Tagline: Join the Resistance.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The lives of reporter Polly Perkins and her ex-boyfriend, Joe Sullivan, intersect. For the past three years, large robots have been roaming the Earth, taking what they need, and vanishing as quickly as they appeared. Joe and his technical assistant Dex have been investigating and battling these mysterious robots.
Meanwhile, many of the world’s scientists have been systematically kidnapped. Dr. Jennings, believing that he is the next target, tells what little he knows to Polly. His beliefs are that Dr. Totenkopf, who has not been heard from in over thirty years, is carrying out a project he started prior to World War I, this project which may be associated with these robots.
Polly and Joe, with Dex, join forces to find Totenkopf, which may not be easy due to their still antagonistic relationship. As they piece together Totenkopf’s plot, Polly and Joe realize that stopping him from carrying out his grand plan of creating his version of a Utopian society may not be as easy as killing him.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a 2004 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Kerry Conran in his directorial debut, and produced by Jon Avnet, Sadie Frost, Jude Law and Marsha Oglesby. The film stars Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie; it is an example of the “dieselpunk” genre.
Conran spent four years making a black and white teaser with a bluescreen set up in his living room and using a Macintosh IIci. He was able to show it to Avnet, who was so impressed that he spent two years working with him on his screenplay. No major studio was interested in Sky Captain, but Avnet convinced Aurelio De Laurentiis to finance Sky Captain without a distribution deal.
Almost 100 digital artists, modelers, animators and compositors created the multi-layered 2D and 3D backgrounds for the live-action footage while the entire movie was sketched out via hand-drawn storyboards and then re-created as CG animatics. Ten months before Conran made it, he shot it entirely with stand-ins in Los Angeles and then created it in animatics so the actors could envision it.
About the Production
Featuring state-of-the-art special effects never seen before, the film 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.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Directed by: Kerry Conran
Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Bai Ling, Michael Gambon, Giovanni Ribisi, Omid Djalili, Laurence Olivier, Trevor Baxter, Julian Curry
Screenplay by: Kerry Conran
Production Design by: Kevin Conran
Cinematography by: Eric Adkins
Film Editing by: Sabrina Plisco
Costume Design by: Kevin Conran
Art Direction by: Kirsten Conran
Music by: Ed Shearmur
MPAA Rating: PG for sequences of stylized sci-fi violence and mild language.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: September 17, 2004
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