Movies - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

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	Movies - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film released on September 17, 2004 in the United States. It was written and directed by Kerry Conran, in his directorial debut.

The film stars Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. It is set in New York City in an alternative 1939 and is a science fiction adventure film. Along with Casshern
and Immortel (Ad Vitam)
, it is one of the first movies to be shot with actors entirely in front of a bluescreen, with all the sets and nearly all of the props computer-generated. The actors spent only 28 days in principal photography. The role of the villain, Dr. Totenkopf, is "played" by Sir Laurence Olivier, who died in 1989; archive footage of him from the 1940s was manipulated by computer to allow him to make this posthumous film appearance, with dialogue from his reading of the bible on tape.

Synopsis

The film takes place in an alternative 1930s where there is no sign of Germany preparing for war or that America is in the grips of an economic depression. The fantastic technology which is a mixture of super-advanced science and early 20th century (developed in science fiction works and comics of that age), points to alternate history, which some would classify as an unofficial subgenre of steampunk, known as "dieselpunk".

The film opens with the arrival of the Hindenburg III zeppelin in New York City, mooring at the Empire State Building. A frightened scientist named Dr. Jorge Vargas makes arrangements for a package to be delivered to a Dr. Walter Jennings, before vanishing.

Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), a newspaper reporter for The Chronicle, is looking into the mysterious disappearances of Vargas and five other renowned scientists. She receives a cryptic message, telling her to go to the Radio City Music Hall movie theater that night. She is warned not to go by her editor (Michael Gambon, enacting a variation on the 1940s character he played in the BBC's The Singing Detective
). She arrives and encounters Dr. Walter Jennings, who is terrified, and tells her that Dr. Totenkopf (German for "death's head") is coming for him.

Just then, air raid sirens go off, heralding the arrival of numerous massive robots that prove all but unstoppable. In desperation, the police call for the aid of Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), who is known as Sky Captain and commands a private air force, the Flying Legion (perhaps a reference to the British Legion of Frontiersmen, a similar historical 'private army', but more likely inspired by the Flying Tigers, as the P-40 he flies is painted in the same style). Sullivan's attempts to stop the robots are successful in that they leave after he knocks one of them over, and he helps save Polly, who endangered herself while photographing the robots.

The wreckage of one of the robots is brought back to the Legion's airstrip, so that the Legion's mechanic Dex (Giovanni Ribisi) can examine it. Polly arrives as well, hoping to get information for her story. She and Joe are ex-lovers, who broke up three years earlier due to a fight, which each has a different account of. Joe constantly accuses Polly of sabotaging his airplane, which led to him spending six months in a Manchurian labour camp; Polly accuses Joe of fooling around with another woman while he was in Nanjing. Since Polly has some useful information, Joe agrees to let her in on the investigation.

This takes them to the laboratory of Dr. Jennings, which has been ransacked, and Jennings near death. The culprit, a mysterious woman (Bai Ling), escapes, while the mortally wounded Jennings warns of Dr. Totenkopf's plans. He also gives Polly two vials, which he says are crucial. Polly doesn't tell Joe about the vials, presumably so that she can keep her edge in the investigation.

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