolie
plays a Brit Navy skipper), to action under the sea, and finally,
to a lost world with “dinosaurs”.
The film used
similar techniques to the new Star Wars films, that is a lot
of virtual sets, with actors working against green screens.
But, unlike the Star Wars films, they don’t seem disoriented
and lost. They seem to be having fun, in fact. Don’t
know how they pulled that off. Perhaps Kerry Conran, the director,
is a better actor director than Lucas is.
Anyway, he did
manage to pull off a fun tale, with good characters and a
stunning visual look. And his next movie is an adaption of
Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars. I look forward
to that very much.
This film is worth
catching. Three and a half bananas.
|
