Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely Fantastic

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

When a series of scientists start disappearing and the city of New York gets attacked by an army of futuristic robots, a very curious reporter and a famous pilot team up to find the source of the problems which seem to point in the same direction. Thus, an intense, full of action search commences, in a desperate attempt to ultimately save the word from imminent destruction.It's a beautifully filmed action movie, which puts the viewer into the middle of an old New York, where supernatural phenomenon seems to occur. Its artistic approach creates a wonderful and catchy atmosphere which lasts the entire movie, while its actors contribute in a pleasant and funny way to this bloomy action. Unfortunately, this is where the good parts end. The plot is very simplistic, linear and predictable, and to make matters worse, the movie is full of clichés which you simply cannot ignore. Their usage does not represent a tragedy, but when you exaggerate, like this film does, it becomes a bit disturbing for the viewer. While most CGI is well executed and a pleasure to look at, the producers seemed to omit a couple of sequences, which are choppy at best.The overall impression is that the movie wasn't taking itself seriously, fact which could have represented an advantage if you ask me. To sum things up, it's beautifully filmed, well played, but with a below average plot which drags the whole thing down.

*Spoiler/plot- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2004. When mysterious giant robots attack New York City, intrepid reporter Polly Perkins is on the news story and enlists the aid of ace aviator and old flame "Sky Captain" Sullivan. Their mission is to find out who's behind these fling killing machines and to stop the plot to destroy the world before it's too late.*Special Star- Jude Law, Angeline Jolie, Gwyneth Patrow, Giovanni Ribisi.*Theme- The future has millions of possibilities, some good and many bad.*Trivia/location/goofs- This film features innovative state-of-the-art digital special effects with blue screen sets and unique scene image processing to achieve 1930's theatrical serial comic book appearance.*Emotion- While this film was interesting in it's breakout use of film digital EFX, I thought the movies plot got lost in all the technical special EX....certainly the theme was over shadowed or not clearly communicated to the audience.*Based On- Film plot takes it origins from a 6 minute original computer edited treatment by an amateur filmmaker that took the World's Fair 1939 theme.

"Sky Captain" Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) is a free-lance fighter pilot who works to protect New York City. When a series of heavily armed robots begin to attack the city, Joe winds up working with Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), a newspaperwoman who obsessively searches for the next best thing. The robots attack Lower Manhattan by flying through the skies before making strong landings on the ground below, smashing through the streets and destroying everything in sight. The robots are a product of Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Oliver), a World War I scientist who has been working towards the ultimate goal - the fabled idea of world domination. His robot henchman are looking to take every civilian out who doesn't comply with his plans; Sky Captain is assisted by Franky (Angelina Jolie), a sexy fighter pilot who looks to assist him in tough predicaments as well as Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi), the head of research and development for Sky Captain's many planes.Such is the wacky premise of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which would've made for a fantastic pulp novel about fifty or sixty years ago. This is one of the quirkiest but most charming films to released in the 2000's, as it's the kind of film that needed to catch lightning in a bottle several times to even be made. However, thanks to writer/director Kerry Conran's persistent drive to shop the film around, finally coming in contact with producer Jon Avnet and then the production company Aurelio De Laurentiis to finance it, Sky Captain evolved into a $70 million studio gamble that was, to be fair, lucky to see the light of day.This is the kind of film that seems destined for critical and financial disaster (and only the latter became slightly true). Sky Captain is one big homage to the action serials of yesteryear, being shot with monochromatic sepia filters to replicate the feel of a grainy, pulpy adventure being shown through a shoddy film projector. It was also the first major film to be shot almost entirely on a digital backlot, which has actors acting before greenscreen sets (now a pitifully common practice), with Sin City following a year later. Sky Captain is not a known commodity either, not stemming from any line of comics (although it could've fooled me by its look and story) nor any preexisting media property. With that, this film was a gigantic leap of faith that turned out modestly well.To begin with, I absolutely love the look of the film. The monochromatic filters, the blatantly artificial backgrounds, and the action serial-feel in the pacing and suspense all pay a cheerful homage to a genre we don't see anymore. I'd shell out money for a film like Sky Captain much faster than a contemporary action property, where scenes don't even last three seconds and camera angles muddle the action to make the chaos indistinguishable. This is a film with a beautiful look, assuming the looks of a city-based 1920's film like Metropolis, the perilous quick-cuts of a 1930's action films like King Kong, and a gritty 1940's film noir like The Maltese Falcon throughout its one-hundred and six minute runtime.Law and Paltrow also drum up likable chemistry throughout the film; they assume their roles nicely, with Law probably being the only actor who should play a fighter pilot by the name of "Sky Captain" and Paltrow really nailing the news-obsessed reporter taken along for a ride by the coattails of a masked crusader of the sky. With the visual feast and the enjoyable banter between the leads taking place, it's hard to initially see Sky Captain's core issue. To be fair, I was gearing up to write a positive review up until I realized something gravely troubling.For a film decorated with classic special effects and a nostalgic look, despite using new technology, the story here is stunningly simple and unengaging. Some may claim that it's adhering to the story of the simplistic page-turners from decades gone past, but in the modern age, there should be at least a bit more meat and substance to the story. And if not, a basic plot line like the one used here could work as a satire of the genre. Yet, through all its silliness and its routine plot, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is serious in its story and that's a frustrating thing when the story is lacking as it is here.At the end of the day, though, it's hard to clamp down on Sky Captain too much. It does something that's totally brave and foreign to contemporary cinema; the fact that this film got past the talking stages is an unprecedented achievement for present-day Hollywood and Conran himself, who wasn't working off any nepotism whilst pursuing his dream to get this film made (he shot a cheap short film in his living room to shop to producers). If you can forgive a fairly weak story and embrace the acting and the visuals, there's no good reason to skip Sky Captain - there's your recommendation within a kinda/sorta nudge in the other direction.Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Laurence Oliver.

When this film was released, it used the best available CGI. The 'special' effects are now out-matched by modern consoles, so the film has to stand on it's plot and acting. Well, the plot is a by-the-numbers Saturday afternoon B-movie, full of dastardly enemies, evil robots, stoic heroes and damsels, some of whom are even in distress. The problem with the plotting is that sometimes the decisions that characters make are so astonishingly stupid, you want to scream; for example, Polly hides two vials in her pocket that she gets from a dying scientist. Why, what is she going to do with them? She's a reporter, not a biologist.But that is nothing compared to the acting. Jude Law does a good dashing hero, Angelina Jolie has an excellent cameo, but the real fly in the ointment is Gwyneth Paltrow, whose acting seems to consist of being shrill and irritating, although, to be fair, she is not best served by the execrable lines she's been given. Sadly, the effect is that you end up utterly disliking her character. And there is no sexual tension between the leads at all. Michael Gambon is wasted, but in general, you feel that all the actors had a really hard time in their virtual environment, wildly overplaying everything.Don't expect too much, definitely don't analyse the plot and you may enjoy it.