Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
I first heard about Sky Captain and
the World of Tomorrow at the con
we
went to a few months ago. At that point, all it was was a picture of
Angelina Jolie in front of a retro-futuristic backdrop on a freebie
poster.
The buzz around the movie was that originally, the director had created a 5 minute 'pilot' which was completely generated on his Macintosh, which had then been picked up by a major motion picture house and was being given a full budget to realize it's potential, once again completely generated on computers. 100% bluescreen + actors.
Various
interviews confirmed the buzz at the con, adding the detail that
it was Jude Law, (Gigolo Joe from AI) who had discovered
the director
and 5 minute pilot. Apparently, both the stunning effects and stylistic
vision based "future" of the early 1900s was enough to get
him on-board and he recruited other producers (read: money) and big name
talent like Gwyneth Paltrow to join him on the film.
The extended trailer is online now. I've usually got a really decent sense for how a movie will do when it's released, and I wish I could say that I thought this was going to be a great smash hit. I feel roughly the same about it now as I did about "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" before it came out. I'm going to see it and probably love it simply for the Geek Factor, but I don't know if America will bite without at least a familiar retro character or premise to help justify the stylistic theme of the film.
Here's hoping the movie proves me wrong.
