Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow

Sky Cap­tain and The World of Tomor­row is just like most reviews you’ve read of it. 100% pulp. Grant­ed, it has that fan­boy­ish nos­tal­gia for the gold­en age of sci­ence fic­tion, and it works in the retroart­de­co hip­ness that has been pop­ping up late­ly, so pulp should be expect­ed. Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Bur­roughs don’t hold up so well in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Or more to the point, you can’t make a sci­ence fic­tion movie that hap­pens 70 years in the past.

At least pulp sci-fi mags were enter­tain­ing and had orig­i­nal ideas. Seri­ous­ly, the only thing this movie does is ref­er­ence oth­er movies and sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries and play on exas­per­at­ing “wit­ty” repar­tee. Even its CGI high-con­trast, over­ex­posed pret­ti­fied­ness bores the liv­ing shit out of you after 10 min­utes or so. In a genre known for robust cre­ativ­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion, Sky Cap­tain lays a big egg-smelling cor­po­rate post-mod­ern fart.