Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

The film begins in New York City when is attacked by giant robots and a gorgeous journalist (Gwyneth Paltrow) and an adventurer pilot, the Sky Captain, set off in pursuit the enormous aircrafts are destroying the megalopolis. Besides, famed scientists (Michael Gambon) are disappearing. The Sky captain supported by his assistant (Giovanni Ribisi) are trying to locate the source , a sound sign. Meanwhile , they will face off a mysterious enemy(Bai Ling) and an amazing array of technical bizarre robots , being helped by a flying aircraft carrier General (one-eyed Angelina Jolie).

The picture mingles great lots of action packed , rip-roaring , shootouts,derring-do adventures,spectacular scenes and is pretty entertaining . It's a very amusing cinematic roller coaster and with well made action set-pieces illuminating the full-blown adventures starred by Sky Captain. The "World of Tomorrow" portion of the title is a reference to the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, which was named "The World of Tomorrow". The film is a crossover between comic-strip héroes , Saturday matinée serial and old-fashioned thirties , forties movies as Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers . The tale describes the fantastic events with a plethora of special effects created by computer generator and transparency in blue background. As the movie used a unique combination of Adobe After Effects Plug-ins applied to achieve the film's unique look, no new technology was created to achieve the stylized look of the film.

The motion picture was beautifully executed with phenomenal images and ideal main cast completed with magnificent support actors. The flick will appeal to adventures , Sci-Fi fans , as the comic-books enthusiastic and have you on the edge of your seat , being extremely entertaining and fun .The film was splendidly directed by Kerry Corran . Well worth watching , it is indispensable and essential seeing .

Fmovies: Visually interesting, but falls flat in the originality department. This tedious excercise in technique wears thin after the opening battle. Jude Law has the charisma of burnt toast, but in his defense this film contains some of the worst dialogue I have ever seen on the big screen. In fact the script is so poor that it keeps taking you out of the film, and had me thinking about work, bills, my dogs, etc. There are many moments that scream bluescreen. Paltrow is as wooden as they get. This could of been saved by snappy film noir dialogue or over the top camp. My only complaint on the technique is that Black & White film (sorry, computer) would of helped because it looks like Turner colorized black and white. Just a big dull cliché mess. I would rather break my femur than sit through this endurance test again.

While my peers were racing to the movies to see such films as Pretty in Pink and Say Anything I couldn't wait to visit my grandparents' farm in southeastern Colorado. In my grandmother's antique cabinet in their 'playroom' were literally hundreds of tapes; movies staring the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and dozens of cliffhangers such as Mystery Squadron and The Adventures of Red Ryder . My love of serials is one of the few things I remember sharing with my father.

So when I was sitting in the theater and the first preview for Shy Captain and the World of Tomorrow came on I was transported back to the safety of my grandparents' home and the love I felt while watching old cliffhangers with my dad.

I was instantly in love with the movie, the beautiful quality of every frame that made the movie appear to be one beautifully illustrated comic book and, of course, the similarity to the campy sci-fi movies of the 1930's. I went home and immediately looked the movie up on the internet.

I was stunned to find out that this was the first film Kerry Conran had directed or written, and that Sky Captain was originally a six minute reel that producer Jon Avnet saw and wanted to turn into a feature length film. The movie itself was first storyboard with crude animation so that the actors would understand what was happening in their scenes since the entire film was shot in front of blue screen. Because there were no actual locations filming only took 26 days instead of an estimated 6 months.

When the movie opened on the 17th of September I was there for one the first showings. The theater was all but empty, only about twelve other people were there, all men, all in their thirties and all alone. I was truly shocked at the small turn out, what about this film had turned off so many movie goers?

The movie began and I felt like a little kid falling in love with movies for the first time all over again. The shuttle references to classic sci-fi movies of the 1920's, 30's and 40's littered the screen. References to King Kong, Forbidden Planet, and the comic book Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. were everywhere you looked. At one point Polly Perkins the feisty reporter played by Gwyneth Paltrow is talking to her editor on the phone saying, 'They're reached Sixth AveÂ… Fifth AveÂ…. they're a hundred yards away', a direct quote from Orson Welle's radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Even Star Wars was referenced when Joe 'Sky Captain' Sullivan played by Jude Law is instructed to land on the air carrier's pad 327, the same number the Millennium Falcon lands on in Cloud City. By far the greatest reference to past greatness is the appearance Sir Laurence Olivier, who died in 1989, as the villain Dr. Totenkopf, using CGI and archival footage Conran brings back to life one of our greatest actors.

I was in movie geek heaven, for about the first hour, and then my attention started to wonder. In a society of attention deficit the constant motion and flying from one scene to another and the quick, panicked, pace of this movie should have fit in, however I felt teased, as if I was only watching part of a movie, the part that would never have a conclusion. We receive through the dialogue what little character development the movie has to offer, which isn't much, and in the end no one grows, or changes, or even becomes deeper than a character in a commercial.

Looking back at the old serials I realize that

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow fmovies. In a 1940's of the future, scientists are mysteriously going missing and only plucky journalist Polly Perkins has a lead. Meeting with a scientist in a secret rendezvous, mere minutes before he disappears, she is horrified by the sudden appearance in New York of a horde of giant robots. Luckily Sky Captain Joe Sullivan comes to the rescue in his customised Spitfire and prevents the robots robbing the city's central generators. With further attacks around the globe, Sky Captain and his group team up with Polly to track down the source of the robot menace, uncover the plot involved and stop it before it is too late.

All the interviews around this film have talked up the visuals and the possibilities of making movies entirely on blue screen etc and, to be honest, the marketing behind the film reflects it really well because it is all about the visual style and effects with very little else. The film starts immediately with a really great visual feel that harks back to the old sci-fi serials of the 1930/40's where the future is based on the present with knobs on. The lighting and delivery is all fitting this period and it works pretty well on this level. The scale and nature of the effects are impressive, they are all retro and look great and only occasionally is it obvious that the actors are staring at things that aren't there. Of course after this we have problems, because looks enough aren't quite enough to make it all work. The period feel will make it a cult film with time but at the moment it is not enough to just sell me a computer generated yarn with no substance to it.

I suppose in a way the writing and delivery is all in keeping with the genre that it is homaging but this is a thin excuse for material that is slightly dull and lacks the twinkle and wit it really needed. Wooden acting and clunky dialogue can be fun if served up with the tongue in the cheek but that never really happens here to the degree it should. Thinks looked good at the start with Godzilla making an appearance on a Japanese newspaper but aside from this and a handful of other comic touches the film is played pretty straight – meaning we feel we should treat it so, something I found too hard to do. The dialogue is fun at times but is mostly as stiff as much of the delivery. The cast are not to blame because they are remote from the action, secondary to the visuals and trying to match the acting of the genre, which is traditionally wooden. I'm not totally sure that bringing back Olivier was a good idea but it was such a small part of the film that it didn't really matter and left me wondering why they bothered in the first place.

Law is boyishly handsome and works pretty well with the material, looking very British in his beautiful Spitfire. He has fun with his character and he at least seems to be in on the joke. Paltrow has some comic moments but mainly she plays it pretty straight and is a little dull. Ribisi is all at sea, he plays it straight and looks bad as a result. Jolie is a nice addition but has little time to make an impression – she never has a character and is really nothing more than a set of lips! Support from Gambon and Ling Bai is wasted and neither makes an impression – especially disappointing from Ling who is really the main baddie for the majority of the film. None of them are good enough to make the plot engaging or bring out characters in their genre clichés but they try their best and at least fit into the period quite well.

Overall this is eye candy but it is candy th

I read through some of the other comments on here... I can't imagine who went to this movie expecting it to be full of philosophy or deep thinking, it's just a fun thrill ride type of movie and it is one of the best of those types of films to appear in decades. I knew the film would be cool looking because I caught a few minutes of it at a drive-in, but when I watched the whole movie it really blew me away as a well-conceived well-executed whole. I liked the characters, I didn't think they were "realistic" but they were fun in the old-school movie kind of way. It reminded me somewhat of a Howard Hawks film, actually. I like the love triangle here and wish it had been developed more. The visuals are just amazing. This movie is in every way better than the new Star Wars movies.... it has the great futuristic dogfights that were so great in the first 3 SW movies but are missing in the new films, and its effects are better thought out and better done than "Attack of the Clones".

Everybody who likes science fiction or just who likes good old-fashioned movies should see this film. It is suitable for kids and for adults. Very good photography and direction, I think this one will be appreciated by film fans looking to the new fronteirs of filming also. This film gave me some hope, at long last, that Hollywood will not become a wasteland of effects without good story, so I am indeed surprised that many posters here consider it to be just that. To me, this film is a gem.

I'll be the first to admit it. I went into 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' with a lot of trepidation and even loathing. I didn't like the direction that cinema was taking with this film, featuring a backdrop that was mostly digital, because being a film purist, I used to relish the feel of actual celluloid in my hands, so this 'fake' creation was disturbing. I am still wary of this possible trend, but after seeing 'Sky Captain', I found that art can be realized in this medium.

'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' not only boasts one of the longest film titles in recent months, but a great cast: Jude Law as Joe 'Sky Captain' Sullivan, our hero, Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly Perkins, our intrepid reporter and Sullivan's former flame and Angelina Jolie as Capt. Franky Cook, a friend and ally of Joe's. There is an evil element threatening the Earth, and it is up to Joe and Polly to find out who is behind the threat, before Earth is destroyed.

One line is all it really takes to sum up the story, which is generally all it took to summarize the films 'Sky Captain' pays homage to. The story is good, and it certainly boasts one of the most entertaining endings that I can remember in recent years, but it is the presentation that is the biggest draw with 'Sky Captain'. The overall style is 1930's Art Deco mixed with bits of Neo-Futurism. The robots in the first half hour of the film look like something out of comic book, the clothes and character styles are most certainly inspired by the 1930's, and the backdrops and locations are very Deco. It's obvious that one of the advantages in producing a film in this manner is that the filmmaker can be as elaborate in design as possible, because the 'set design' was very rich and exciting.

As a lover of classic film, I found the numerous nods to the films of the 30's very refreshing. Several scenes or lines could have been construed as corny, but I found them to be presented with a giant wink at the audience. Because all of these aforementioned elements were done so well, this film was a huge success in my opinion. And despite my concerns (which are still prevalent in my mind) I can sincerely rave about and recommend 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' to just about anyone who appreciates both art and good entertainment.

--Shel