A successful homage to the great adventure and fantasy movies of the 1930's and 40's. The visuals reach artistic perfection, moving smoothly and seamlessly from a black-and-white to a sepia palette and back. (Or perhaps I should say "pseudo black-and-white" and "pseudo sepia", as there are clever touches of a more icy or a more naturalistic color scheme.) The visuals are not only beautiful, inventive and evocative, they are also well suited to the material, resulting in an excellent marriage of style and plot.Paltrow, Law and Jolie possess just the right kind of matinée idol looks, artfully accentuated by some very flattering costumes. Do you want to see miniature elephants, doomsday machines, giant robots, submersible airplanes and amazon fighter pilots ? Do you want to hear tales of ungodly experiments and A Knowledge Man Was Not Meant To Pursue ? Do you want to travel through snow-covered Lands Of Mystery ? Yes, YES, yes ! YES ! Of course you do - admit it !

*Spoiler/plot- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2004. When mysterious giant robots attack New York City, intrepid reporter Polly Perkins is on the news story and enlists the aid of ace aviator and old flame "Sky Captain" Sullivan. Their mission is to find out who's behind these fling killing machines and to stop the plot to destroy the world before it's too late.*Special Star- Jude Law, Angeline Jolie, Gwyneth Patrow, Giovanni Ribisi.*Theme- The future has millions of possibilities, some good and many bad.*Trivia/location/goofs- This film features innovative state-of-the-art digital special effects with blue screen sets and unique scene image processing to achieve 1930's theatrical serial comic book appearance.*Emotion- While this film was interesting in it's breakout use of film digital EFX, I thought the movies plot got lost in all the technical special EX....certainly the theme was over shadowed or not clearly communicated to the audience.*Based On- Film plot takes it origins from a 6 minute original computer edited treatment by an amateur filmmaker that took the World's Fair 1939 theme.

It's pretty odd how the ratings for this movie here aren't that high, but there actually are a lot of positive reviews. I guess I'm with the people who genuinely enjoyed it, even though it wasn't great. I think it's mostly because of how outright beautiful this film looks. I mean, the way everything is shot just makes it look authentic and it seems to be a great tribute to the old film serials. Granted, I don't think I've ever really seen any of those, but this certainly looks faithful. Anyway, this movie begins with giant robots appearing (always a good start) and people investigating to see where they came from.I admit that the dialogue isn't that good, but there really are some pretty good characters in this. I really did find myself rooting for the relationship between the male and female lead. The way they bonded was actually quite cute. I think the film's length was good, even though the pacing could have been better. I was glad I saw it and even though I would not quite recommend it, it was enjoyable. It's not that great of a story but for me it was a fun little film that was at least above average. It had pretty creative ideas even if they weren't executed that well. ***

Sky Captain is a loving distillation of 1930s serials into an enjoyable, beautiful, intriguing, fun film that never takes itself serious but is ultimately mindless. And that's what such films should be. In my opinion this is far and away the best of it's type, far surpassing the Marvel and Transformer spectacles. While adopting many of the plot points and action sequences of serials it still manages to look fresh and surprising.While I haven't the time or energy to review all of the previous posts, it surprised me that many criticized the use of color. One even said it was adopting the colorized look of the 1970s. You'll notice that the only part of the film that had true color was The Wizard of Oz showing on the Radio City Music Hall screen. In point of fact the film was a deliberate attempt to copy the look of two-strip Technicolor which was used up to 1935. As a fan of this look I go out of my way to find such films. Sky Captain succeeded admirably in copying it.Much criticism is lodged about the lack of sparks between the principals. This also is in keeping with serials where the only clinch was the closing scene. Instead, the rivalry between investigator and reporter with lots of wisecracking copies the feel beautifully. While all of this has become hackneyed from decades of use, it is handled well and intelligently.The CGI is used with care and as an adjunct to the plot. Small details keep popping up that will require multiple viewings to assimilate.This is a film for film fans. I consider it a classic.