Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)October 11th, 2004
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
It started life as a black-and-white tribute to those creepy
science-fiction
thrillers of the 1950s, a slew of "It Came from..." wherever flicks that played
upon our then paranoid fears of nuclear annihilation, precipitated by Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast that panicked an already panic-stricken nation.
Then they colorized the newspaper ads and the TV spots and the interstate billboards, much like media mogul Ted Turner did with his Network Classics.
And then they went and hand-tinted the whole kit and caboodle, no doubt fearful that kids today were going to start hurling rotten tomatoes at the projection
booth figuring something was amiss up there. (Right. Like Jet Li's "Hero" tanked
at the box office because teenagers were too lazy to read the words at the bottom
of the screen. That film's currently playing at a real live *drive-in* for all under heaven's sake--just how youth-accessible is that!?)
Which makes me wonder that the heck happened. Was "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" *ever* a monochromatic movie, or did nervous execs simply do the dirty color coordination job at the eleventh hour? I tell you this film was meant to be color-free. It looked good that way (at least from the previews)
and the subject matter clearly demanded it. I don't need to see Jude Law in a colored flyboy jumpsuit or Gwyneth Paltrow under a fetching colored fedora and I don't need to see Angelina Jolie sporting a colored eyepatch (even if it *is* black).
But the moneymen at Paramount Pictures apparently do.
It's 1939, "King's Row," "Wuthering Heights," and "The Wizard of Oz" adorn
the movie marquees, and a scoop-happy reporter, Polly Perkins (Paltrow), wants her story. Faster than her Leica shutter clicks air raid sirens serenade the arrival of massive metal monsters from the skies. Who y'gonna call? Why mercenary
fighter pilot Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan of course!
Sky Captain (played by Law with a nod and a wink) flies a Spitfire with tiger shark teeth painted on the fuselage. He's part Superman, part Flash Gordon,
all Adventure. Joe and Polly team up, sort of, to investigate the whereabouts of eleven missing scientists, two mysterious vials, and a rogue doctor named Totenkopf who, it would seem, has some diabolical doomsday device up his sleeve.
About 20 minutes from the end of this adventurous romp the mood is upset as Sky Captain morphs into a Jurassic Park/Indiana Jones/James Bond/Matrix clone.
It literally becomes brighter and more focused, neither one of which are a good
thing since they undermine the painstakingly crafted look of the piece.
Until then, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" looked lovely in all its sepia-enriched, fuzzy-focused glory, with the CGI not quite as
overwhelming
as usual, oddly enough. Because the players look and sound very different, and that's enough to keep us charmingly distracted. And the
filmmakers--writer/director
Kerry Conran for the most part--get the period tone exactly right, from the huge close-ups to the off-center camera angles to the snappy front-page banter of Polly's fast-talking dame.
Oh yes. And apart from our protagonists and possibly one or two others (including Giovanni Ribisi as inventor Dex Dearborn and Michael Gambon as Polly's
editor), the whole thing, believe it or not, was put together on a computer.
--
David N. Butterworth
[email protected]
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