FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

When giant flying robots land in the streets of New York City and start wreaking havoc, only one man can stop them. Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan rushes in to stop the immediate threat and get the metallic behemoths to retreat. However, there’s a larger threat out there. The man sending these evil creations has been killing off the world’s top scientists and the destruction of the Earth could be imminent. The Cap’n will need the help of a sassy reporter he knows all to well named Polly Perkins if he’s to have any chance at all.

The film is meant to pay homage to the movies of the late 1930s, especially those “Buck Rogers” type serials. Writer/director Kerry Conran does a good job with this in certain areas, but ignores many others in favor of flashiness. The movie is shot entirely in front of a blue screen, which means that all the background action and scenery was added after the actors were finished and a composite of the elements was made later. What I imagine it was meant to do was show what a film from 1939 would look like if back then they had the same computer graphics capabilities, but film technology remained where it was. This may not have been the goal, but it should have been.

First: the good. Every shot in the film is given a blur/soft focus effect on the brighter light and there’s a heavier presence of grain on the image. Also, the actors appear to have been colorized in a Technicolor-like process. All of this would fit the limitations and stylistic look of the represented era. The robots and machinery seen all over give that “Popular Mechanics” impression. The giant robots are big, bulky and look ridiculous, but menacing. There are also more advanced planes that the villain sends that look sleeker, yet still are within the limits of that period’s notion of science fiction. Edward Shearmur’s music was appropriately heroic and uplifting. It could have played along with the action some so as not to lose it in the background behind all the sound effects. So, the props, the film look, the music and the scenery all work, but….

Now: the bad. The film falls victim to thinking that it must still be contemporary. The acting is bad, but not God-awful. The biggest problem is that it’s not worse. It’s not stagy. People were still mostly exaggerated and flamboyant. Jude Law (The Cap), Gwyneth Paltrow (Polly) and the rest should know this and would probably enjoy delivering lines in the old style. I can only assume it was Conran’s conscious decision. The script is also bad, but could have been purposely worse, meaning hokier. Avoid developmental issues and let the characters blurt out seemingly random emotionally charged sentences to further the plot. Most of the backstory was unnecessary to me. The editing was also far too modern. This can actually be paired with shot composition, which I also had problems with. In the beginning, they made good use of low and canted angled shots and of dissolves to get information across. As the story became more linear, it became more of an action movie. The cutting was MTV fast and there were many places where the sound effects told you something was happening, but you sure can’t tell it from the picture. If this were true to 1930s cinema, the camera would let the action play out from a relatively safe distance so we could soak it all in. We’d be able to properly admire the spectacle of it all. That’s far from the case here.

The movie makes all kinds of references to various movies to show its “influences,” but one in particular bothered me. That was the appearance of Godzilla in a quick montage sequence. I know they both involve giant destructive monsters, but shouldn’t the “King Kong” similarities suffice? Leave the cheap joke alone. I also don’t think I like seeing Laurence Olivier being used as an actor in here one bit. All in all, the movie could have been much better were it to stay true to the time period in which it was set. It’s stylized, but not in a good or productive way. So much so, that it becomes just an odd-looking, hardly entertaining, typical action flick. Very disappointing.

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