Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Beaks, Quint, and a whole bunch of other AICN friends and family were at this screening, and the word from them is that it tore the roof off the place. This is the first review anyone’s sent, though, so here we go...
Harry - I have written before from a different email, one review you used and some you didn't but here goes nothing...
How is it hanging AICNers?
I am at Comic-Con in wonderful San Diego and by chance while at a party for this one thing instead of going to the Star Wars fan film festival like I planned, I get an invite to a flick, none other than "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."
Now I know that Salty Seaman is scouring the Con somewhere, but WHY the hell doesn't have have a computer-friendly hotel? Anyway, I didn't see any Seamen-like figures at the screening, which I don't think had much to do with the Con as there were a lot of industry-like folks in attendance. In fact, Maggie Thompson from Comic Buyers Guide was there as was a Dark Horse big-wig and I had a pleasant chat with an effects guy who had only seen 40 minutes of the film. Was Quint at Shawn of the Dead?
From my hotel, earlier in the evening, two GIGANTIC inflatable robots (I think) were visible in downtwon SD, near the convention hall, so if the screening was publicized then I guess it was to impress somebody in the room. Anyway, bottom line, I liked this film a lot, although I am puzzled what the general public will think.
Now, there are spoilers ahead but I HATE runing the movie and I will hold back to the best of my ability. This isn't the kind of flick to hit you with something you didn't see coming, but all the same, I will do what I can. The producer was there to introduce director and writier Kerry Conran (I used IMDB) and apparently its the first screening ever, anywhere.
So, Sky Captain (Jude Law) and Polly Perkins (Gweneth Paltrow) eat up the screen almost all of the time. Although Angelina Jolie is also top-billed, she isn't central to it all, or even much more than an extended cameo. She does have nice lips though and perfect teeth. The rest of her was hidden.
Perkins is the impossibly tenacious reporter who has every instinct, follows every lead (threat of death isn't the slightest bit of a deterant) takes every picture never once has a hair out of place. Captain is part of the mercenary air crew (of which apparently only Captain actually flys, the rest run around and get shot) and he is impossibly brave, impossibly handsome, impossibly skilled and impossibly lucky.
These two have a very Han Solo/Leia type relationship al la Empire Strikes Back. They have an aparent past, they bicker, they make smart-ass quips to each other in the face of horrific danger and all the while they are really wanting to jump on top of each other and spread man goo around. I get the feeling Polly would be a dominatrix, telling her Sky Captain what to do and how but...anyway...
Tenacious Polly follows a lead which lands her smack dab in the middle of New York City when a legion of "iron giants" decide to attack, defended only by her impossible luck and the skilled piloting of Sky Captain and his Spitfire prop plane fully equiped with its Snow Speeder grappling hook. He was called in by visible radio waves (think Tesla album cover) from New York City, which is aparently just over the mountains (yes, geography majors) from NYC.
Our good captain and the good reporter eventually meet up and start bickering with Giovani Ribisi who plays the impossibly smart guy who can invent anything (a gun that melts metal instantly) except a decent camera for Polly. He plays R2D2 to the Han/Leia dynamic. He is the tech-hero of the film and is also not in it much, although our captain LOVES Dex.
Dex is abducted by a whole different kind of robot (just big ones, not GIANT ones) with snakey arms and off go Han/Leia arguing in the Mellenium Falcon to find him. Along the way, Polly takes a few pictures, chooses not to take a few pictures and they meet Jolie who plays a male Nick Fury on her S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier who serves as the Lando of the film, except with much bigger lips. Jolie, like the other cast members, is actually perfect to play the deliberately sterotypical character and she does look fantastic.
So then they visit King Kong's island/the Degobah System, complete with the big log that crosses the chasm, still looking for Dex and the bad guy that never appears - a bit like Sauron in Lord of the Rings. So, to go much further would really infringe on the film too much, but I hope you get the basic idea. They fight lots of robots, go to Eden which is now radioactive and do cool stunts and try to save the world while longing to get naked together.
From my tone you might think I don't like the film, but that isn't true. It wasn't strikingly original in its plot/ideas/characters but it was pretty amazing visually and the sounds of big clanking robots was equally as accomplished as sights of it. I think the movie was made for style and the substance was deliberately thin.
The whole film is mostly sepia tones and lighted a lot like you see on the posters. The most color is Polly's lips and a few explosions along the way and I admire the decision to take the look of the film that far. It worked for me. What makes the film watchable is the design of the thing, which is obvious, but I really enjoyed it.
The film is set in a weird pre-WWII age (I think) with skewampus technology (sumbersible airplanes but no curved glass on Captain's googles) with dirigibles and classic clothes. It's the technology in the film that is so WOWing, and a couple of times clever devices acheived a polite clap or two. The dinosaurs were a bit of a let-down because they didn't do anything and there weren't enough of them to really excite me. I couldn't help but wonder if a few scenes were on the cutting room floor at this point.
Like the setting, I felt that the audience was being asked to go back to a time when the viewing public was more simple. We were being asked to see the movie as somebody who watched the original Flash Gordon might have watched it. I don't mean that it was just stupid and asked the audience to be stupid (Van Helsing) but that it asked us to be wide-eyed and innocent. It asked us to have joy and wonder as the hero was heroic beyond belief, as Polly was Leia beyond belief and as Dex pulled inventions out of his ass beyond belief.
For me, all that worked. I bought into the film and enjoyed it. I fear critics are going to rip it up, swallow it and crap it out before the public can even try it, but I think viewing the film that way is too simplistic. I think the director asked us to meet him part way and I was willing to do it and I enjoyed doing it. I liked it.
A lot of talkbackers will be hating it (because Paltrow doesn't show her bubbies among other things) and calling it lame and inane, but I appreciate the vision, the commitment to a singular look and the fun I had while watching it. Even though I was seated between two palookas over 6 ft. 10, I wouldn't have minded it being a bit longer. I suspect the studio doesn't know what to do with this, thus a September release (although going against Spider-Man was suicide) but that doesn't seem as bad to me as I feared.
The first ass who screams "plant" must go read a year's worth of "Star Wars III is going to be great" talk balks. It's late at night so cut me some spelling slack, I have a Con to be at tomorrow after all. We do discover what the "World of Tomorrow" is and you will know it when you see it.
Affectionately yours,
Franklin "Foggy" Nelson.
I agree with him, as I said in my review of the movie last month. It’s innocent, without an ounce of the cynical detachment that has become so standard-issue in almost any Hollywood movie these days, and I am pleased to hear that at least this audience... maybe the best audience the film’s ever going to have... met it on its own terms and had the fun that’s there to be had. Can’t wait to see it finished when it hits in September.
"Moriarty" out.
