Sky Captain and Yesterday's World of Tomorrow

my rating: Nathan's rating:

Nathan got the two of us into an advance screening of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. (Actually Nathan kept referring to it as an "Angelina Jolie movie", and I had to point out to him that she had only a supporting role.) It was pretty much what I expected, which is to say that it was pretty good.

The film is a tidy bundle of influences and contradictions... and it wears them on its sleeve. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it aims to recapture the spirit of a bygone era of moviemaking, specifically adventure serials circa 1940. Sky Captain adds a heavy dose of pulp science fiction and comic book heroics, taking advantage of the ability of modern cinema to actually deliver the "special effects" that only prose and illustrations could achieve 65 years ago. Giant robots, ray guns, amphibious fighter craft, and other staples of wide-eyed SF come to life.

The greatest irony of the film is that it uses digital rendering to create the imagery of a pre-computer era. The actors were filmed (or should we start saying "recorded"?) on a blank soundstage, with all of the environments created and added digitally. Since about the only thing that digital imaging can't animate convincingly is human actors, they get the best of both worlds that way. Filmmaker Kerry Conran wanted to produce this in black and white, but apparently the studio talked him into a subdued, almost sepia-toned look, which works pretty effectively.

Once upon a time this film would have knocked the audience on its collective ass, with its action sequences and cinematography. But it failed to bowl me over, because... yeah, I know you can render anything on a computer, so I'm really not that impressed that you can render _____. And the acting was just a little too authentic to the genre and period it was evoking, with two-dimensional lead characters like the rogue hero and the meddlesome heroine, and supporting characters like the resourceful assistant, the old colleague/flame, and the old friend/native guide. Indiana Jones, by contrast, was a more rounded, more interesting character.

It's no summer blockbuster, but summer's over, and in terms of fun entertainment, it beats the pants off any movie released in the last month.