A Few Words About A few words about... Sky Captain... (1 Viewer)

[TheLongshot]

Well, the DVD Savant absolutly hated the film. Thought it was guilty of some of the worst sins of CGI films.

Personally, I take the film for what it is: made by a man who had an interesting idea in how to make a film, but didn't really have the experience of directing films, and the story was just a vehicle for the visual style. Sky Captain is a flawed film, but I find much to enjoy with it as well. (it helps that all the bad reviews put things in perspective for me.) I'll be interested to see how much Kevin Conran improves on things with "A Princess Of Mars". At least there, the source material wll be better.

Jason

 

[Emmett Maguire]

I and my wife enjoyed this film. It was different enough to hold our interest. I had a problem at about the 62 min mark when the picture froze but the sound carried on. I had to shut the dvd player down and restart to get it going again.

Regards
Emmett

 

[JohnRice]

I found myself enjoying Sky Captain quite a bit, probably partially because I get a kick out of the old serials it is emulating. To be honest, I think it takes a certain amount of release to enjoy a film like this. An awful lot of people are too concerned with showing how "discerning" they are to enjoy something like Sky Captain. Is it great, profound cinema? No way. It IS a huge amount of fun though and a fine experiment.


Mr Harris. I must say, those were some fabulous posts.

 

[KyleK]

Question: When they are in the snowy place (Siberia or whatever) all of a sudden there is this intense bombastic music and they show this huge white spherical structure as if it's something REALLY important, and one of the characters says something like "You won't find this on any map." And then the characters look down at a building and say something like "It looks like a mining outpost." They totally ignore the huge sphere thing! Was that supposed to be part of the mining outpost too or what? I couldn't figure it out.

Kyle

 

[ChristopherDAC]

It was the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 New York World's Fair. What it was doing in the Highlands of Tibet I don't know, but I get the sense that it was supposed to be where the radio transmissions had been coming from, that it had been Totenkopf's base but when they got there it was long-abandoned. Maybe this was a plot angle which was abandoned or cut out?

 

[Patrick McCart]

The key to enjoying "Sky Captain" is to view it as nothing more than a feature-length Republic serial made with modern technology.

I know from my own experience that it wouldn't be nearly as fun to watch if I wasn't familiar with serials like Flash Gordon '36 and Spy Smasher.

Basically, where films like the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series homage the serial, Sky Captain is one.

Although, my only problem with the film is that it was missing a good Republic fist fight where a bunch of furniture gets destroyed.

 

[george kaplan]

The thing I find strangest about the film is that it's this pseudo-1940s in which there is no Nazi Germany or WW2 (as far as I can tell, though they still refer to World War 1), and instead of Nazis (which make really, really good bad guys for these kinds of films - see Raiders of the Lost Ark), they replace it with a WW1 era German, basically a proto-Nazi who turns out to have died long before this anyway, leaving us without much of villian in the end.

 

[JohnRice]

Patrick, that is exactly it. I'm not sure anyone can fully appreciate the movie without some knowledge of those serials. Sure it's completely absurd. That's the point, which should be clear to anyone who has actually watched those old serials.

As far as the strange things about Sky Captain, somehow I don't think it is necessary for a movie to be historically accurate when it has WWII era fighters which can fly under water and a floating Air Force base. The fact it has a "Hindenburg III" flying 2 years after the crash of the actual Hindenburg might be a indication to discard conventional thinking and historical events.

Also, is it even remotely possible the villain is meant as some sort of statement on evil, rather than the usual, mundane, "kill the bad guy" stuff?

 

[DaveF]

Great summary! I munched my popcorn, sipped my soda, and thoroughly enjoyed Sky Captain in theater. A nearly perfect "popcorn", movie-going experience.

A day later the movie was like the popcorn -- tasty but lacking substance. A fine little pleasure, but not profound nor particularly compelling.

 

[Patrick McCart]

I think it's sort of a homage to The Wizard of Oz. This was probably intended, given how we're treated to a clip of Oz early in the film, as well as "Over the Rainbow" featured in the end credits.

 

[JohnRice]

Oh yeah. I completely forgot about Oz. Definitely a major theme and parallel.

It always amazes me how you can include some historical elements, but play with others and some people will slam you for being unrealistic. It's a freaking movie. Go with it.

 

[george kaplan]

Yes, and I can only speak for myself, but I found myself spending way too much time during the film trying to figure out what the world was that it was set in. I have no problem with it being set in some alternative universe, but unlike other films, it never was very clear about what that universe was. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a good example of a film set in an alternate 40s where they make it quite clear what world that is. Hell, it took a good 30 minutes or more before I was even certain Sky Captain was set in the 40s, and not in modern times with science and society having basically stopped forward progress since the 40s. I don't have a problem with the universe it's set in, I just don't think the film did a good job of explaining what that universe was, even by the end of the film, and maybe it's just me, but that was a major flaw in the story as far as I'm concerned.

And while I don't doubt for a moment that being familiar with those serials improves one's appreciation of this film, think about that. If the only audience that's going to get this film is one that's seen those serials, that's an awfully small audience. And other films, like Raiders, that are homages to earlier films don't require you to have seen them to work.

 

[Andy Sheets]

It's a highly fetishistic movie, no doubt. If you don't think 1930's fashion and design are inherently cool, the movie will be completely lost on you. That probably is a small audience but that's the studio's problem, not mine

 

[JohnRice]

George, then you must believe an awful lot of good movies are fatally flawed. Ones like Dark City, Titus and Richard III (just to name a very small sample) all take place in non-existant times, don't bother to explain it, and are excellent films. For a simple-minded person like me, I just saw "Hindenburg III" and thought "huh, they are playing with things a bit". In addition to the other things I already mentioned, which basically make the obsession with determining the actual year of the setting a practice in futility. Were you honestly still trying to determine the year after the fighters went under water?

Personally, I often feel far too many movies have to spell out every little thing, like anyone watching is completely unable to go with it, or figure it out on their own. This was a bit refreshing. It appears that any film set in that particular time which does not include Nazis is fatally flawed and Raiders is the most perfect movie ever made. So, Sky Captain has a limited audience which can fully appreciate it. I say "hooray." Not lowering to the lowest common denominator is hardly a negative in my book. The Magnificent Ambersons goes through the 1930s but has no Depression. I guess it's fatally flawed too.

 

[Patrick McCart]

But does it matter?

For example, look at The Incredibles. At first look, it seems to take place in the 1960's judging by how the cars, houses, and clothing look. Low and behold, you see a B&W 1950's TV with a VCR in the principal office... and the Parrs own a 16x9 TV.

Or there's A Clockwork Orange. It looks futuristic, but a lot of stuff looks like it's 1960's/1970's. Alex shops for records, but also has a microcassette player.

 

[JohnRice]

No, it doesn't matter.

 

[george kaplan]

I have a rule about not using the rolleyes twice in a post, but you make it hard for me to do so. Sky Captain is an OK movie, but it's not some wonderful film that created this challenging world that stupid people like me just can't get because we're the lowest common denominator, while geniuses like you mangage to grasp all of the intracies. It's a messy hodgepodge that either fails to have a consistent universe in the back story, or fails to communicate that to the audience.

I guess I'll just crawl back into my limited intelligence dwelling and keep watching movies that I can understand because the filmmakers dumbed them down for me: The Seventh Seal, Metropolis, The Manchurian Candidate, Zelig, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Citizen Kane (my God, they actually tell you what Rosebud is! - how LCD can you get?), Memento, Diabolique, Vertigo, 2001, Rosemary's Baby, etc., etc., etc.

 

[TheLongshot]

I think explaining the whys and wherefores of why things are in Sky Captain are beside the point. All I need to know is that this is some alternate history that diverged sometime in the early 20th century, but the details aren't really important to enjoy the movie. The movie isn't about that split, but something that happens in that world.

It is kinda like LotR. We don't really get explinations on where Elves, Hobbits and Dwarves come from, but we accept it all the same. Same here. It is just as much a fantasy, but you seem to have a problem with it because it has a foot in the real world as well.

If you look carefully, I think you can figure out about what the date is (I think there are dates in the ledger, and they say how long ago they were made), but I don't think it matters for enjoying the story for what it is.

Jason

 

[JohnRice]

My diversions aside, that is basically it, Jason. FWIW, I think a newspaper shown has the year 1939 on it.

George, those are all excellent films, though I have never had any luck appreciating The Seventh Seal.

Oh yeah, Dark City was a bad example.

 

[Sam Favate]

Is there any talk of there being a newer edition of this movie? Or is the current edition it for now?