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.
3 thoughts on “Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow”
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Just make sure you watch ‘Serenity’ this fall. It comes to theaters September 30th. Then you’ll see some real science-fiction with original ideas and an actual plot.
I won’t disagree that Sky Captain was dreck. I will, however, quibble over ERB and Verne not holding up over time. The characters and the narrative still capture and engage. The John Carter of Mars pulps are still pure joys to read.
I just reread Journey to the Center of the Earth a few weeks ago, and it was quite enjoyable, but your average science fiction reader is expecting Michael Crichton [I think he is a modern day JV], a bit more science with their fiction.
But then again, steampunk has never really done anything for me. I’d much rather prefer to read the actual stuff. Of course, ERB and Verne were writing “adventure” novels. They only got pigeonholded as sci-fi retrospectively.