{"id":31171,"date":"2023-06-26T10:40:04","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T15:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=31171"},"modified":"2023-06-23T11:40:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T16:40:46","slug":"movie-report-sky-captain-and-the-world-of-tomorrow-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/26\/movie-report-sky-captain-and-the-world-of-tomorrow-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Report: <i>Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow<\/i> (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/skycaptainandtheworldoftomorrow.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">At Rob K.&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/i-have-this-gift-certificate-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">recommendation<\/a>, I watched this film.  I am easily led, you see, so be careful with your comments, gentle reader, as they may spur me to action.<\/p>\n<p>So, the plot: In an alternative reality, in 1939, an intrepid woman reporter, Polly (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) investigates the disappearance of several scientists.  As she&#8217;s doing so, a number of giant robots attack the city to extract resources.  The authorities call upon Sky Captain, played by Jude Law, who is the leader of a band of mercenary pilots.  Sky Captain manages to save Polly and disable one of the robots, which he takes to his base in the mountains for his science-and-engineering genius, played by Giovanni Ribisi, to study.  Sky Captain and Polly follow the trail of the missing scientists to a base in the Himalayas and then to an island lair where Dr. Totenkopf&#8217;s minions have been building a rocket to take select animals and people and robots to another planet to begin anew as man on earth is bad.  Unfortunately, the rocket&#8217;s acceleration at about 100km above the earth&#8217;s surface will kill all life on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>As mentioned in the previous post, <em>Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow<\/em> features a lot of CGI animation&#8211;the film was one of the first to feature a completely green-screen backlot, where scenery behind the actors is completely <strike>penciled<\/strike> pixeled in.  As Rob said, it has aged well, but that&#8217;s because the animation was supposed to look a bit like a comic book and not as real as they could make at the time.  So it&#8217;s not a jarring anachronism.<\/p>\n<p>An interesting film, an especial treat if you&#8217;re familiar with the comic books of the 1930s (such as <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/29\/book-report-red-snow-and-death-had-yellow-eyes-by-lester-dent-2011\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Doc Savage<\/a>) with their tropes.<\/p>\n<p>Angelina Jolie appears in the film wearing an eyepatch which in the comic books of the 1930s would not disqualify one from being a pilot.  Bai Ling also appears in this movie&#8211;it is the first film I&#8217;ve seen her in since posting her picture in <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/08\/symptoms-of-my-sinophilia\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">2017<\/a>.  I thought it might be the first film I&#8217;d seen with her, but I&#8217;ve seen <em>The Crow<\/em> and <em>Red Corner<\/em>, so this is not the case.  I just didn&#8217;t know then to associate the name with the actress at the time.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Rob K.&#8217;s recommendation, I watched this film. I am easily led, you see, so be careful with your comments, gentle reader, as they may spur me to action. So, the plot: In an alternative reality, in 1939, an intrepid woman reporter, Polly (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) investigates the disappearance of several scientists. As she&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31172,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31171\/revisions\/31172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}