Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
| Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow | |
|---|---|
| File:Sky Captain movie poster.jpg | |
| Directed by | Kerry Conran |
| Written by | Kerry Conran |
| Produced by | Jon Avnet Sadie Frost Jude Law Marsha Oglesby |
| Starring | Gwyneth Paltrow Jude Law Giovanni Ribisi Michael Gambon Omid Djali Laurence Olivier |
| Cinematography | Eric Adkins |
| Music by | Ed Shearmur |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date | 2004 |
Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film released on September 17, 2004 in the United States. It was written and directed by Kerry Conran, in his directorial debut.
The film stars Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Giovanni Ribisi, and Michael Gambon. It is set in New York City in an alternative 1939 and is a science fiction adventure film. Along with Casshern, Immortel (Ad Vitam), Sin City (and later, 300), it is one of the first movies to be shot entirely on a digital backlot with actors in front of a bluescreen, with all the sets and nearly all of the props computer-generated. The actors spent only 28 days in principal photography. The role of the villain, Dr. Totenkopf, is "played" by Sir Laurence Olivier, who died in 1989; archive footage of him from the 1940s was manipulated by computer to allow him to make this posthumous film appearance, with dialogue from his reading of the Bible on tape.
Synopsis
Template:Spoilers The film takes place in an alternative 1930s where there is no sign of Germany preparing for war or that America is in the grips of an economic depression. The fantastic technology which is a mixture of super-advanced science and early 20th century (developed in science fiction works and comics of that age), points to alternate history, which some would classify as an unofficial subgenre of steampunk, known as "dieselpunk".
The film opens with the arrival of the Hindenburg III zeppelin in New York City, mooring at the Empire State Building. A frightened scientist named Dr. Jorge Vargas makes arrangements for a package to be delivered to a Dr. Walter Jennings, before vanishing.
Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), a newspaper reporter for The Chronicle, is looking into the mysterious disappearances of Vargas and five other renowned scientists. She receives a cryptic message, telling her to go to the Radio City Music Hall movie theater that night. She is warned not to go by her editor (Michael Gambon, enacting a variation on the 1940s character he played in the BBC's The Singing Detective). She arrives and encounters Dr. Walter Jennings, who is terrified, and tells her that Dr. Totenkopf (German for "death's head") is coming for him.
Just then, air raid sirens go off, heralding the arrival of numerous massive robots that prove all but unstoppable. (The robots are based upon the ones in the Fleischer Studios Superman animated short "The Mechanical Monsters".) In desperation, the police call for the aid of Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), who is known as Sky Captain and commands a private air force, the Flying Legion (perhaps a reference to the British Legion of Frontiersmen, a similar historical 'private army', but more likely inspired by the Flying Tigers, as the P-40 he flies is painted in the same style). Sullivan's attempts to stop the robots are successful in that they leave after he knocks one of them over, and he helps save Polly, who endangered herself while photographing the robots.
The wreckage of one of the robots is brought back to the Legion's airstrip, so that the Legion's mechanic Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) can examine it. Polly arrives as well, hoping to get information for her story. She and Joe are ex-lovers, who broke up three years earlier due to a fight, which each has a different account of. Joe constantly accuses Polly of sabotaging his airplane, which led to him spending six months in a Manchurian labour camp; Polly accuses Joe of fooling around with another woman while he was in Nanjing. Since Polly has some useful information, Joe agrees to let her in on the investigation.
This takes them to the laboratory of Dr. Jennings, which has been ransacked, and Jennings near death. The culprit, a mysterious woman (Bai Ling), escapes, while the mortally wounded Jennings warns of Dr. Totenkopf's plans. He also gives Polly two vials, which he says are crucial. Polly doesn't tell Joe about the vials, presumably so that she can keep her edge in the investigation.
They return to the Legion's base, which comes under attack by squadrons of ornithopter drones. In the ensuing battle, Dex is captured, but he succeeds in leaving behind a clue as to where Totenkopf's base is located.
Joe and Polly track the signal to Nepal, and venture into the Himalaya there, where they find a mining outpost, long abandoned, and are nearly killed by two of Totenkopf's goons, who take the two vials from Polly. Joe and Polly escape but are knocked out by an explosion in the mine. They wake up together in the mythical Shangri-La. The monks who live there tell of Totenkopf's enslavement of their people, forcing them to work in the uranium mines, which killed most of them. The survivors Totenkopf experimented on. The final survivor of the mines and experiments, who is horribly disfigured, provides another clue to where Totenkopf is hiding.
This leads them to rendezvous with Joe's other ex-flame, Captain Francesca "Franky" Cook (Angelina Jolie), who commands a flying aircraft carrier (which resembles Captain Scarlet's Cloudbase, the craft in The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier.) in the Royal Navy. Franky helps them get to Totenkopf's hidden island. Getting in requires an extended trip underwater, making use of amphibious aircraft.
Joe and Polly find themselves inside the mountainous island, which contains numerous new creatures created by Totenkopf, many of which appear to be variations of dinosaurs. They travel to the very centre of the island, where robots are loading domestic and other animals, as well as the contents of the mysterious vials, Totenkopf's genetically engineered humans, onto a massive "Noah's Ark" rocket. Joe and Polly are nearly killed, but Dex arrives with the missing scientists (they escaped from the robots), and spirits them away. Dex explains that Totenkopf has given up on humanity, and seeks to end the world as he begins a new one: the "World of Tomorrow".
The group goes to Totenkopf's lair, aiming to end his evil scheme, only to discover that Totenkopf has in fact been dead for nearly two decades; his machines have carried on his work begun in "Unit 11". The only way to stop the rocket from incinerating Earth during its launch (presumably with the aid of the uranium that Totenkopf had mined and refined) is to cause an internal malfunction; unfortunately there is no way to escape from the rocket before it explodes. Joe knocks out Polly, and then goes to sacrifice himself, while the others escape. Polly recovers and goes after Joe, arriving in time to save him from the mysterious woman (who turns out to be a robot). The two then go into the rocket just before it launches, ready to stop it before it reaches 100km altitude (at which point the atmosphere will be incinerated). They succeed, releasing the animals in escape pods, and then use a pod to flee from the exploding rocket.
Influences
The Conran brothers were influenced by the designs of Norman Bel Geddes who was an industrial designer and did work for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and designed exhibits for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Geddes also designed an Air Ship that was to fly from Chicago to London.
Another key influence was Hugh Ferriss, one of the designers for the 1939 World’s Fair and who designed bridges and huge housing complexes. He was an American delineator (one who creates perspective drawings of buildings) and architect. In 1922, skyscraper architect Harvey Wiley Corbett commissioned Ferriss to draw a series of four step-by-step perspectives demonstrating the architecture consequences of the zoning law. These four drawings would later be used in his 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow (Dover Publications, 2005, ISBN 0486437272).
Homages
Conran incorporated many elements of classic genre films into his. Some of them are not simply homages/easter eggs, but also hint that the world of Sky Captain is actually a crossover world where several fictional events and elements like Shangri-la and King Kong, coexist as actual facts (a universe similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Here is a partial list.
- Metropolis (1927)
- King Kong (1933)
- Flash Gordon (1936)
- Things to Come (1936)
- Lost Horizon (1937)
- The War of the Worlds (1938)
- Buck Rogers (1939)
- Wuthering Heights (1939)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- His Girl Friday (1940)
- Superman (1941)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- Godzilla
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- The War of the Worlds (1953)
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- Zeppelin (1971)
- THX 1138 (1971)
- Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (1977)
- Moonraker (1979)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Forbidden Planet (1956)
- Castle in the Sky (1986)
- Star Trek: The Original Series (1966)
- Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Battlestar Galactica (1978)
- The Iron Giant (1999)
There are also significant visual elements from the pulp fiction series Biggles and Doc Savage. The steampunk graphic novel Luther Arkwright probably provides the origin of the movie's British craft, but there are other possible sources. Franky Cook, Angelina Jolie's character, seems to have some elements of characters like Nick Fury and Honor Harrington.
Although this was not confimed or acknowledged by Conran, the character of Sky Captain (Joe Sullivan) seems to have been inspired by none other than Red Albright, aka Captain Midnight.
The name of the lead heroine is Conran's reference to the famous British song Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.
The line of poetry "... all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by ...", quoted by the hero, is from the famous poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield.
Performance
Although the movie had high box office expectations, opening at #1 on its September release date, the movie performed modestly (at best) at the box office grossing only about $37 million in the United States as of December 21 2004. Critical reviews, while leaning positive, were mixed. The film scored 74% on RottenTomatoes.com, a film review aggregator site. The Canadian network Space: The Imagination Station awarded it the 2005 Spacey Award for Best Film, an accolade voted upon by network staff. The film is also one of few to be awarded five stars by IGN filmforce.
Trivia
- One of three Jude Law films to be released by Paramount Pictures in 2004, along with the 2004 remake of Alfie and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
- During the newflash scene, several newspapers from various countries flas by. In the picture from the japanese paper, Godzilla kan be seen in the corner.