...to the future!
Sep. 20th, 2004 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieWent to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow today. Pez peoples, I'm dragging you off to see this movie in Exeter. And then I'm buying the DVD.
Well, I checked my brain at the door, and I had a really good time at this movie--surprising, as I'm not usually a fan of "let's blow stuff up for the entire two hours!" style of movie-making. I think it helped that I went in expecting only to be wowed by the CGI and the design (I'm a sucker for both art deco and muted color palettes), and was pleasantly surprised by the characters and the acting, and even to a certain extent by the plot. Okay, not the most intellectually-stimulating storyline to come 'round the block, but...dude. It has planes that turn into submarines, flying airstrips, giant robots, and funky Jurassic Park-esque creatures. It became the very definition of cool, at least if you're a weirdo like me. I'm not even that much of a technogeek and I was having geekgasms. I saw a description of this movie somewhere as "the kind of movie 1930s comic book writers would have made if they had access to today's CGI," and it's totally true. The CGI was AMAZING--so realistic. Incredible. Plus the action sequences were pretty exciting. :)
I don't remember ever looking at my watch once during the whole thing; there was too much to see on the screen. I think I liked it so much because it reminded me of the less-than-groundbreaking SF novels I read all through middle and high school--three hundred pages based around some loose "we have to get this crystal/free this girl/kill this man or the WORLD WILL END! Why? Um...not sure. But look out behind you! The enemy's coming! Hiii-yah!" storyline that's essentially an excuse for lots of action and for the hero and heroine to spar wittily until they fall into bed with each other at the end. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow actually played that really well; loved the ongoing accusations about her sabotaging his plane and him fooling around with Frankie. Polly's expression why she told him she was the one who cut his fuel line was priceless. Them punching each other in the face was utterly predictable, but amusing nonetheless. And the "lens cap" at the end... *dissolves into helpless giggles* And I liked how all the sniping at each other built up and built up, and then Polly saw that he'd named his plane after her. On paper, that sounds like it would be too sappy, but it worked in the film.
There were some thing that certainly could have been done better, though. I think if Polly said, "Joe, look out!" one more time, I was gonna punch her, and do more damage than Joe did. Also, she went from a cool and sassy chick to brushing on bitchy once Frankie showed up. (And I don't even bother to think of her as Frankie. Girl was Honor Harrington. That's all there is to it. The image is too perfect and I can't call her anything else.) I would've enjoyed a little more on Totenkopf's motivations, although what we did get was a nice summary. I'm curious as to what "Sky Captain" was, exactly...some kind of private entrepreneur that the NYC police happened to know and call on? Some kind of quasi-government entity for either the US or the UK? Not that it mattered, really, but I did wonder. And, okay, I realize this is the nitpickiest of nitpicks--but they actually called WWI "World War I." It would've been all fine and good had this just been a 1939-era person's vision of the future, and was set in some hypothetical near future, like 1960 or whatever. But no, when they found Totenkopf's body, they specifically said it had been 20 years since he died in 1918, thus sticking it before WWII. When everyone still called WWI "The Great War."
Yes, I know. Nitpickiest of nitpicks. But. Still.
Finally, the music made me very, very happy. I heart Edward Shearmur.
From![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theusual:
Pirate!
You are a scurvy Pirate.
Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot?
brought to you by Quizilla
From everyone:
Bwaaaaaaahahahaha! *cackles*
Well, I checked my brain at the door, and I had a really good time at this movie--surprising, as I'm not usually a fan of "let's blow stuff up for the entire two hours!" style of movie-making. I think it helped that I went in expecting only to be wowed by the CGI and the design (I'm a sucker for both art deco and muted color palettes), and was pleasantly surprised by the characters and the acting, and even to a certain extent by the plot. Okay, not the most intellectually-stimulating storyline to come 'round the block, but...dude. It has planes that turn into submarines, flying airstrips, giant robots, and funky Jurassic Park-esque creatures. It became the very definition of cool, at least if you're a weirdo like me. I'm not even that much of a technogeek and I was having geekgasms. I saw a description of this movie somewhere as "the kind of movie 1930s comic book writers would have made if they had access to today's CGI," and it's totally true. The CGI was AMAZING--so realistic. Incredible. Plus the action sequences were pretty exciting. :)
I don't remember ever looking at my watch once during the whole thing; there was too much to see on the screen. I think I liked it so much because it reminded me of the less-than-groundbreaking SF novels I read all through middle and high school--three hundred pages based around some loose "we have to get this crystal/free this girl/kill this man or the WORLD WILL END! Why? Um...not sure. But look out behind you! The enemy's coming! Hiii-yah!" storyline that's essentially an excuse for lots of action and for the hero and heroine to spar wittily until they fall into bed with each other at the end. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow actually played that really well; loved the ongoing accusations about her sabotaging his plane and him fooling around with Frankie. Polly's expression why she told him she was the one who cut his fuel line was priceless. Them punching each other in the face was utterly predictable, but amusing nonetheless. And the "lens cap" at the end... *dissolves into helpless giggles* And I liked how all the sniping at each other built up and built up, and then Polly saw that he'd named his plane after her. On paper, that sounds like it would be too sappy, but it worked in the film.
There were some thing that certainly could have been done better, though. I think if Polly said, "Joe, look out!" one more time, I was gonna punch her, and do more damage than Joe did. Also, she went from a cool and sassy chick to brushing on bitchy once Frankie showed up. (And I don't even bother to think of her as Frankie. Girl was Honor Harrington. That's all there is to it. The image is too perfect and I can't call her anything else.) I would've enjoyed a little more on Totenkopf's motivations, although what we did get was a nice summary. I'm curious as to what "Sky Captain" was, exactly...some kind of private entrepreneur that the NYC police happened to know and call on? Some kind of quasi-government entity for either the US or the UK? Not that it mattered, really, but I did wonder. And, okay, I realize this is the nitpickiest of nitpicks--but they actually called WWI "World War I." It would've been all fine and good had this just been a 1939-era person's vision of the future, and was set in some hypothetical near future, like 1960 or whatever. But no, when they found Totenkopf's body, they specifically said it had been 20 years since he died in 1918, thus sticking it before WWII. When everyone still called WWI "The Great War."
Yes, I know. Nitpickiest of nitpicks. But. Still.
Finally, the music made me very, very happy. I heart Edward Shearmur.
From
theusual:Pirate!
You are a scurvy Pirate.
Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot?
brought to you by Quizilla
From everyone:
Bwaaaaaaahahahaha! *cackles*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 07:50 pm (UTC)And how is it that you always know everything?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 10:08 pm (UTC)It so is. And maybe it could be a bonding experience with our new English friends...
And how is it that you always know everything?
What few things Google can't get me (and it can get me many answers), I ask my British friends. :)