Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

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Movie
German title Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Original title Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Country of production USA , UK , Italy
original language English , German
Publishing year 2004
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Kerry Conran
script Kerry Conran
production Jon Avnet ,
Sadie Frost ,
Jude Law ,
Marsha Oglesby
music Edward Shearmur
camera Eric Adkins
cut Sabrina Plisco
occupation

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a 2004 feature film directed by Kerry Conran , who also wrote the screenplay.

The film was shot entirely using the digital backlot process, in which the film is no longer filmed in backdrops, but in front of evenly blue or green walls, and the desired background is later digitally copied into the picture.

action

In 1939 an alternate reality , scientists from a former special research unit (unit 11) are kidnapped in mysterious attacks. Huge robots cause great devastation. The robots steal technology and components. A Chronicle reporter , Polly Perkins, is investigating the background in New York . She meets the Sky Captain, who was her former friend, and soon afterwards they both set about investigating the background and saving the scientists. Both get help from Captain Franky Cook, who located the base of the robot dispatch and was kidnapped.

But while the hunt for the scientists leads the dissimilar duo around the world, evil forces are already planning the annihilation of the entire planet. A mysterious Dr. Skull is at the center of the events. He once planned the exodus of mankind and created a huge rocket whose launch will destroy the earth. The countdown is on and only Sky Captain and Polly Perkins can save the world. In the meantime, Polly and Sky arrive at Captain Totenkopf's Island and discover that a mysterious woman is managing it.

Polly and Sky Captain find Dr. Skull. They discover that the latter has been dead for around twenty years (his last entry in his diary is from 1918), the mysterious woman who turns out to be a robot in human form, but continues his plan to destroy the planet. Polly and Sky Captain destroy his rocket at the last second, saving the world.

Trivia

  • Laurence Olivier died in 1989; Old recordings were digitized and inserted by him for his scenes in the film.
  • All vehicles, locations and devices in the film are also digital; No backdrops, models or real images were used in production
  • The sentence "I want nothing but a slim ship and the pointing star in the sky", which Jude Law says on the plane in search of Rana, comes from the poem "Sea Fever" by John Masefield .
  • Sky Captain's aircraft is modeled after a Curtiss P-40 .
  • At a cost of 70 million dollars a film played worldwide only 57.9 million US dollars again.
  • The movie is Pulp - Genre created, it contains, among other many allusions to other well-known works from the genre. However, since only works from the 1930s are assigned to the pulp genre, the film is assigned to the diesel punk genre , a sub-variant of steampunk .
  • The machines and vehicles were based on the design of older films, such as Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers .
  • Director Kerry Conran was also heavily inspired by Norman Bel Geddes , an industrial designer from the 1930s. Bel Geddes designed, among other things, an airship that was supposed to fly from Chicago to London.
  • In the sequence in which the Manta squadron underwater to the island of Dr. Skull dives, a shipwreck called Venture can be seen - a reference to King Kong and the white woman . Another allusion can be seen during the attack on New York. Here you can see the silhouette of King Kong at the top of the building in a short shot of the Empire State Building. After Joseph Sullivan and Polly Perkins were on the island by Dr. Totenkopf have arrived, shortly afterwards they have to cross a wide, deep ravine over which a thick tree trunk lies. The whole area, with the canyon and the tree, looks exactly like in King Kong and the white woman . A little later, Polly asks if Joe has cheated on her with Franky in the past, to which he replies: "Look me in the eyes, little one. I really never cheated on you ..." The first sentence is a direct quote from "Casablanca" from 1942, spoken by Humphrey Borgart to Ingrid Bergman.
  • There are also allusions to Metropolis , FP1 does not answer , In the Shackles of Shangri-La , Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Isle of Dr. Moreau .
  • There are also allusions to George Lucas and his Star Wars universe. When Sullivan and Perkins arrive at Professor Jennings 'lab, the number 1138 is on the frosted glass pane of the outer door. This is a direct reference to Lucas' first film, THX 1138 . When Sullivan and Perkins land on Captain Cook's flying platform with their broken aircraft, they are assigned landing pad 327 ; That same number had the landing pad on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back , on which the damaged Millennium Falcon was supposed to touch down.
  • When Sullivan flees from Totenkopf's flying machines and dives into the sea with his plane off New York and moves underwater, he tells Polly that Dex had the idea for it from one of his comic books. In the comic book Mickey Mouse and the Pirates' Submarine from 1935, Mickey Mouse also flies a plane that can dive.
  • The worldwide newspaper reports about the robot attacks are shown; the silhouette of Godzilla can be seen in the Japanese newspaper .
  • The film opened in German cinemas on November 18, 2004.

Reviews

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is even more entertaining than the title suggests. He [...] reminds me of the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark . "

"Good effects, bad characters and a story that would have inspired in the fifties, but is out of place today and just annoying."

“Stylistically ambitious 'future noir' film in which real actors act in virtual spaces. 1930s design and science fiction are charmingly combined, whereby the film reveals itself as a postmodern pasticcio made up of numerous set pieces from film history and popular culture. Despite the advanced aesthetics, it remains pale in the long run because the characters and the plot are neglected. "

The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Alex Jahnke , Marcus Rauchfuß: Steampunk - short & geek . O'Reilly, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86899-367-7 , pp. 96 .
  2. http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Vulter
  3. http://comicvine.gamespot.com/mickey-mouse-234-the-pirate-submarine-part-2/4000-165987/
  4. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sky-captain-and-the-world-of-tomorrow-2004
  5. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 11, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used