Customer Reviews

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [HD DVD]

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(117)
3 star:		(86)
2 star:		(47)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

Within the first fifteen minutes of Sky Captain, I was in. Gigantic robots swarm New York City and stomp through the streets, Gwenyth Paltrow as Polly Perkins does a pitch-perfect emulation of those 1930's newspaper gals, and the whole movie has the feel of the best old sci-fi movie never made. I felt like a five-year-old again; not in that still-eating-paste sense, but because something on the screen was so boldly exciting I nearly leapt out of my seat and applauded. No freaking joke. Needless to say, the rest of Sky Captain never really reaches the level of invigoration that its slam-bang opener achieves (and yeah, it has a few slow moments), but it's still an accomplished, consistently interesting movie with enough in-jokes to keep film buffs satisfied (look for not only references to The Wizard of Oz, but a few Citizen Kane nods as well) and enough rip-roaring action for everyone else.

Sky Captain could have been an empty exercise just for the sake of a new filmmaking technique - I'm sure you know by now it was all done in front of a blue screen. What makes it so interesting, though, is how seriously everyone takes the whole endeavor. Jude Law effortlessly embodies the sarcastic, multi-talented everyman do-gooder; Gwenyth Paltrow delivers those one-liners in a way that Howard Hawks would be proud; Giovanni Ribisi steals his scenes like any faithful sidekick should; and the whole plot of the movie (which could have been a borderline parody) comes off as deadly serious. Don't let the blue-screen hesitation hold you back from this one; if you complain that they don't make 'em like they used to, here's proof that it's not always the case. B+

I think I can say with some confidence that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is not quite like any other film you've ever seen. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on what you think a movie should be.

Sky Captain is set in the years between the World Wars. Ace big-city reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) gets wind of a shadowy world-domination plot involving a German uber-scientist, named Totenkopf. As she begins to investigate, the city is attacked by giant robot storm troopers, who wreak destruction and attempt to steal the municipal generators. (I am not making this up.) Polly and the city are saved by the timely arrival of Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law), who turns the tide in his trusty P-40 fighter plane. Polly and Joe, who have a bit of a history, reluctantly join forces to find Totenkopf and foil his evil plans. They are aided by Joe's whiz-kid sidekick, Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), and his old flame Francesca "Franky" Cook (Angelina Jolie), who is the commodore of an armada of flying British aircraft carriers. (Still not making this up.) The good guys brave sundry fantastical adventures involving many more mechanized henchmen before they finally locate Dr. Totenkopf's lair in Nepal. The ultimate confrontation that ensues between good and evil brings the earth to the brink of apocalypse.

Okay, so much for the plot, which is pretty negligible. And while we're at it, let's dispose of the acting; Law, Paltrow and Ribisi are capable actors with good range, but Sky Captain's script wouldn't overtax the thespianic skills of a wombat. All of which is beside the point, because this movie is about other things.

The first thing to know about Sky Captain is that pretty much everything you see on the screen, aside from the actors themselves, is created whole cloth out of CGI. That gives creator Kerry Conran almost unlimited license to do whatever he chooses - and what he chooses is very odd indeed, if rather intriguing withal. Conran goes to extraordinary lengths to make Sky Captain look convincingly like a very old science fiction movie; even the "film" stock seems aged, the color bleached, the images burred with slight haloes. The very conceit of a lone mad scientist developing technology to destroy the world as we know it is hopelessly antique (although admittedly the plot has rather a lot in common with 1979's Moonraker). And the gargantuan, bolted and riveted, bucket-headed robots look like they marched straight out of the 1950s.

Conran gleefully adopts the logic holes, discontinuities, and plot conveniences that were standard in movies before audiences developed a taste for realism. Early in the movie, for instance, Dex is grabbed by a robot and carried off, but somehow finds time to leave a clue stuck to the underside of a desk by a wad of chewed gum. Following the clue, Joe and Polly fly all over the globe (including an ocean or two) in his little P-40, managing to pack along a few cases of Vienna Sausages and an apparently inexhaustible supply of wardrobe changes. At one point, the plane gets a big rock lodged in its tail assembly, making it impossible for Joe to maneuver, but then a few moments later the rock is conveniently gone. And how the heck does Totenkopf build a monumental fortress, complete with armies of giant automata and a rocket launch complex, in the inaccessible wastes of Nepal?

What's significant is not that these implausibilities exist in the movie, but that the writer/director flaunts them and demands that you notice. Conran emulates even "flaws" like these from the old movies he evokes, because those flaws arose out of a romantic mindset that he is making every effort to recreate.

On one level, the film is a straightforward story about Joe and Polly and Dex and Totenkopf; but on another - and ultimately more important - level, it's about nostalgia. Not only nostalgia for old science fiction movies, I think, though Conran clearly delights in them; but even more for the innocence of a world view that made such movies possible. In a way, Sky Captain - with its indestructable hero, its moral certainty, and its inhuman, otherworldly menace - is more about Iraq and September 11 than it is about monster robots. It's about decisive, cinematic victories instead of messy, real-life quagmires. If your idea of a good movie is one that places complex characters in realistic conflict, go see The Door in the Floor. But if you'd rather suspend disbelief for a couple hours, flying your P-40 into the sunset of a happy ending, check out Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" represents the triumph of style over substance, the P-40 Tomahawk over mechanical monsters, and computer generated actors over death itself. That last part is actually the tip of an ethical iceberg that has the potential of being the biggest point of contention in Hollywood since Ted Turner broke out his box of crayons and started colorizing black & white classic films. But for now we can just enjoy director-writer Kerry Conran's tribute to both the decade and the serials of the 1930s done with enough digital magic to make going over the rainbow seem like an unnecessary journey.

The story begins in a New York City untouched by either the Great Depression or the madness of Hitler's Nazis. But there is still a Teutonic threat beginning to encroach on the civilized world courtesy of the brilliant, mysterious, and apparently evil Dr. Totenkopf (enjoy the surprise). Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), an intrepid reporter for "The Chronicle," stumbles upon the first significant clue about the good doctor only to be distracted by the legion of giant killer mechanical men walking down the streets of New York City. In defense of the city comes Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), the Sky Captain himself, whose P-40 Tomahawk with its Flying Tiger teeth has been souped up by his sidekick, Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi). Of course Polly and Joe had something in the past, so there is a lot of subtext to her backseat driving as they go merrily along.

In the grand tradition of the Saturday morning serial the hero and his gal get on the trail of the bad machines, fueled by Dex being kidnapped by a mysterious Asian woman (Bai Ling) and helped by a few old friends, most notably Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie), the commander of a most unusual British airship. The running gag for the second half of the film is that Polly has only two shots left in her camera and keeps bypassing visual wonders, such as the real Shangri-La, because there could be something better around the corner.

Visually, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a visual treat, filled in the same sort of sepia tones we associate with the first reel of "The Wizard of Oz," a film that is clearly a reference point for Conran. Much is made of the fact that the actors performed in front of a blue screen to which Conrad added all the dazzling images of the mechanical creations in the art deco style of a lot of the architecture we see in the film, all glowing with a blue light. But Law, Paltrow, Jolie and the rest of the cast get credit for playing these roles straight without ever getting too tongue in cheek. This is an earnest homage and not parody, and while the result might not be great cinema it is still as much fun as any of the Saturday morning serials it wants to emulate.

This film wants to be "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for a new generation of filmgoers weaned on computer generated images, but it is not up to that level. The difference can be simply quantified by saying Kerry Conran is not Steven Spielberg, but it would be more worthwhile to point out that in his first film Conran has a much better handle on the cinematic over the dramatic aspects of movie making. His next project is the long awaited adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's "A Princess of Mars," with a screenplay by Mark Protosevich ("The Cell"), which should help firm up the dramatic half of the equation. Given the stunning eye candy provided in his debut effort, whatever Conran does in the future will certainly be worth a look.

The soft-focused, noir-esque, 1930s-style retrofuture of "Sky Captain" is a visual feast to behold, unabashedly revelling in obvious influences as Lang's "Metropolis" and B-movies of the 1930s. Amid some viewers' complaints of underdeveloped characters and dialogue, here's a movie for those us who truly "get it." Granted, this movie is not for everyone. But quite frankly, it has a lot of balls.

And dirigibles! And exploding dirigibles, at that! And giant robots! And...

But I digress. The Question is: Why should you see this movie? To put it simply, it will be unlike any other movie you've seen recently. I want to see more movies like this. I want to see more movies that take chances.

This is a movie for those who enjoy dirigibles, giant robots, ornithopters, dogfights, Manhattan, searchlights, Gwyneth Paltrow's cute over-bite, "larger than life" heros, the German language, mad scientists, industrial complexes, ray guns, dinosaurs, B-movies, film noir, steampunk, Ridley Scott's Los Angeles, the aforementioned "Metropolis", "The Wizard of Oz", Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", China Mieville's New Crobuzon....The point is that this movie takes you somewhere quite different. "Sky Captain" harkens back to a particular time and particular genre of truly escapist movies. And plus, the exploding dirigibles were just freakin' cool.

This movie was one of the coolest movies I've seen in a long time. It has it's own original look & feel. Can't really compare it to many other movies out there. If they had modern special effects & surround sound theaters back in the 30's this is what the movies might've looked like. It was loud,action packed,had a really cool story & was fun from beginning to end! Most of the movies from 2004 got bashed by critics but even JoBlo.com & rottentomatoes.com have a lot of good reviews for this one! If you want an old fashioned good time at the movies this is the one you've been waiting for!

Computer generated special effects have been around for quite some time now, and often questionably so, but they come into their own with Kerry Conran's SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW--an innovative film that failed in theatrical release but which now makes a big splash in the home market. And whether you love it or hate it, SKY CAPTAIN is likely to cast a very long shadow indeed.

As a concept, the film seems to be based on the popular serials of the 1930s and 1940s. This is not limited to the use of an improbable plot fueled by special effects and cliffhanger action sequences, but it extends to the dialogue and characters as well, all of which are typical of such celebrated serials as BUCK ROGERS, CAPTAIN MARVEL, SPY SMASHER, and THE CRIMSON GHOST. The film also draws specific plot elements from such diverse sources as KING KONG, LOST HORIZON, THE WIZARD OF OZ, and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, to name but a few.

The story is typical of serials. "Girl Reporter" Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is doing a story on missing scientists--and when giant metal robots attack New York she unexpectedly holds a clue to their origin. She and Sky Captain (Jude Law) form an uneasy alliance to get to the bottom of things. With an assist from Sky Captain's faithful sidekick Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) and the disconcertingly military Frankie (Angelina Jolie), the two search the world--and finally track the wicked Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier, resurrected via CGI) to his secret lair.

The look of the film follows suit. The live cast worked on a blue screen set, and with the exception of a single set, the costumes, and items the live actors had to handle, everything you see on the screen was created in the computer and added after the fact. A great many people have described the look of the film as "deco," an arts movement associated with the 1920s; this is misleading. It would be more accurate to describe it as a mixture of pre-WWII arts movements filtered through a 1950s sensibility, and the result is like nothing so much as a pulp science fiction magazine cover unexpectedly come to life.

Now, how much you like this will depend to a great extent on how clearly you recognize the film styles and specific films that have clearly influenced it. If you know nothing about serials, for example, you are likely to be appalled by the flatness of the script and Paltrow's one-note performance; on the other hand, if you are a serial fan, you'll immediately recognize that the script is reflective of such serials as SPY SMASHER and that Paltrow echoes Linda Sterling, famous for such serials as THE CRIMSON GHOST. It wouldn't be too much to say that in many respects SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is akin to an inside joke.

But most particularly, your liking for this film will depend on how you react to the visuals. I am not a great fan of CGI when it is used to bolster live action films such as GLADIATOR or TITANIC; I can usually spot the CGI and I find it distracting. But I have to come down in favor of SKY CAPTAIN: this isn't an effort to "make it look real;" this is an effort to make a totally artificial world, and whether it be giant robots, Shangri-La, or Radio City Music Hall the designs are stunning and remarkably well executed. Whatever other shortcomings it may have, SKY CAPTAIN has incredible visual "WOW!"

The DVD release is visually handsome with superior sound, and the package contains a fair number of bonuses. Unfortunately, the two commentary tracks are less interesting than you might expect, but two short documentaries ("Brave New World" and "The Art of the World of Tomorrow") are quite good--and the original six minute short that inspired the film is fascinating. Not every one will get it, so I recommend you rent before you buy, but on the whole this is a show truly worth the money. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Uhhh... Can you say Lois Lane meets Leni Riefenstahl in Laputa? Sky Captain is Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), who flies a vintage Annie Chenault Flying Tiger P-38 modified for aquabatics. His plane's number is h11-od, which makes more sense upside down, as does his girlfriend, Ace reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his other girlfriend with the eyepatch, British dreadnaught Frankie Cook (Angelina Jolie). He's also attracted to a mysterious female assassin (Ling Bai), the swine.

Dr. Totenkopf, translateable equally well as either Dr. Skull or Dr. Deadhead (Larry Olivier), is the archvillain whose army of giant flying robots (slightly ahead of their time in 1939 New York) is out to "save" the world from itself, in his own (you guessed it!) dastardly and inimitably twisted way unless you've seen Moonraker.

Maybe the only surprise in all this tongue in chic is the sheer mass of compacted cliches, but what makes it interesting to me, at least, is the undeniable fact that this movie is American anime, minus any and all actual animation except for what you see on the screen. The visuals could have been penned by Hayao Miyazaki, but the live action plot is some kind of metaphorically impure Marvel Comics Übermensch fantasy. It's also the first movie I've seen since Der Blaue Engel in which German is spoken without a sneer.

The gumsnapping sass is vintage Thirties Hollywood. There's also a Julie Garland walk-on in full Technicolor, as seen on a tiny square screen in one of those enormous Art Deco movie palaces from the period. The rest of this flick is sepia-toned.

Four stars for fun, out of five. This is the best B movie since Milky Way went poppable, but you may need an elastic attention span. And grease your suspension of disbelief.

Back in 1996, wannabe filmmaker Kerry Conran was holed up in his small Sherman Oaks apartment hunched over his Apple computer incessantly rendering segments and scenes for a trailer of an epic movie that only existed in his head. Two years later he had an art deco tinged, vintage-looking six minute black and white teaser that would become SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (Paramount).

A screenplay was begun after producer John Avnet saw that short film in 1998 and committed to making Kevin's big screen vision a reality. Two years later, shooting began in London with Kevin directing. Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie acted out every digitally storyboarded scene on a bare, blue stage. All the globe trotting locations and huge aerial and underwater action set pieces were then computer designed with the actors seamlessly inserted.

I mention these things because the art of this film is at least as important as the story. Set in the late 1930s, giant robots invade New York City and perky reporter Paltrow alerts old lover Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law). Their daunting task is to figure out who's behind this attack and stop a conspiracy to destroy civilization in order to save the planet. An idea that resonates on some level today.

The exquisitely beautiful, period perfect, richly detailed results didn't connect to the full audience potential this breathtaking breakthrough film deserves.

Extras include three informative featurettes on the art and making of this film and there are two superb commentaries. One from the filmmakers and a lone producer commentary from Avnet that should be the model for all future producer commentaries.

This DVD is highly recommended.

Maybe there will be a two disc extended edition that includes the finished version of the important deleted scenes and a separate disc that actualy shows the digital artists at work creating the astonishingly detailed, beautifully executed visuals that look straight out of the 30s.

i went with the highest excitment about this movie...it surely didnt disappoint me...it was more than i bargained for. Jude Law as the quincetenial 30s indiana jones, and Gynneth Paltrow as the ultimate "blondie" katherine hepburn wanna-be. bickering, judgemental about each other, love-hate relationship...and chemestry to spare. however, just a few scenes and ur just ultimate boyhood dream girl, ANGELINA JOLIE, takes away the sweepstake on this jackpot. amazing, sensual, sexxy as hell...i want more of the relationship with sky captain, i want more of the backstory of her...how she became sky's friend...if only angie was gynneth and cast someone else as franky...the one that really impress me with the nice touch of 30s actioneers was Giovanni Rabisi... over all, was a great movie, and lots of future promise with this director....cant wait to see what he does with "princess of mars", with this original story base in the 30s, i dont think he will have problems takling real 30s story (princess is made by the guy who did tarzan) and bringing it to the masses with a 21st century FXs touch.
this is what real originality means...not crappy movies sorely relying in FX alone.

"Sky Captain And the World of Tomorrow" is a wonderfully entertaining and refreshingly unique action flick that stands head and shoulders over any other recent films of the genre. I was stunned by the lush visuals, gorgeous lighting, period costumes, rich colors and overall style of the film. Whoever said style over substance was a bad thing?

"Sky Captain" is riddled with references to films of the 30's and 40's and old adventure comic books. This nostalgia is what gives "Sky Captain" its own unique persona that has so amazed critics and audiences worldwide. In the troubled world we live in today, many yearn for simpler times, and the best way to revisit the past is, of course, through film. In "Sky Captain", I fond comfort in the simplistic beauty of times past.

From the opening moments, as snow falls on a Gotham-like a scene, Director Kerry Conran sets the mood and style as he docks the massive airship Hindenburg III to the top of the Empire State Building in a sequence so astounding and breathtakingly real; so of the moment, that it fills audiences with an awe and wonder. Conran takes a palpable joy in his filmmaking, an enthusiasm that sweeps you off your feet. The visuals in "Sky Captain" are, simply put, are among the most astounding I have ever seen in a film. No wonder Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Giovanni Ribisi were all scrambling to be a part of this soon-to-be classic film!

The story is by no means bad, as it has been suggested by many, but rather it is much more basic than most action flicks nowadays. Frankly, I loved the simplicity of the story, which once again reminded me of Old Hollywood. There were no annoying, pointless subplots that so confused me that I found myself frustrated with the film as I left the theater. The fun, witty script kept me entertained and I found that I had a large, goofy grin on my face practically the entire film. The whole thing was just so darn fun and lovable that I couldn't help it! By far the year's best film.