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Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon
Directed by: Kerry Conran
Screenplay by: Kerry Conran
Release Date: September 17, 2004
MPAA Rating: PG for sequences of stylized sci-fi violence and mild language.
Box Office: $37,762,677 (US total)
Studio: Paramount Pictures
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Tagline: Join the Resistance.
Featuring state-of-the-art special effects never seen before, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" represents a trailblazing moment in cinematic history. With more than 2000 effects shots, this unprecedented feature uses live action filmed against blue screen and fills in every frame detail digitally, after the completion of principal photography.
More than six years in the making, this groundbreaking achievement in film is the brainchild of first-time writer / director Kerry Conran, in collaboration with producer Jon Avnet. As Conran says: “This film exists because of Jon Avnet’s maverick spirit, his belief in me and his love for this project.”
Although "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" has virtually no sets and no locations, Conran uses the latest in digital technology to immerse audiences in a breathtakingly detailed and lush, long-lost sci-fi world, where pulp fiction fantasies come to life.
Flying high above New York City, the film opens with the Hindenburg III, a behemoth airship, docking atop the Empire State Building, the world's tallest port-of-call. Storm clouds rumble as snow blankets the city and startling news fills the screen: Famous scientists around the world are mysteriously disappearing.
When deadly gargantuan robots trample the city streets, flinging cars and crushing buildings in their wake, on the investigation is Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), who enlists the help of her old flame, Captain H. Joseph Sullivan (Jude Law) -- aka Sky Captain -- an ace aviator with daredevil flying skills.
Traveling to the Himalayan Alps, where they're trapped in an enormous ice cave wired with explosives, and to the tranquil valley of Shangri-la, Polly and Sky Captain battle terrifying flying robots, make an incredible mid-air landing on a mobile airstrip thousands of feet in the sky, and experience the wonder of underwater flight as they search for Dr. Totenkopf, the evil mastermind behind a plot to destroy the world. Will these two determined souls find the elusive Totenkopf in time? With the help of the courageous captain of an all-female amphibious squadron, Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie), and technical genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), Polly Perkins and Sky Captain may be our planet's only hope.
About the Six-Minute Film That Spawned a Film and A Revolution
"It's unlike anything you've seen," says producer Jon Avnet, who's been dubbed "the godfather" of this epic, unprecedented film for his hyphenate role as Conran's mentor-producer-protector. "There are crucial elements that set the film apart when I first saw it, and continue to make it quite unique on many levels." When Avnet showed the six minutes to Jude Law, who portrays flying ace Sky Captain Joe Sullivan, Law was so enthralled with "The World of Tomorrow" short, he not only agreed to play the feature film's title character, he also jumped on board as one of its producers. "What I watched was the most exciting and inspiring retrospective piece of cinema I'd ever seen," Law says. "I'd never seen anything like it before... I couldn't work out how it was done, but it had this feeling that reminded me of the classical serials of the 1930s and '40s and had a place in today's, if you like, blockbuster, moviegoing appetite. It absolutely bowled me over."
"When I first watched the six-minute video, I understood finally, exactly what they were talking about, and it just looked unlike anything I had ever seen," says Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oscar-winning actress who was Avnet and Law's first choice to play reporter Polly Perkins. "Before I even read the script, I said, 'OK, I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll be in it,' because what I had seen was just amazing."
While boasting elements from many genres and sources, Conran's original six-minute film short was unlike anything anyone had seen. Working alone, the computer software whiz and aspiring filmmaker seamlessly merged classic styles and iconic images with today's cutting-edge digital technology, juxtaposing the Empire State Building, circa 1939, with wild, whip-lashing, point-of-view aerial action shots straight out of today's most intense virtual reality or simulated flight experiences.
"It's mind-blowing," says Giovanni Ribisi, who portrays technical genius Dex. "Absolutely overwhelming."
Using his laptap computer, Conran had not just re-created a world that almost existed, but he had taken the twists and "What If's...?" of science fiction, fantasy, history and destiny and given them fully rendered, vividly rich life.
For years, Conran spent nearly every free moment toiling on his Mac, experimenting with ideas, software, trying to turn his idealized world vision into a virtual reality. Through a quiet, painstakingly modern digital effort, Conran has not only achieved an astonishing re-creation of a long-lost world we all once knew; he launched a filmmaking revolution in the process.
"There is an enormous amount of action, but that's not all," says Avnet. "Kerry has such a special vision, a sense of scale, of graphic composition, of the use of light and the use of darkness that it is somewhat overwhelming. The result is that you take a ride; that the suspension of disbelief is uncanny.
Avnet knew that Conran's "World of Tomorrow," grounded as it was in a collective cinematic memory of classic films, Saturday morning serials and comic book superheroes, was familiar yet entirely new. Conran's short was defined as much by what it did not resonate as by what it did. It wasn't camp or self-conscious or ponderous. It wasn't kitsch or too serious. There may be a twinkle in Sky Captain's eye, but no wink at the camera. There was a glimmer of the inexplicable and unbelievable, which only served to heighten the film's overwhelming sense of the real and wondrous.
The style, tone and story was everything Conran -- and Avnet -- loved about the movies. It was an alternative reality, how things might have been ... once upon a time ... if only. It was a pure, adrenaline rush.
"With all our technology, they were much more future-thinking than we are now," says writerdirector Kerry Conran about the mass consciousness and culture of the 1930s and '40s. "My film was a sort of an idealized vision of the future that never quite materialized, but we all wish perhaps still could."
The six-minute short, which gave rise to the feature-length motion picture "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," gave new meaning to the term, "recruitment film." Conran's short seemed to captivate the hearts and minds of those few who saw it, although it was Kerry Conran's brother, Kevin Conran, who actually began to show it. "I didn't want to show it," Kerry says. "I did not sit down to make a six-minute film. I sat down to make a feature film and I got six minutes into it, and it was four years later, and I thought I might need some help, because this was obviously going to take a while."
In November 1999, Kevin Conran, who had done a couple of illustrations and paintings for Kerry's film, invited an old college friend of his wife over for dinner and a (short) movie. Kerry Conran knew, ready or not, he needed an "outside perspective" on his work and producer Marsha Oglesby seemed anxious to see this short she'd heard so much about. After Oglesby first finished watching it, she was almost speechless. Awestruck, she asked, "Can I see that again?" The next day, when it came time for Oglesby to share the film with her producing partner Avnet, it was all show, no tell. "Just watch it," she said and he did.
"It was the composition of shots, use of light, framing," Avnet says, remembering when he first glimpsed Conran's "World of Tomorrow" in his office years ago. "It had a film noir quality ... I really responded on a personal artistic level. Then, he had these huge mechanical robots invading New York City and it made me smile. It was a totally noncynical presentation of story. More importantly, I came to believe that Kerry had the ability to do it as a full-length film. In fact, he had done it on an Apple [computer] in his garage, which was pretty cool to me."
Avnet, like Oglesby, wanted to see the tape again. He was still wowed. "There are a couple of shots of these robots' feet, which I think are just fantastic because you feel the mass, you feel the density, you feel the weight of them. It's so real it's a little weird almost."
Avnet, a veteran producer-director, knew Conran's vision was unlike anything he'd ever seen. By 1998, having produced special effects-laden films as "George of the Jungle" and "Inspector Gadget," Avnet knew computer graphic imaging (CGI) shots were becoming a large part of moviemaking, but a film made entirely in a computer was unprecedented. The sets, landscapes, locations, design -- everything was done in a computer. Conran's desire to weave animation, computer graphics and actors-against-blue screen into a wild roller-coaster-ride-of-a-movie was incredibly ambitious.
"It's very difficult to describe the look when you are saying the fact that something is 'new,' that you haven't seen anything like it," Avnet says. "As colorful as my language may be at times, I felt I was unable to explain what [it] was unless you saw it."
"The World of Tomorrow" opens with a zeppelin flying through a snowstorm to dock at the top of the Empire State Building. Moments later, when flying robots descend into the soaring skyscraper canyons of Manhattan, wreaking havoc, and the hero, ace aviator Sky Captain, swoops down in his P-40 Warhawk to save the day, the images are breathtaking. Conran's stunning world, wrapped in the shadows of film noir and shaped by the sleek, geometric forms of an ever-faster, machine-driven culture, unfolds mysteriously, seductively, owing as much to Orson Welles as to H.G. Wells. Conran's visual homage leaps back to the future, mixing science-fiction, action-adventure and fantasy with historical fact, fiction and film, in a dark tale of man battling the machine for the survival of humanity.
As Conran remembers, when Avnet finished watching the short, he sat back and asked, "What do you want?" Conran said all he wanted was to make his movie and Avnet replied, "I think I can do that."
And pretty much just like that, Conran's long-held dream of realizing his epic fantasy world merged with Avnet's character-driven filmmaking know-how in an unusual marriage of common sensibilities and complementary strengths. Conran had spent four long years to complete six minutes of film. While the lone pursuit satisfied the self-described "shy" but "controlling," 37-year-old aspiring filmmaker, he knew that at such a glacial pace, his world of tomorrow might never arrive. And Avnet, while acknowledging the undertaking's unprecedented process and scope, saw in Conran's world of tomorrow a breakthrough in filmmaking. For both of them, the future was now.
"This is Kerry's movie," says Avnet of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." "What I am is Kerry's biggest fan, his benefactor. One of the things that appealed to me when I first met Kerry was the notion he had for shooting it. Working on the same computer that however many millions of people have, he was going to make a movie. And that's exactly what he did."
And what Avnet did, like any godfather, was make Kerry Conran an offer he couldn't refuse: Avnet would help Conran make his movie. He would spend his money, time, knowledge and influence to give the unknown Conran the opportunity to create his film. In return, all Kerry Conran had to do was take those six minutes and make them into a full-length feature film, which Avnet would produce and secure Aurelio De Laurentiis to fully finance.
Avnet says, “No one should underestimate the impact of Aurelio’s vote of confidence in this project. Though alternate sources of financing would have been available, Aurelio embraced the concept of allowing me full creative control, which I in turn could give to Kerry on an unprecedented basis. In a traditional development scenario within a studio, Kerry’s movie would never have been made. Something else might have been made, but not Kerry’s movie. Aurelio was instrumental in allowing this whole film to happen."
Aurelio commented, “I remember three years ago when Jon Avnet sent me the script and showed me the six minute tape in Rome. I was so blown away that I couldn’t even speak. When he assured me he would have big stars, I agreed to finance the movie and share ownership with him.”
No one knew at the time, it would take nearly 2000 special effects shots and some six years to realize Conran's vision. No one knew because no one had ever made a film like this before.
About the Story
Kerry Conran traces the origins of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" back to a book he had as a child growing up in Flint, Michigan in the late 1960s, early '70s. Conran says among other wondrous images, The Book of Marvels had a rendering of the Empire State Building mooring dock for dirigibles, aka zeppelins or blimps. This relatively unknown, trivial fact was amplified in Conran's imagination when he saw the film, "King Kong."
 "Before they mounted the antennas up there [on the top of the building], they had a cowling dock," Conran says. "You can see it in the original 1933 'King Kong.' He's clutching it. If you look at it, it's a cowling dock for a zeppelin that he's holding on to."Conran says he took that "strange image I wanted to see" and slowly, carefully spun a universe, his "World of Tomorrow," around it. As he sat down and began working on his film, the characters, storyline and images he envisioned sprang from the eclectic mix of film noir, pulp fiction, comic books and classic animation he'd seen growing up. He wanted to take his favorite elements of each -- the epic romance and action, the wild pace, humor and surprises, exotic locations and suspense-filled cliff-hangers -- and create an imaginatively credible world.
Kevin Conran, Kerry's brother and the film's production designer and costume designer, remembers he and his brother "would literally run downstairs on Sunday morning to watch these old 'Flash Gordon' serials before we had to take off for church." He says, "They were sliding that rocket ship across a wire and you knew it, but it was great to us just the same. There are numerous overt references in this film to those old serials and cartoons. We know a lot of other people love them, too."
Just as George Lucas found inspiration in '40s aerial flicks like "Buck Rogers"" and "Flash Gordon" for his empires and space ship dogfights in "Star Wars," so did Conran find these serials and cartoons combining with his love of film noir and the American genres of fantasy, science-fiction and adventure fiction -- all of which sprang from pulp fiction, at the beginning of the last century.
The term pulp fiction originally referred to "pulp" paper magazines of the late 19th century, such as Weird Tales and The Strand, which featured the work of such prolific literary masters as H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (The Lost World, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan of the Apes).
Generally, pulp fiction stories focused on man struggling with dark, powerful and often, evil forces -- both internal and external --beyond his control. By the early and mid-20th century, pulp fiction, with its mix of science fact and speculative fiction, launched a new era and genre of fantasy stories with compelling alternative or parallel realities.
The enduring universality of these conflicts and stories can be seen in the continued popularity of such characters as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan as well as of the recent multiple-Oscar-winning film series, "Lord of the Rings," based on Tolkien's trilogy, and blockbuster film updates and remakes of "The Lost World" (Steven Spielberg's film of the same title), "King Kong" and the upcoming Robert Rodriguez adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's "A Princess of Mars."
Conran believes that many people relate not only to the universal archetypes of comic book and pulp fiction characters but also to the iconic and unforgettable imagery surrounding them. He studied these images that haunt him and used the exaggerated scales, minimalist framing and monstrous villains to achieve the look and composition of his digital and live-action wonder.
"You know the scale, it really does get back in large part to a lot of those old pulp magazine covers, where things are exaggerated, just bigger than they could possibly be," says Kevin. "The closest parallel would be more of a traditionally animated movie, only with actors. The intention was never to make a photo realistic world. It was always intended to be its own thing, it's own unique world. Kerry wanted to make a movie since he was a little kid and he had these images in his head."
"I wanted to see P-40s [Warhawk planes] in the canyons of New York City flying in the same way, I wanted to see a zeppelin docking on top of the world's tallest building," explains Kerry. "In fact, I was sort of obsessed with docking the zeppelin. It just struck me as natural and proper and right to dock one since it never quite happened."
[While a dirigible did succeed in circling the globe once, stopping in Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York, two attempts to dock zeppelins on the Empire State Building during the 1930s failed. The vision of the world's tallest tower as an airship port-of-call, welcoming transatlantic guests to the world's leading city, ended forever after the Hindenburg I disaster in 1937.]
"There was also a Hindenburg II," says Kevin, adding another little-known historical fact. "So, naturally, ours had to be the Hindenburg III, since we wanted to keep much of it rooted in things that actually transpired."
"The World of Tomorrow" was the theme of the 1939 New York World's Fair, a spectacular collection of modern and futuristic buildings, displays and scientific inventions, which also fascinated Kerry Conran. The awe-inspiring scale, designed by the legendary Norman Bel Geddes, was built for machines, not man, just like New York's new soaring skyscrapers and automobile parkways. Terms such as "aerodynamic" and "flow mobility" entered the lexicon. With the rapid advances in science and technology, the machine had become a force for both prosperity and destruction, its omnipresence provoking both faith and fear.
As one traveled through the gigantic halls and exhibits of the World's Fair, it was clear that the machine was transforming the economic, social and psychological aspects of every culture it touched. The dawn of the American-driven "Machine Age" in the 1920s and '30s was an exuberant, imaginative era, where anything seemed possible. Eventually, the era's prosperity and optimism crumbled under the realities of a stock market crash, worldwide depression and world war.
"I think the World's Fair remains so magical to a lot of people because of what they succeeded in building," says Kevin. "There was a real sense of wonderment about it, optimism about what future was going to be and, indeed, the world of tomorrow, all the wonders it might bring. It's easy to be cynical now, looking back, but there was genuine optimism for the future, for all the things technology could bring."
Decades later, the ultimate Machine-Age wonder, the computer with which Conran weaves his seductive, but dangerous world, is the same machine that holds the key to the planet's complete annihilation. In developing his story, Kerry Conran found man's long-standing ambivalence with the machine a provocative and timeless conflict. Infusing his world with film noir's ominous, dark shadows, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" opens with huge mechanical monsters and flying robots. They rob the earth of major mineral and power sources; and one by one, the world's leading scientists are also mysteriously disappearing. When reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) investigates, she soon discovers that a brilliant and reclusive German scientist, Dr. Totenkopf, is the prime suspect behind both.
Teaming with an old flame, mercenary aviator Sky Captain Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), Polly takes off on a globe-trotting mystery to find the mad genius before he detonates a doomsday device.
As Avnet explains, the film's title also underscores the machine-driven theme in Totenkopf's apocalyptic vision of the future. "Our villain, Totenkopf, came together with a group of scientists in the early part of the 20th century, convinced that man, left to his own devices, would destroy himself," says Avnet. "He dreamed of a way to keep that from happening and in doing so, he wanted to create a 'World of Tomorrow.' In most people's eyes he may be nefarious, but in other's, it may be an attempt to save humankind. It's similar to many messianic visions, good and bad, romantic and dictatorial."
For Kerry Conran, Totenkopf is more than just the story's villain; he personifies the selfperpetuating myths we create to explain the mysteries of our world. "He's not the conventional villain you've seen in most movies," Conran says. "Ultimately, he's not quite what you think he is, much in the way The Wizard of Oz was not quite what you thought he was. He's almost more metaphorical in a sense."
"The Wizard of Oz," which has come to symbolize things that are not as they seem, was released in 1939, along with a string of other classic Hollywood films, including the enduring epics "Gone With the Wind," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Wuthering Heights," "Gulliver's Travels," the animated "Pinocchio" and John Ford's "Stagecoach." There are many things Conran loves about "The Wizard of Oz" and he "unabashedly, unapologetically holds in very high regard the various things we are paying homage to in this film," including the Wizard himself. Conran sees Sky Captain and Polly's pursuit of the elusive Totenkopf as similar to Dorothy's journey to see the Wizard. "He's an idea they're chasing," he says. "They're creating his story as much as he's created it. They're piecing together his life as they go along, and so much of what they learn is true and so much of what they learn is false."
With digital control of this high-contrast style, Conran could finally realize the gizmos, gadgets and utopian beauty of the era's industrial designers, scientists, inventors and writers. Conran could build his New York as the city of the future that never was ... the romantic, humanistic city of the imagination, which promised to merge science and art to improve the quality of life for all. Conran could explore the enduring delight of watching his characters journey out of their stark worlds and into brilliant Technicolor as they cross into Shangri-la, just as Dorothy did when she landed in Oz. And, most important of all, despite its illusion to the contrary, he could do it without the massive resources conventional filmmakers would need.
"I started to experiment with structuring in a very minimalist way," Conran explains, noting it was the simple attractive lines, shadings and framing in old cartoons, especially, which encouraged his ambitions. He found he could create simple geometric images and graphics without much effort. "That's sort of where it started in a sense," Conran continues. "Being somewhat ambitious and wanting to have a production value, and that sort of thing. It was out of necessity, mostly. Even in the computer, some things would have been unavailable to me in just sheer numbers or [time] to assemble. Part of how the look evolved was a combination of the films and video styles that I liked, and the other was the limitations of what I could do in terms of the technology."
Conran began studying older animated serials, such as Max Fleischer's "The Adventures of Superman," to see how they handled framing, composition and lighting. "The filmmaking in them was brilliant in terms of, if it had been a live-action film, the things that they did," he says. "I started by trying to look at the way they did certain things and mimic it -- but with live action. Older animated films didn't have the luxury of drawing in thousands of people to present a crowd or city, but you'd still feel like it's a teeming city. It was just the way they designed those images and those shots, which made you feel satisfied by it."
While Avnet loved the film's look, he knew no visual-effects spectacle, however impressive, could substitute for a story and characters that entertain. "I knew what would be most challenging here was not letting the enormous demands of creating the shots -- the technological demands, digital demands -- get in the way of the movie being a purely wonderful, entertaining ride," Avnet says. "It's a very simple story and it's rendered in a wonderfully exciting way. The technology is servicing the imagination and the imagination is served by the strong narrative, by telling a good, old-fashioned story in an entertaining way."
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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Production notes provided by Paramount Pictures.