The year is 1939 in New York City. It looks like 1939 with art deco buildings filling the skyline as the streets teem with men and women in hats. But it's a 1939 that is a bit more technologically advanced. The zeppelin Hindenburg III moors itself atop the Empire State Building.
We meet Polly Perkins, brassy and blonde, an amalgam of gorgeous and tough we expect from an investigative reporter in 1939. She's investigating the disappearances of renowned scientists.
Then....
GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!!!!!
What is New York City to do? Call for help!
Enter....
SKY CAPTAIN!!!!!
Hooray!!!!!
Sky Captain! AKA Joe Sullivan, aviator extraordinaire and commander of the private air force the Flying Legion.
Also Polly Perkin's former lover.
Joe manages to disable one robot; the rest leave thereafter. News reports show similar attacks around the globe. The disabled robot is taken back to the Legion's air base so that technology expert Dex can examine it.
Polly convinces Joe to join him on the investigation. Joe is reluctant to let Polly in on this. It's dangerous and besides, she done did him wrong.
The man behind the giant robot attack and the disappearing scientists is the mysterious Totenkopf.
Joe and Polly's quest takes them to Nepal and Tibet.
Oh no! A death trap! A roomful of DYNAMITE!!!!
A narrow escape leads our intrepid adventurers to the mythical Shangri-La.
Look! A clue to Totenkopf's secret island lair.
To the skies once more!
In flight, Joe and Polly get some help from a Royal Navy flying aircraft carrier led by Commander Franky Cook. Franky and Joe used to have a thing going on and they do so still get on so well much to Polly's annoyance.
Totenkopf's island lair is found!
Joe and Polly enter through an underwater inlet. (Joe's plane can fly underwater! Cool!)
Oh look! DINOSAURS!!!
A secret subterranean facility in a mountain?!?
With ROBOTS!!!!
Totenkopf's scheme: send up a rocket to start humanity over again in space while the rocket ignites the atmosphere and kills everyone on Earth!'
The fiend! He must be stopped!!
It turns out Totenkopf himself has stopped! He's been dead for 20 years while his robots continued his scheme!
The robot fiends! They must be stopped!!
Would it be too much of a spoiler to tell you they are stopped?
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a classic movie serial writ large on the canvas of modern motion picture technology.
Writer and director Kerry Conran is heavily impacted by classic movie serials as well as the pulp magazines of the 1930's.
Golden Age comic book characters Airboy and Blackhawk are influences as well.
The Superman cartoon The Mechanical Monsters (1941), produced by Fleischer Studios, is homaged in the form of the giant robots that attack the city.
Sky Captain was shot entirely on a "digital backlot", blending live action actors with CGI surroundings.
Jude Law as Joe Sullivan captures the combination of straight laced hero with cocky daredevil evocative of a 1930's pulp or serial hero. Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly Perkins is a blonde Lois Lane, as either action girl or distressed damsel as the story calls for. Angelina Jolie steals the picture as Commander Franky Cook with her Royal Navy flying aircraft carrier. (Yes, it's basically Marvel's SHIELD Helicarrier.)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a box office bomb when it was released, earning only $58 million at the box office on a $70 million budget. Since this movie was distributed by Paramount, I'm not surprised. Paramount seems to know fuck all about marketing a movie.
The movie itself received largely positive reviews, particularly for it's aesthetics. It has gone on to obtain a following as a cult classic.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a fun movie with a genuine affection for it's influences of serials, pulp magazines and comic books. And it looks good too!
No comments:
Post a Comment