If "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is really the future of movies, then I should probably cross "movie critic" off of my list of possible careers. "Sky Captain" is the sort of movie that leaves you wholeheartedly disappointed and always wondering what might have been.
The film takes place in New York City, where intrepid reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is covering the mysterious disappearance of nine eminent scientists. As she begins to piece together the details behind the conspiracy, giant mechanical robots invade Manhattan, trampling down the avenues.
The destructive machines are no match for Joe "Sky Captain" Sullivan (Jude Law), leader of the Flying Legion and the hero of the story. After he saves the day, Sky Captain and Polly team up to discover the source of the machines and to locate the missing scientists, with the help of whiz kid Dex (Giovanni Ribisi).
Yet few people outside of comic book convention attendees would go to see this film for its plot. The trailers for "Sky Captain" showcase what are supposed to be the movie's breathtaking visual effects. Screenwriter/Director Kerry Conran shot his life's labor entirely in front of a blue screen, and even the actors are digitally enhanced in a seamless weaving of live performers and CGI.
At first, the results are kind of cool. But the innovative "holysh*tthatisacooleffect" moments which made the "Lord of the Rings" films so amazingly successful are lacking from the film. There is even a point, when Sky Captain is supposedly at the famed Shangri-La, that the background looks as if it were lifted straight from Rivendell, the Elven kingdom in "Fellowship of the Ring."
The great thing about action and comic-book films is that the good ones all have a good dose of deliberate campiness that benefits from the hokey genre. Sam Raimi understood this in his "Spiderman" adaptations, as did Stephen Spielberg with "Indiana Jones." Paul Verhoven's "Starship Troopers" is one of the guiltiest pleasures in film, so ridden with goofiness and impossible situations that it works.
But "Sky Captain" takes itself so seriously that the massive plot holes are not trivial criticisms, but devastating distractions. Without any sense of so-called purposeful "camp," the film betrays its genre by not realizing its own potential within the realm of willing suspension of disbelief.
The movie, which was filmed entirely in front of a blue screen, is set in the late 1930s. America is coming out of the Gilded Age and into its new role as a world leader. The movie's title is in part a rip-off of the 1939 World's Fair theme, "The World of Tomorrow."
And that's where "Sky Captain" fails. It is a series of unfortunate rip-offs from other movies and from aspects of American culture. As an amalgamation of numerous films and film genres, "Sky Captain" is a constant reminder that its inspirations were better flicks.
The film opens with an awe-inspiring view of the Gotham reminiscent of the film noir-ish versions of "Batman" (as opposed to the campy television version). As the fictional Hindenberg III docks at the top of the Empire State Building, you'd half expect for King Kong to pop into the screen. The giant robots must have come from the same factory as the "Iron Giant." Polly Perkins is meant to be a Lois Lane-like character, and Conran tries to make Sky Captain into Indiana Jones. Instead, he comes off as a James Bond without nuance, a hero with a gadget filled airplane and an ego to boot.
Conran's most egregious film allusion, however, is the overly obvious way in which he tries to make "Sky Captain" into the new "Wizard of Oz." As Polly makes her way into Radio City Music Hall to meet the last remaining scientist, the 1939 classic is playing on the screen. The message is rather obvious; if "The Wizard of Oz" was the feature film to usher in the use of Technicolor as a commercial success, than "Sky Captain" is the first to have been shot one hundred percent with digital effects.
Conran is probably right in insinuating that his style of CGI effects is the future of film, but one would hope that it would come at the hands of someone a bit more skilled in the art of screenwriting. "Sky Captain" suffers from the same fate as other big-budget flops like "The Avengers" or more recently, "Van Helsing." They all attempted to scrunch too many ideas into one feature film, which has the unfortunate effect of leaving no room to develop the plot into one cohesive work of cinema.
"Sky Captain" comes off as flat and uninspiring to its audience, and leaves them to fear the world of tomorrow's film and yearn for the classics which belong in a museum.
