Blogging By Cinema-light: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran, 2004) Conran's film envisioned a new world—not the homagey 1930's era steampunk film that he created, but in how films were made, given the computer revolution that was exploding every aspect of business and personal life. Could the movies be far behind?

George Lucas was perfecting the green-screen process with his Star Wars pre-sequels, so that everything looked exquisite, but it tended to ham-string the actors, who could only emote to hanging ping-pong balls and walk around imaginary architecture and furnishings, making them have to concentrate on other things besides making their memorized lines sound natural or convey something besides exposition. In the mean-time, film-makers saw the potential of shorter shooting times and building expansive/expensive sets—just do it in the box around the actors. Robert Rodriguez jumped in and James Cameron took it to whole new levels, merely motion-capturing the actors for his Avatar. And making a billion bucks.

For four years, Conran worked on a MacIIci to make a short promo film (see below) of a 1930's New York where zeppelins dock at the Empire State Building and giant mechanical robots (inspired by a classic Fleischer Studios Superman cartoon seen further below) march through the streets crushing cars and resisting the efforts of machine-gun-wielding police—to shoot them down so they could fall and crush even more things, like the overlayed people looking up with a sense of horror/wonder. It ends with a call to the title character (relayed by an RKO studio-like antenna) and the short ends with the promise of another chapter, like an old-time movie serial.

The strength of the short is it's obvious love for art-deco stylization and Warner Brothers montages and German expressionism—and monster-robots (that one's key). It was enough to excite producer Jon Avnet to take the techniques and design sensibilities and turn it into a feature. For two years, Avnet and Conran expanded the story, with—literally—the sky being the limit. But, the issue was giant robots attacking New York and a guy in a P40 Warhawk to the rescue.

Seems a little limited for a feature.

And it is. Even with an explanation of who and why giant robots, and for the introduction of so many reinforcements needed to take out so many robots, there's not much story. The solution is what Sky Captain provides—more opportunity to add more ships, precious few characters and a lot of flying around dodging the more-than-enough hardware thrown at them—but not a lot of depth. As in this clip...

The details are that Jude Law's devil-may-care Sky Captain—his name is Harry "Joe" Sullivan and leader of "The Flying Legion"—manages to disable one of the robots for examination by his tech-guy Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) and, with the help of plucky reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), learns that the mastermind behind the attacks is one Dr. Totenkopf, who has been assassinating top technologists around the globe (by means of a "Mysterious Woman"—that is her name and played by Bai Ling) to hide his intentions. The scientists don't have that much differing them, just slightly more than individual robots do, making it difficult to care about their fates, much less tell them apart.

It is up to Sky Captain to recruit former flame Commander Francesca "Franky" Cook (Angelina Jolie, leathered up down to an eye-patch) of the Royal Navy, to lead a team of "Thunderbirds"-style air-squadrons to stop the ultimate plan of the Dr. Totenkopf at his headquarters on a mysterious island, which involves destroying the human race and starting it anew on a rocket designed as a modern-age Noah's Ark.

But, there's a difference between being "inspired" and being "inspired-by." In the film's desturated, vaseline-smeared world, Paltrow's Polly Perkins works as a reporter for Charles Foster Kane's Chronicle chain, there's a visit to James Hilton's (and Frank Capra's—and Stephen Gooson's) Shangri-La, and during a pitched battle in the skies over New York, King Kong can be seen climbing the Empire State Building (presumably because every plane in the city is otherwise engaged). Ed Shearmur's score is busy "Mickey-Mousing" with John Williams' orchestration-templates, but there's no time to establish anything but the briefest of musical themes.

When Polly meets one of those vulnerable scientist-types, she does so in a nearly empty theater showing The Wizard of Oz, and control rooms have a similar spark (but a bit more scope) than Flash Gordon serials and Things to Come. Even when Dr. Totenkopf is revealed, it turns out to be an Oz-generated Laurence Olivier using archival footage. There are pop-culture references tucked in corners and hidden in plain sight—you know Sky Captain is sweet on Polly when you look at his plane's serial number, "h11od" (read it upside-down...or head over heels).

During the big reveal it turns out that Dr. Totenkopf is long-dead and his research to create a "perfect world"—"The World of Tomorrow"—has been taken over by his robots, who have been covering tracks, and gathering an example of male and female of every species of creature to be housed upon a giant rocket, the second stage of which will ignite the atmosphere of Earth to wipe out all life currently existing on Earth, sterilizing it for his re-boot.

Uh, yeah...hold on there.

With an atmosphere on fire, that'll pretty much make the planet uninhabitable to the saved species, as well as a long-in-the-works "Adam and Eve" project (Don't worry, it's not Sky Cap and Polly). So, unless Dr. T's robot-minions have a Death Star orbiting (and they don't), their so-called "World of Tomorrow" is going to be extra-crispy rather than regular. The robotic plot to re-populate the planet is a bit short-sighted and then, which, only means that the movie's plot is clunky and blowing off steam.

And that's the problem with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Oh, it's fun alright, with enough details to satisfy any geek/film-freak willing to watch it over and over again (and maybe capture those images and post them on their movie blog). But, if that same frothy energy that went into those quick call-backs and little details had gone into big things like story and plot, then this might have been a better movie, instead of the cheese-fest that it is.