"The World of When?"
written by Chris Blunk

I viewed the trailers for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow for months with skepticism. Looked like a lot of blue screens. Looked like it was trying pretty hard to mimic old Saturday matinee serials.

In time I learned the extent of the special effects - nearly everything was computer generated except the actors and some key props. Gwenyth Paltrow spent days shooting scenes in giant, blue rooms, knowing nothing of the action that would surround her in the final film except what she could discern from the script and concept drawings. I read about how writer/director Kerry Conran got the film made largely through a six-minute demonstration of the effects he created on a Mac in his garage. I had visions of a man huddled over his computer creating his own little world in his own house and I became intrigued. I went to the movie and left the theater at the credits, quite disappointed.

Sky Captain is not a good movie. The first five minutes are appealing, including the sequence familiar from the preview of the dirigible "Hindenberg III" docking amidst a snow storm. But the same elements that make the film instantly intriguing soon render the experience unenjoyable. The sepia / monochromatic palette and soft focus, probably employed to better combine the effects with the (sparse) live-action players, make viewing an already tedious film a chore. Many hand animated movies achieve more depth than any shot in this film. Flat characters and a ridiculous plot leave the audience with nothing to hold on to.

The film falls apart early in the first big action sequence where giant robots dig through the center of New York with lasers. Here is Paltrow's "blue room" sequence, and while it's believable enough that she's walking amongst giant robots, there's never any sense that she's in danger. This is a recurring problem. Constantly the characters dive away from action blue screened behind them and it's no more convincing than the days of rear projection. But the question is never whether we believed the heroes were in danger or not - the question was whether we cared. But we don't, because the characters are flat. The only actor able to bring any life to his role is Giovanni Ribisi, and this is largely because his character chews a lot of gum.

I disliked the movie, yes, but found beneath this simple thumbs down a revulsion toward the film itself on a fundamental level. It confused me for days. After all, for all my qualms there are still things to like in the movie. There are some very funny lines and I generally respect a film that worries more about entertaining its audience than looking silly while doing it.

I came to realize that I dislike the film because it bored me, but I was repulsed by it for the same reason any dislike falls into hatred - fear. It took another man's review and a modern dance exhibition to realize what it was I really feared.

Perhaps understandably, I blamed the special effects at first. I thought I feared an onslaught of movies shot against blue screens with sets inserted rather than built. Sky Captain and its parents, episodes I and II of the Star Wars saga, suffer from such a severe lack of visual depth in many scenes that the discerning audience is dubious as to whether the actors could actually exit through the doors in the room, let alone whether the intergalactic cityscape actually exists. Despite having the freedom to program in ay location imaginable, Sky Captain feels very cramped in some shots simply because there's no tangible space for the actor to maneuver around - no breathing set or dressing to interact with. The room ends at the edge of the frame and we can feel it.

To say that I dislike digital effects would be untrue. I've loved many films that go heavy on the digital, starting with Jurassic Park onward through The Lord of the Rings and even the not always convincing Spider-Man films. I won't say computers will ruin movies. They'll simply take them another direction (you know, like sound did).

Film is currently the superior format, however, and will be until enough ones and zeros can be crammed into a frame to match the subtlety of actual chemical reaction with film and light discernable by the human eye. A rich, deep, shadow gradually lightening across an object on film simply cannot currently be recreated by digital technology. The difference is similar to that between the slop on the left and the slope on the right:

If the choice is presented to a filmmaker and film is possible (ie - has the money for it and is not planning to shoot exclusively in very low light situations), the filmmaker should choose film. So when a film like Sky Captain comes along with no use for film, when all of it will be generated by or filtered through a computer, I worry the death knell for film will ring prematurely.

This played into my fear of Sky Captain, but only scratched the surface. I was wrong in many ways; I didn't fear the film's influence on filmmaking. I actually feared what it might say about filmmakers.

The generally warm reception by critics, still unusual for a special-effects laden action film (let alone one whose plot feels like it was derived from a frenetic cereal box illustration) fueled my interest in Sky Captain. After seeing the movie, I sought reviews for the film. I rarely read reviews before seeing a film. I like to read them afterwards not to validate my opinions, but because they help articulate them. I enjoy reading reviews with opinions opposite my own and can even find myself agreeing with their reasoning, if not their assessment.

The reviews generally praised the effects and blue screening techniques or the whimsical story or damned the film for the same reasons. It was among these reviews that I came across a quote that stuck with me. It came from a review by Stephen Whitty in the New Jersey Star-Ledger and it observed:

"It's not because of the style, though. It's because of the content - or the lack of it. Although Conran clearly enjoys the period, it's a stolen nostalgia - you're not getting his memories of it, or even his memories of its films, but rather his memories of other people's memories of its films. The movie quotes from Spielberg and Lucas, but it doesn't have one-half the heart of the first Indiana Jones."

The quote stuck with me.

A couple evenings later, Jeremy and I were invited to an informal performance in the park by a local modern dance group. It was improvisational in nature, and for about an hour we watched as the dancers moved to the music and as the music moved through them. The music was performed live by two men on various instruments, and each stretch and contortion by the dancers was the result of a direct response to the sound waves reverberating over all of us. Here I suddenly thought again of Mr. Whitty's quote. "...not getting his memories...but rather his memories of other people's memories of its films." Something clicked in my head, and I see more clearly why I fear.

The problem I have with Sky Captain is that Kerry Conran is not channeling the music around him. He's not letting any part of the real world move him. He's using the world created for us by movies as the jumping off point for what tries to pass as emotion or excitement or originality. No amount of special effects can overcome this.

What I fear is a culture where movies become the frame of reference for reality rather than reality a frame of reference for the movies.

It would be ridiculous to say Sky Captain is the first film to let other people's fantasies dictate the film's reality (haven't even scratched Kill Bill or the legions of Star Wars fan flicks out there). But I hope for filmmakers whose influences are their own lives, experiences, and hopes. Not just the experiences they've seen at the movies. I guess you can say I'm grateful to Sky Captain for showing me a little more of the kind of filmmaker I want to be.

Stephen Whitty's review of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (9-17-04)

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