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Sky Captain and the Films of Tomorrow
professorfalcon writes "Foxnews.com has an interview with the stars of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. They talk about their experience hugging a green screen for the entire film, and how the movie is 'unlike anything most audiences have seen before. It uses no sets, only computer generated imagery.' So most audiences didn't see Star Wars?"
Star wars is very different. Sure, a lot of the stuff is CG or green-screened, but a lot of the stuff is done on sets with more than just a few props.
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Actors hate it because they have no set to act in.
Audiences hate it because they're made so conscious of the forgery they're watching.
This sort of thing is a nice little novelty, but in time it'll be no more than a niche product.
You're telling me that Star Wars used only computer-generated sets? That there were no physical sets involved at all?
Offtopic I know, but I'm really starting to wish that article submitters could save the commentary for comments...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I saw this last night. I was interested in the visuals, after reading about the filming method. After ten minutes, the novelty of the effects wore off. I could get past the 30'-style campiness, but the actors didn't seem to be interacting with each other. As the movie progressed, you could tell that the actors were acting by themselves in many of the scenes. It was a neat idea, but it got really distracting for me after a bit. I think for a short film, it would have been pretty cool, but a full-length feature? I was bored out of my mind by the end of the movie...just my $0.02.
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this movie had no substance whatsoever.
ya, it looked cool..if you like a movie that looks like it was shot through an unfocused lense.
my 4 year old like it though.
Films like this are wonderful for 12 year olds. I'm hoping it will be the same kind of breakout fantasy for twelve year olds today that Star Wars was for me in 1977 when I was twelve.
I remember seeing the 20th anniversary re-release of Star Wars in the theaters in 1997. It was campy and Luke was a whiny twit. However, Star Wars was for boys and I let it slide. Sky Captain is for boys. Cut it some slack and escape back to when you were twelve.
Now, I hope this generation can find a replacement for the other breakout movie from when I was 12, Saturday Night Fever!
Think Indiana Jones, but on an even bigger scale. Globetrotting around the world, giant robots, flying aircraft carriers, underwater planes, etc. Yes, you need to turn off your sense of disbelief, but it was an absolute blast. Ebert said it best, it went from Conrad's mind to film without reality intervening. A glorious film about an alternate reality we should've had.
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I doubt that. I saw it too, and also thoroughly enjoyed it. But, in my opinion, it lacks the feel of mythology that was an important part of what made Star Wars so special.
You might as well say "Yeah, I like 2001 but why'd they have to put it in space?".
I've always liked the 30's vision of the future: dirigibles, flying fortresses, giant steel robots. And the old serials had a certain charm, you know that crawl at the beginning of star wars? Lucas got that idea from serials, which would use it to catch everyone up on the last episodes. Longtime fans of MST3K will remember "The Phantom Creeps" serials and especially "Radar Men From The Moon".
Sky Captain is a direct homage to these serials. I imagine that this movie would be the dream of any kid who watched those.
I guess it's a very different genre of movie from anything that's been produced in the last 70 years. Sky Captain isn't the best movie ever, but it's a lot of fun to watch the "we-make-it-up-as-we-go-along" style of storytelling. He crashes his plane into the ocean? No problem, Dax fitted it with submersible gear. Who cares if that's ridiculous. It's supposed to be, but it's still exciting.
I mean, how can you hate a beautiful movie like this, a british commander on a hovering air field saying things like "Alert the amphibious squadron!".
I will prolly get modded down as a flame, but I'm tired of everyone acting like this is some new paradigm in movies, an example of the future... when in reality, the techniques aren't even new or the least bit interesting.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
"You're telling me that Star Wars used only computer-generated sets?"
Yah, I thought that statement was bogus.
The interesting part is I've always maintained that the signature look of the original three Star Wars films (Episodes 4, 5, and 6) comes about because they didn't have all the special effects tech they have these days. Computer generated imagery didn't really exist; chromakey didn't exist. Everything was done with models (and paintings for large stuff) and then manually compositited. Even today's best computer models still don't manage to get all the details of a "real" scene completely right. If you look closely, you can still almost always spot the CG models. But in the original Star Wars, every time they blew something up, they actually built something and blew it up.
(Of course, the artifacts resulting from inaccurate hand compositing detracts from the overall quality, but hey, you can't have everything.)
I imagine CG models will eventually catch up, but right now, you still can't beat the "real thing".
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"Man are you confused. World War One was 1914-1918."
Right. And until they had another one, it was called "The Great War" or "The World War". They didn't know to call it "World War One" until there was a second one.
This reminds me of the gag with the guy who finds a coin dated "50 BC".
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It's a spoof as much as anything. It was intended to be a "cheesy" type movie...like they used to make in the 30's. It was intended to have stereotypical, bubble-gum-pop acting and gee-wiz special effects...It wasn't trying to be "realistic".
It was a really cool movie....I took my two kids[frankly the target audience!], way past their bedtime and they didn't make a peep for the whole show!! Therefore, it's a great movie!!
You just have to love the Slashdot crowd. Anything new comes along and all you get is "oh, it's been done before... it wasn't quite as fully developed, and was only part of a larger whole, but it was done."
When are we going to stop and think about the fact that all innovation in human history involved taking things that already existed, and combining them in ways that no one else had?
No one had ever fillmed a feature-length movie with live-action actors as the primary stars in which there was only one set and 90% of the film was CG. If hollywood had nixed the idea of doing this, Slashdot junkies would be the first to rant that Hollywood never does anything innovative like this, but when they do, it's all just, "been there, done that."
Tron was an innovative and well-made film. So was Sky Capt. Why can we not celebrate the innovation of both (while lamenting that Hollywood DOES limit such innovation such that it took us 30 years to get from the one to the other)?
For a movie that everyone HATED so damn much, you guys sure can't seem to stop talking about Star Wars. Ever.
Star Wars 1& 2 as well as LOTR were nearly Skycaptain in their use of special effects. Skycaptain finally makes the leap from trying to "merge" real and imagined sets to simply shooting the actors ACTING and building all the sets from CGI. it's a nice middleground for a few years.
Okay, I saw it, and loved just about everything about it, except the opening title sequence was so jarringly out of place - it's like a standard opening title sequence for a regular movie, not for a 30s/40s sci-fi homage. Weird.
:)
I thought the storyline was great, the characters were very well realized, and the special effects were fantastic, most especially the designs. The more 30s & 40s sci-fi/action serials you've read/seen, the more you'll realize how effin' brilliant this homage is. If you've never read or seen anything from that era, you're really gonna hate this movie, though you may have enough artistic appreciation in your soul to see the beauty in the designs (though I doubt it, from most of the comments in here thus far).
The effects aren't _intended_ to be realistic. Another movie that did this to great effect was last year's fantastic version of "Peter Pan," which I very highly recommend. Kerry Conran (writer & director) came up with the idea to make, essentially, a comic book come to life, IN THE STYLE OF THE COMICS. _That_ is something noone has done before. The 'set' design evokes a time that never really existed (well, much like most movies do). I love the revisionist history, Hindenburg III, indeed, and docking with the Empire State Building like the original - nice touch! I found out that some New Yorkers don't even know about that.
I think a travelling museum piece about all of the things that influenced the making of "Sky Captain" would be a pretty marvellous thing.
re: the acting
Okay, it wasn't bad, first off. They did what they intended to do, so guess what? You missed the whole point. This is a comic book. Use your brain and think about the things that implies, okay?
The character I was most impressed with was Dex - a character that could have easily have been a helpless little geek character. Instead, he's the one responsible for most of the technical innovation the good guys use. His inspiration? Comic books! Brilliant. And I want that ray gun of his in the worst kind of way! Every time Cap said, "Good boy," I wanted to beat the shit out of him. And I cheered when Cap socked Polly.
I'd say anyone bitching about this would bitch about the original Star Wars (A New Hope) if they were seeing it for the first time now. You've got no soul.
And people are _bored_ by this movie? Geez. I feel really sad for you.
I enjoyed it as well... it felt halfway between an action movie and a cartoon, which is something different anyways.
The one thing that bugged me was the sound. Of all the elements of the film that they tried to give a 1940's feel, they seemed to gloss over the musical score. Stylistically, it was appropriate, but the recording itself sounded WAY too "2004 clean and accurate." I'd expected and hoped for a bit of campier orchestration and old-style recording quality (not the scratches and hisses, but the balance between instruments). There's a certain zing to older soundtracks, and this opportunity was completely missed in the movie.
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In the context of ubiquitous computer-generated graphics, you have to be deliberately obtuse to think that it refers to the original trilogy. I don't care how old you are.
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Exactly right. It thought it achieved its goal very well. It's definately a genre tribute, not an all-things-to-all-people film. I found that the CG fit so well with everything, that I didn't think about it. Yes, it's blurry and dark and monochromatic, along with the characters. But it makes it look very Noir-ish, and that's the point. It accomplished the feel that its creators were going for *very* well, IMHO. If you don't like that style--and it's *very* stylized--then you probably won't like the movie, so if you see it, don't complain when it's not The Matrix or Star Wars or whatever. If you really like the 30s and 40s style of comics and movies (like me), then by all mean, go see it. I don't watch teen comedies or romance movies for this very reason--I don't like that sort of movie, and even if it was a good example of its genre, I still wouldn't appreciate it.
Indiana Jones is another example of movies with the same 30s pulp inspiration, although it's not nearly as stylized as Sky Captain, and is more accessible to more people. It still has the somewhat cheesy unbelievable parts, though.
No offense, but I hate it when people who obviously don't "get" or like what is the creators of something are trying to do complain when it's not like every other movie/game/etc out there. Example: complaining that Doom3 is too dark and that you can't use a flashlight and a weapon. Or someone who hates classical music reviewing a classical record and saying it sucks.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on anything, but in order to express a "useful" opinion, such as a review, one needs to adopt, at least temporarily, the expectations of a fan of the genre. I don't go to a Schwarzenegger film expecting Oscar-worthy plot or acting, but an hour or two of mindless entertainment. I went to see Sky Captain expecting a tribute to the 30s/40s film and comic style, with its pros and cons, and that's exactly what I saw. I give it four out of five stars.
The script may be stupid, but I'll be that the script writer was familiar with the concept of "paragraphs"....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.