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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
(2004)
Dir: Kerry Conran
Recently I’ve become a Sci-Fi junkie; SF to those who are true fans of the genre. I watch anything and everything. Every day I consume the perceived future, technology, and psychology of guys like Philip K. Dick, and Ray Bradbury. But I also have this tremendous weakness for the old black and whites. I can’t get enough of their beauty, wonderful craftsmanship, misconceptions on the future and their direct hits on the society of “tomorrow”.
To find that a man, a human being, has used the technology available today, to combine my two loves into one film, was like finding a buy-one-get-one-free coupon in your pocket, right before paying the bill on a first date with that blond you’ve been eyeing forever (she has only worked in the same complex as you for the last year you big idiot). Sorry, confessional. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve wanted to see Sky Captain since I first heard about it. I even woke up early to go to the movies before work, and it was worth it.
Director, Kerry Conran, has fabricated an amazing blend of live action, and CGI (the people are real, where everything else is fake, kind of the opposite from Disney’s Dinosaur, which cost $130million). Conran envisioned a movie that didn’t use special effects to bridge gaps, but to build its own world. He wanted to merge his love for the future and SF with the pulpy mystery thrillers, and action adventures he grew up on. His main problem was the close-to-impossible production his vision would have called for. He started by making a six minute short film on his I-Mac, and somehow ended up delivering the biggest kids-and-adult film of the year, with great potential for deserved sequels (minus the fat, crude and boorish monster in his first of four sequels, bastard). Hopefully, the enormous amount of wit within the dialogue between Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law will continue.
Sky Captain is much like Kill Bill (without the blood and guts. Hell, there’s only like two or three actual deaths in Sky Captain). It’s Conran’s vehicle to play Tarrantino to his favorite directors. When Joe’s plane surfaces under an island, it looks like Luke Skywalker’s plane in the Dagobah swamp. I have to thank my brother for catching that Dr. Jenning’s office number is 1138 (THX). Then there are the Ray Harryhausen-esque monsters. Its not often a filmmaker gets the chance to pack one movie full of so many tributes to his mentors, this truly is a love letter to cinema in that respect.
Kerry Conran has proven to me that he’s a great visionary. Making a futuristic SF film set in the early 20’s, he’s created a world that defies everything we know about the era, and makes us believe it. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is an SF that will go right up there alongside Blade Runner, and Artificial Intelligence for its wonderful use of special effects. The effects aren’t there to make you drool, but to make the story believable; in this case, to make the film possible.
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