Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Pleasantly surprised is the best cliched phrase to describe my thoughts on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the movie which unfortunately boasts to having not a single frame without computer magix.

My expectation was for the film to get lost in that dark urban world of a Nazi robot attack so extensively revealed in the primary trailers. However, we circle the globe and almost get to space by the time the movie concludes. The environments that act as the film's cornerstones are spectacular and they turn into the subject of a well-executed (even if predictable) running joke with a camera.

Admittedly, that joke may be the most interesting plot device in Sky Captain. It's strictly linear, and the characters are low-relief at best. I don't find that a fault here, though. It keeps the movie from being something truly, indispensibly great, but I don't think it is meant to be that. The environments are where the depth is intended, and that's where the depth is.

Sky Captain is an ode to fantastic (referring to genre) pulp stories. Unlike the Indiana Jones series (or as Kill Bill did for Martial Arts flicks) it's not interested in pulling pulp environments into a more contemporary narrative. Instead, it brings technology back into its source.

Personally, there were times when the heavily stylized nature of the thing grew overbearing, as if my mind wanted some tangible, unprocessed element to hang on to. There's really not anything I would have done differently; it may just be that the film's style reaches a peak and finds itself with nowhere else to go.

A sports analogy seems appropriate although somewhat obscure:

Daunte Culpepper is a large part of why the Minnesota Vikings are as good as they are, but he is also a large part of the reason they will never be truly great [1]. Without getting too sidetracked, Culpepper is a proficient passer and a tough and fairly mobile quarterback, but he has this ridiculous achilles heel in fumbling the ball in the red zone. For every 21 points he helps the Vikings score, he keeps them from scoring 7 and even then, he's the reason they had a chance at those points in the first place. Even so, a truly great team cannot have this problem. Still, there are a scant few quarterbacks who can do what Culpepper does and none of them will ever be available. So, to replace him would mean replacing practically everything, rebuilding the team from scratch with no guarantee of even close to the perennial decency of the Vikings [2]. Good teams that simply cannot get a championship are often posed with similar questions; is it better to continue on this stalwart course of quality or to dismantle everything once the peak is reached and strive for greatness in a new way?

To bring things back into a non-metaphorical realm, is something bad simply if it is never great? Because that is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow... You decide.

[1] Don't kid yourselves; deep within you know what I say is true.
[2] If you're having trouble, replace any mention of Culpepper with "Extensive CGI Image Processing" and the Vikings with "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" or "a movie like..."