craschworks

Sky Captain, and the World of Tomorrow:

pros: 30 story giant flying robots. Harryhausenesque monsters. Hero scientists. Angelina Jolie in aviator pants. Gorgeous sets straight out of 30's pulp fiction. Jude Law as Sky Captain.

cons: Plot holes you could fly a 30 story robot through. Dramatic tension drained by multiple deux ex machina rescues. Ludicrous premises.

Why don't movie directors take their worlds seriously?

For example, how was Totenkopf able to build an army of gigantic flying robots on a huge island complex (over a period of decades), import two of every animal in the world, and yet keep it a secret?

When the robots attack New York, the city's police radio for Sky Captain. Sky Captain answers the call, and flies in to heroically attack the robots — alone.

Sky Captain just happens to already be airborne? Okay, grant that. He is Sky Captain after all.

But is he the only pilot in the New York area? Where are the air force, army, navy planes that would be stationed nearby?

I never got the sense that there was anything at risk. Even though the robots destroy much of New York, and firebomb Sky Captain's research complex, you don't see anybody injured or dead. In the face of enormous descruction, none of the characters exhibit much fear or sadness.

And no matter how ridiculously hazardous the situation, you know Joe (Sky Captain), and Polly Perkins will survive.

Will Polly Perkins be crushed underfoot by a giant marching robot? No, Joe just happens to clothesline that particular robot at precisely the right moment.

Will Joe and Polly, trapped in a room filled with dynamite, be blown to smithereens? No, their hapless guide opens the door at precisely the right moment. (And why was all that dynamite there to begin with? Why didn't the villains just shoot them? Why waste all that dynamite? )

I know, I know, it's just a pulp movie. But I'm always frustrated when so much effort is put into making a film look beautiful, and so little is put into making it logically coherent.