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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow 571

Posted by timothy from the lucky-him dept.
serutan writes "Tuesday night I attended a sneak preview of Kerry Conran's groundbreaking film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow , courtesy of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. I was completely blown away. Below is my brief review of the movie and the event. No spoilers, if you have seen any of the clips available on the web." Read on for the rest.

Set in a mythic version of the late 1930s, this movie is a stunning tribute to classic sci-fi serials, comics and pulp magazines of that era. Starting with a reporter investigating the disappearances of top scientists, the story quickly becomes a nearly constant barrage of giant robots, aeroships, submarine planes, ray guns and retro technology on a grand scale. The plot, which hurtles across maps of the world Indiana Jones style, definitely take a back seat to the effects. The character interactions are all predictable. But all of that is consistent with the genre, and for me it didn't get in the way of enjoying the hell out of this movie.

What sets this film apart from others is that every scene was shot against a blue screen. Except for some hand props and the actors themselves, the whole thing was computer generated. We've certainly seen plenty of CG, going all the way back to "The Last Starfighter" in the 80s, but I've never seen anything done so stylishly or so well. Perhaps the hazy, murky look is perfectly suited to both the 1930s atmosphere and the current state of the art of CG. It works.

The packed screening was followed by a Q&A with director Conran, who turned out to be an impressively low-key, likable guy. He started working on the film about 10 years ago with a blue screen in his living room, wondering whether he could create an entire movie in his Mac. The first 6 minutes took him 2 years. Initially he made an animated version, which actors later used as a guide as they mimed their way through the live version. When Paramount got involved they insisted on big-name actors, so the theatrical release is actually version 3. Hopefully all three will make it onto the eventual DVD. Conran mentioned that for his next project he wants to tackle Edgar Rice Burroughs' epic John Carter series.

The presenter, a filmmaking friend of Conran's, closed the screening with a joke about Pete Townshend meeting Eric Clapton in a London bar and commiserating about some new kid named Hendrix, "who's gonna kick our asses." He imagined that Spielberg and Lucas might soon be having a similar conversation somewhere in California. I have to agree that it seems like a distinct possibility.

Thanks to serutan for this review!
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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow More

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

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  • I can think of another... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:03PM (#10214570) Homepage
    What sets this film apart from others is that every scene was shot against a blue screen.

    Pretty sure that Attack of the Clones was also shot entirely in front of a blue screen.

  • Can't wait to see this! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Crazy Man on Fire ( 153457 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:03PM (#10214578) Homepage
    I just saw the trailer for this yesterday. I must have been hiding under some rock (or not reading /.) for the past several months, because I hadn't heard of the movie until my roommate told me about it yesterday. Looks very cool.

  • My Impressions from the Commercials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Enigma_Man ( 756516 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:04PM (#10214587) Homepage
    From the commercials about this movie, it looks incredibly cheesy, like an unwitting hollywood insult to the retro-future styling (not to mention their choice of an actress, bleh). It's good to hear otherwise.

    -Jesse

  • First intirely blue screen movie was.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrPrefect ( 805302 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:05PM (#10214604)
    called The Immortal you can find it on the net, pretty wierd but shot intirely infront of a blue screen

  • Kinda Reminded Me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Dobber ( 576407 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:05PM (#10214605)

    of the PC / Xbox game "Crimson Skies" when I first saw the previews.

  • Hey Great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:06PM (#10214609)
    Let's see. 1. It's a Sci-Fi Movie. 2. It's not a sequal or a remake. And 3. It's not Star Trek!
    Wow, they should make more of these!

  • Groundbreaking? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [nosrednehevets]> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:06PM (#10214613)
    Tuesday night I attended a sneak preview of Kerry Conran's groundbreaking film

    The plot, which hurtles across maps of the world Indiana Jones style, definitely take a back seat to the effects. The character interactions are all predictable. But all of that is consistent with the genre

    Is this a little contradictory? Special effects are not ground-breaking. Give me a movie with effects like these and a plot that doesn't insult me. Then, we can call it "groundbreaking."

    • Groundbreaking! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:14PM (#10214721) Homepage Journal
      Conran's groundbreaking film
      The plot, which hurtles across maps of the world Indiana Jones style, definitely take a back seat to the effects. The character interactions are all predictable. But all of that is consistent with the genre

      Special effects are not ground-breaking.

      Why not? There's no SFX ground to break? Or does this not constitute a ground-breaking level of SFX achievement according to you?

      Give me a movie with effects like these and a plot that doesn't insult me.

      The plot insults you? WTF?

      Its a pulp! I love these! Indiana Jones, Tom Strong, and now Sky Captain. I'm happy.
      If you don't like pulps, that's your loss, but to say that it insults you...that's something else.
      • Yes, FX can be groundbreaking. However, the inclusion of said effects does not make for a groundbreaking MOVIE.

        As for the plot, why does a movie with special effects have to be a pulp? Why not run with the great effects and make a movie like Minority Report? Yes, I understand that not all movies have to be serious, but just because a movie has a thin, cheesy veil of a plot, does not mean I am going to defend it. Kill Bill went for that type of pulp plot and succeeded. Sky Captain does not try for it, b

        • Re:Groundbreaking! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @02:03PM (#10215252) Homepage Journal
          As for the plot, why does a movie with special effects have to be a pulp?

          You are approching this completly backwards.
          Its not a movie with SFX that has to be a pulp; Its a pulp movie that has to have SFX.

          Why not run with the great effects and make a movie like Minority Report?

          Because that movie was already made?
          Why do you object to people making the storie they want to make? He started this with a mac in his house. You don't like it? Buy a mac, make your own instead of attacking his movie, without even having seen it no less!
          If you have a movie in your head you want to see on a screen, make it instead of demanding that others refrain from making theirs in order to make what you want to see.

          God I can't stand that attitude! He's not taking anything away from you!
          He's making something new, he's contributing years of effort to our cultural heritage, and you sit there complaining that he spent these years making something he likes instead of something you like.
          Sheesh.

  • check this out (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:06PM (#10214616)
    ... if you like the look of this movie also look at Sin City [imdb.com], directed by RR (Desperado, Spy Kids fame). It is also filmed all against a green screen like Sky Captain. Initial screenings have people drooling. Sky Captain looks good, but I think Sin City will own all when it comes to the style... go RR!

  • Crimson Skies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) * on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:07PM (#10214626) Homepage
    I saw my first preview for this movie this past Holiday season, when I was also playing through "Crimson Skies", the Xbox port. Both have a similar vibe, a retrofuture that never quite was, lots of planes, exploding dirigibles, etc. I'm really looking forward to this flick...

    • Re:Crimson Skies (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dougmc ( 70836 )
      Yeah, I was thinking the same thing -- it looks a lot like Crimson Skies, made into a movie.

      Not that I've seen this movie yet, but the previews look so similar that I wonder if they wanted to make a Crimson Skies movie, but couldn't get the movie rights.

      Either way, it looks like it's right up my alley. Alas, with kids, going to the movies is hard. :)

      • Re:Crimson Skies (Score:3, Informative)

        by kisrael ( 134664 ) *
        I doubt it's an aborted Crimson Skies license, knowing what we do about the movie's background.

        I think it's just a captivating idea...WW2 plans always seems to be one of the "coolest" eras, not quite as primitive and "knights of the air" as WWI, but not so electronic and jet powered as Korea and beyond. Making a retrofuture of it might just be a natural fit.

        Crimson Skies actually played a lot like Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2...a LOT of gameplay parallels. And WC was indeed modeled on WW2 type st

  • Angelini Jolie wearing an eyepatch? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ellisDtrails ( 583304 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:07PM (#10214628) Homepage
    Wow my pirate / brunette bombshell fetish is finally realized!

  • Aha! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dystopian Rebel ( 714995 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:08PM (#10214636) Journal
    That's what Jar Jar Binks, "Face Dances", and "AI" have in common!

  • I Miss ol' Jon Katz's reviews (Score:5, Funny)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:08PM (#10214639) Journal

    Couldn't you have put in a paragraph or two drawing parallels between this movie and Columbine? Or how it relates to globalism? Your plain vanilla movie review kinda feels naked without you attempting to link it in with current events or society.

    GMD

    • I'd almost completely forgotten! (Score:4, Funny)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:29PM (#10214896) Homepage
      Jeez! I'm a little amazed. I've been reading Slashdot regularly every day and somehow, without really realizing when it happened, I'd almost completely forgotten about Jon Katz. How can this be? I still remember how he used to make my blood boil with his pompous, sophomoric rants. And yet at some point I sort of started to chalk that up to the nature of the beast -- listening to children in grown-up bodies blabbering on like they wielded the authority of a BBC field correspondent was all part of the fun of Slashdot. Then he disappeared and ... could it be ... my Slashdot experience seems to be none the worse for wear! How can this have happened? How can I have so quickly forgotten all about Jon Katz's seminal contribution to Slashdot history, when it had given me so much bitter, perverse joy?

      Oh yeah... now I remember. That was about the time I started browsing at -1.
    • Well, if we had giant flying submarines, there would not have been a Columbine.

    • Where's Katz? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Augusto ( 12068 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:57PM (#10215182) Homepage
      He had the most inane and illogical opinions, but I really enjoyed his articles because they just generated levels of flaming and hilarity that are classic on slashdot.

      What happened to Katz? Why did he stop contributing to slashdot? Is he still talking about Columbine and geekdoom? Did he lear to use a computer?

      I wish slashdot would post an interview with him, I predict record page hits!

      Jon Katz we miss you, you sucked, but you are missed!

  • the Sci-Fi museum (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:11PM (#10214676)
    I just visited that museum on vacation a few weeks ago. It's not very big, being shoe-horned into the Experience Music Project, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for with quality. The exhibits and presentation was amazing. (for example, while a short loop about the Matrix displayed on a big projection screen, smaller projectors turned the walls into cascading 'Matrix-code')

    • Re:the Sci-Fi museum (Score:4, Informative)

      by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:56PM (#10215178) Journal
      Strange, I just visted last weekend and was a little disappointed. The spherical video displays were cool, and some of the original cg work was passable (though, it seemed somewhat inappropriate since it looked lower-quality than the movies being represented). However clever some of the looping videos (including a big screen display of numerious famous ficitonal starships all passing within close proximity to each other)these aren't really good reasons to go to a museum-- all those things could have just as well been presented online.

      The real reason to visit a museum for the artifacts, and on this level they sometimes impressed and sometimes were lacking. A number of items were not authentic props- there were replica lightsabers, a replica R2-D2, a reproduced Terminator - and these sometimes made the displays seem a little incomplete. On the other hand, they have lots of Star Trek originals: Patrick Stewart's Borg accessories, a couple dozen phazors, tricorders, Captain Kirk's chair. They had a lot of scripts and original manuscripts, as well as model spaceships... Actually, my disappointment might just be bitterness at the gift shop lingering - I just wanted something with a logo on it, and everything was wildly overpriced, I think the cheapest pen was $10... oh yeah, that and the wording on the back of the ticket rubbed me the wrong way, I believe it starts "This ticket is a revokable license..." - I shit you not.

      Meh, I'd still go again, but if you're planning a trip, keep your expectations in check. I'm sure that as the years go on it will only improve.

      As a more on-topic aside, the Sky Captain movie reminds me of my friend's comic that he's been working on for the past year or so. It's more of a traditional pulp thing, but what I've seen [that he hasn't posted yet] seems pretty cool (he just finally put up the first installment recently - I believe he'll be updating weekly): Captain Spectre and the Lightning Legion [captainspectre.com].

  • personally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:11PM (#10214682)
    I'm looking forward to seeing this movie, but I'll admit I'm starting to have CGI-fatigue.

    CGI should be a tool to enhance a good, original story.

    I rarely see original plots anymore being made into movies.

    One notable exception though, is the recently made Oldboy [imdb.com], a Korean movie.

    If you intend to see this work of genius, avoid spoilers at all costs.

  • Obligatory Futurama Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by loonicks ( 807801 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:11PM (#10214686)
    Every time I hear this advertised I picture the cryogenic technician in the first Futurama episode, saying "Welcome to the WOOORRLD of Tomorrow!"

  • How about a plot too? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:12PM (#10214692) Homepage Journal
    "The plot, which hurtles across maps of the world Indiana Jones style, definitely take a back seat to the effects."

    Why can't Hollywood make movies that have great special effects AND good plots? The Matrix and Spiderman were the the only two decent movies in recent times that have had good CG and a decent plot. I guess you could toss some of the Pixar flicks as well, but that's still a small minority when compared to all the crap that has come out.

    Hollywood, pay attention: we need something that interests us, not just something that looks pretty.
    • is because it's hard.

      hollywood is kind of like the gymnasts in the olympics. you always want them to do a spectacular routine, they always wants to do a spectacular routine, they practice forever to do it right, but they can still screw up badly, even at the highest levels of competition. it's just plain HARD. and you can still fail on the easy stuff you know how to do in your sleep.

      there is just so many variables involved, and so many nuances of execution to keep track of, that hollywood will always be churning out bad movies.

      but look at it this way: there are no peaks without valleys. you can't have something seem great if you compare it against a bunch of other movies equally as great. you're a tough judge. we all are. if every movie was matrix-quality, then it stop impressing you as much as it did. so bad movies will be made, in a greater number than good movies, forever. it's statistical inevitability and human psychology conspiring together.

    • Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)

      by raehl ( 609729 ) * <raehl311.yahoo@com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:35PM (#10214956) Homepage
      we need something that interests us, not just something that looks pretty.

      And you probably like women for their personality too. Wierdo.

    • Re:How about a plot too? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DesertFalcon ( 670699 ) <dcrookston@gmaiOPENBSDl.com minus bsd> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:44PM (#10215053)
      While I definitely agree with you, I feel the need to point something out here.

      Whenever I catch myself thinking about the "good old days" when everything that was put out was good quality and worthwhile, I have to remind myself that things only seem that way in retrospect because I've forgotten about all of the drivel that was produced back then, and have remembered all of the high quality stuff. Take music, for example - the only reason "classical" music has a reputation as being high quality is because nobody plays the crap that was written in the 1800's. Only the very best of what was written then is still around.

      The lifespan of craptacular movies is shorter than that of bad quality arts in other genres, I think, so it doesn't need to take several hundred years for the quality to be separated from the crap.

      Anyway, just my two cents on the issue of "Why is there so much crap coming out these days?"

    • Re:How about a plot too? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dinsdale3 ( 579466 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @02:02PM (#10215235)
      The Matrix and Spiderman were the the only two decent movies in recent times that have had good CG and a decent plot.

      Lord of the Rings?

  • Great (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Arthur Yossarian ( 810063 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:13PM (#10214702)
    He imagined that Spielberg and Lucas might soon be having a similar conversation somewhere in California. I have to agree that it seems like a distinct possibility. Wonderful. We'll have another director who relies solely on CG to sell his films, without any real focus on plot, dialogue, or acting, just like Lucas does these days. I don't think that this is a good trend; it makes for bad movies and deligitimizes CG technology, so that directors who actually use it well (like Peter Jackson in LOTR) don't get the recognition they deserve.

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Funny)

      by Bearpaw ( 13080 )
      I don't think that this is a good trend; it makes for bad movies and deligitimizes CG technology, so that directors who actually use it well (like Peter Jackson in LOTR) don't get the recognition they deserve.

      Yeah, all Jackson got for his effort was shitloads of money, shitloads of great reviews, and shitloads of awards, including an Academy Award for Best Director. Okay, sure, he didn't win an Unobtanium Zrigny Award from the Unaligned Worlds Council for the Electromagnetic-Spectrum-Based Arts, but th

  • FireFox (Score:4, Funny)

    by SQLz ( 564901 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:13PM (#10214712) Homepage Journal
    I guess the world of tomorrow doesn't support Mozilla/FireFox. I can't view the page.
  • SUre, the all-in-front-of-the-blue-screen point is important and impressive, but i'm equally intrigued by:

    1. Laurence Olivier starring in the movie, from old celluloid.

    2. That film noir look achieved through filming the scenes in black and white... and then colorizing them! (Smacks forehead) What a great, simple, and clever idea.

    Those 2 slick gimmicks have to lend an air of retro feel to the movie with aplomb, nevermind the other design elements, like the look and feel of the robots.

    Gotta see this one.

  • Groundbreaking, my arse (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:16PM (#10214744)
    OK, let's translate this...

    What you said:
    ...groundbreaking film...
    ...I was completely blown away.

    What you meant:
    OK, OK, I know this film is just a cheesy knockoff of a pulp '30s-era sci-fi rag, but Angelina Jolie pops her tiddies out! TWICE!!!

  • The coolest part of this movie is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Drunken_Jackass ( 325938 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:17PM (#10214756) Homepage
    the fact that it was one man's vision, and started in his garage using off-the-shelf software and a whole lot of time before any studios ever got involved.

    Wired had an article [wired.com] about it a while ago, and i've been excited to see it ever since.

    Horray for garage studios!!

    • Thank you for pointing it out, I was about to until I read your post.

      Although I had originally been under the impression that he took pictures of the actors, and added them to the movie that way. Oh well, still just as cool.

      If you ever want to see a cool CG anime done ENTIRELY by one man and voiced by himself and his wife, check out Hoshi No Koe (Voice of the Stars), and he recently did another one but I forget the name.

  • Wild ride to the past that should have been (Score:5, Interesting)

    by miketo ( 461816 ) <miketo&nwlink,com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:18PM (#10214771)
    Cheesy? Of *course* it's cheesy! It's for every kid who sat in a theatre with a big bucket of popcorn, grinning like a madman at every swoop and explosion that graced the screen.

    I wasn't part of the pulp era, but I enjoyed reading pulp and Golden Age sf works. There's just something free-wheeling, childlike, and wondrous about the visions of tomorrow that those stories embodied. I still like space opera, with vast galactic fleets spinning out of a nebular cluster to go into battle with the dreaded Zorkanoids -- or whatever the evil space being of the moment was.

    The trailers for this reminded me of another "guilty pleasure" film, "The Rocketeer." I suspect "Sky Captain" will join "Rocketeer" in my movie collection as something that is aimless, harmless exciting fun.

  • John Carter of Mars! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:20PM (#10214791) Homepage
    Actually, this would be kind of interesting. I've read the original series (my father named one of my sisters after Dejah Therece, the Princess of Mars) and loved the sheer retro campty style of the "smiling Virginian" sword fighting his way across the Red Planet.

    If done "so seriously it's fun" like Sky Captain appears, it could be one hell of a ride. If nothing else, I love a good swashbuckling movie.

  • I'm sorry, Microsoft has patented the blue screen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:20PM (#10214793)
    ...though I hadn't realized they had ported it over to the Macintosh yet.

  • View the trailers (Score:3, Informative)

    by nemski ( 587833 ) <davidATnemskiDOTcom> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:22PM (#10214813) Homepage
    If you haven't seen the commercials or trailers, take a look here . . . http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/skycaptain andtheworldoftomorrow/ [apple.com]

  • Doc Savage, Man of Bronze!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:22PM (#10214819) Homepage Journal
    I'm a tremendous fan of pulp era Science Fiction, back when a stout young Virginian could wish himself to Mars. Probably my favorite stories that would translate well to modern visual media are the Doc Savage stories.

    The real thing were written before physics was a respected scientific profession, and chemists and electricians were the cutting edge of technology. The World's Fair and the technological marvel of the Golden Gate Bridge are the settings for the Man of Bronze, a paragon of physical perfection raised by five scientists and flanked by his four comrades in arms, plus their pet monkey, pig and occasionally aided by Doc's sister.

    They are slices of a different age, a different outlook. The world was as full of sinister forces as the headlines of today, but the steadfast belief that honorable and well trained (and euro-caucasian) men could triumph over evil was held as a truism. Airplanes were new, the world had just become global, but war had yet to span the whole planet.

    Great books.

    I have a strong feeling that this movie is based more on the modern steampunk and Sons of Ether (a la White Wolf's Mage) genre. A modern retake on an era, just like RenFaires have little to do with the actual Middle Ages.

    --
    Evan "Not for the Politically Correct sensitive"

    • I'm a tremendous fan of pulp era Science Fiction

      Then you should rather enjoy the adventures ofTom Strong [leguy.de], from America's Best Comics. Very good pulp.

      I have a strong feeling that this movie is based more on the modern steampunk and Sons of Ether (a la White Wolf's Mage) genre. A modern retake on an era

      There is a vocabulary used to discuss and analyse art, and by extension science fiction, that uses the words "modern" and "postmodern" that you might or might not be aware of.
      I don't want to go into a len

  • Wired Magazine Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Standmic ( 769361 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:23PM (#10214826) Homepage
    Wired ran an article about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [wired.com] several months ago.

  • Blue Screen Filming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kenshin ( 43036 ) <.kenshin. .at. .lunarworks.ca.> on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:32PM (#10214931) Homepage
    What sets this film apart from others is that every scene was shot against a blue screen.

    The trouble is: It looks very much like that.

    Good use of blue screening results in the characters looking like they're "there". From the commercials I've seen of this movie, it reminds me of one of those old CD-ROM games where they mixed live actors and CG backgrounds.

    This one just doesn't work for me. It feels so artificial.

  • They finished it? Finally! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:36PM (#10214964) Homepage
    This was supposed to ship last June. Originally, Conran was trying to do the whole job with his own people in Canoga Park. The project was in deep trouble by last winter, and they were frantically outsourcing work to the usual effects houses (ILM, Pixel Liberation Front (hi!), Ring of Fire, etc.) ILM makes about half of their money bailing out productions in trouble.

    (Incidentally, this is why working with Hollywood is such a pain. Either you're in development hell, and there's no money, or you're in production, and and there's no time.)

    "Sky Captain" does look a bit too much like Crimson Skies. Microsoft has a line of Crimson Skies pulp fiction novels. [crimsonskiesuniverse.com] that seem designed to be movies. Dreamworks optioned movie rights for Crimson Skies back in 2001, but didn't use the option.

  • all the way back to "The Last Starfighter" (Score:5, Funny)

    by theghost ( 156240 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @01:55PM (#10215160)
    all the way back to "The Last Starfighter"

    all the way back to 1984?

    Never heard of Tron? 1982? CG all over the place?

    You whippersnappers with your fancy Angelina Jolie-la-di-da and Jude Law-la-di-doo! Back in my day, all we had was Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner in neon jumpsuits. And we liked it!
    • Yes, but Tron's actual CG footage was farmed out to every fledgling computer graphics house in the area.

      TLS was rendered completely on a single Cray, and while some shots have a definite "atari" quality about them, some shots still hold their own, even today.

      Yeah, Tron might have been first to market, but TLS was, imo, a whole hell of a lot cooler. TLS is why I went to Art School and why I have a degree in Computer Animation.

      Of course, I spend my workdays subtitling video and being a linux bitch, but he
      • I concur. Also, Tron seemed to throw in CGI scenes just because it could. For instance, while they are on a solar sail over some valley in the computer world, one of the characters points to the ground and says, "look, gridbugs!" Cut to a scene of little CGI bug critters puttering around a grid for a few seconds. Then they're gone. The gridbugs disappear. They had NOTHING to do with the story of the movie.

        The Last Starfighter had a lot more compelling features:

        1) Everything that looked like CGI in i

  • Princess of Mars, A (2006) (Score:3, Informative)

    by kulakovich ( 580584 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMbonfireproductions.com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @02:10PM (#10215317)

    Princess of Mars, A (2006) [imdb.com]

    Announced, and in production as of March 2004, my friends!

    And to start the rumors flying like a Sky Captain, I heard they are looking at Rena Sofer.

    kulakovich

  • ooh, look! (Score:3, Funny)

    by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @05:41PM (#10217380) Homepage
    Look, boys and girls! It's geek cool to 'dis' popular music and listen to shitty garage bands, all the while claiming that in some mysterious fashion this raises your intellect to godlike proportions over the masses of sheep you egotistically look down on.

    And now we have something new! It's now cool to do the same thing to Angelina Jolie! Those same geeks who watched "Hackers" 67 times and jacked off wildly to every scene with Angelina in it now turn around and try to score points with their uber-arrogant crowd by claiming that Angelina Jolie, like "suxx0rs, d00d".

    You know, if it were legal to sterilize you little twits I'd be out there with a pair of nail clippers in a heartbeat, doing my part to clean up the gene pool.

    Max

  • Castle in the Sky / Laputa (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dcmeserve ( 615081 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @09:25PM (#10218712) Homepage Journal
    I've only seen the TV trailers, but I get the distinct impression that the Miyazaki film "Castle in the Sky" [imdb.com] served as the inspiration for the visuals. Not only in the blimp-battleships, but also those walking robots -- with the rope-like arms and the uneven eyes.

    I definitely need to see this movie, if nothing else than to check for more similarities. :)

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