Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I read some pretty nasty reviews on this film. It was going to boring, non-entertaining, and even plain horrible, according to some paper magazines. But the idea of it being a 30-ies, retr-like film, with Jude Law as main character “Joe” aka the Sky Captain, I simply had to see it.[G.

E.

B describes it very well:](http://godsexboyfriend.com/archives/sky-captain-and-yesterdays-world-of-tomorrow.html)> 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.

The sepia toning, the compositions, and nearly all the artwork refers to the late Art Deco, a styule often used in comics. The style is indeed great. What? Marvelous. But the story is flat, I am not sure if it is the acting, or the story and the acting that makes the caracters as flat as a leaf of paper. I could really not bother at all about any of the characters, something even Pierce Brosnan manages better in silly James Bond films.

But all in all a nice film. I categorise it under those films I really had to see in the cinema, because on DVD its crap. Alltogether happy i weant to see it!