Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) on Netflix
PG20041h 46mActionAdventureMystery
In 1939 New York, giant robots attack the city, and reporter Polly Perkins links them to scientists who have vanished. She joins pilot Joe Sullivan to find Dr. Totenkopf.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.1/1090,711 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
New York, 1939: the zeppelin Hindenburg III docks at the Empire State Building, and a scientist aboard, Dr. Jorge Vargas, sends two vials to Dr. Walter Jennings before he disappears. Reporter Polly Perkins is looking into Vargas and five other missing scientists. A message draws her to Radio City Music Hall, where Jennings warns her that Dr. Totenkopf is coming for him next. Then giant robots descend on the city. The authorities summon Joe Sullivan, known as Sky Captain, who commands the mercenary Flying Legion, and he takes his fighter up against them. The disabled robot is hauled to the Legion's base for the mechanic Dex to examine, and Polly talks her way into the investigation. Totenkopf once ran a laboratory outside Berlin where the missing scientists worked on a project called the World of Tomorrow.
Cast
- Peter Lawas Dr. Kessler
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Conran spent four years making a black and white teaser using a bluescreen set up in his living room and a Macintosh IIci. Avnet was so impressed that he spent two years working with him on his screenplay, and when no major studio was interested he convinced Aurelio De Laurentiis to finance Sky Captain without a distribution deal.
- Ten months before shooting the live-action scenes, Conran first shot them with stand-ins in Los Angeles, then converted that footage to CGI animatics so the actors could accurately envision the film.
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was one of the first major films, along with Casshern, Immortal and Sin City, to be shot entirely on a “digital backlot”, blending actors with CG surroundings.
- Laurence Olivier, who died in 1989, appears posthumously as the villain and mad scientist Dr. Totenkopf: his likeness was produced using digitally manipulated archival BBC footage, adding one more film to his repertoire. A similar technique was used two years later in Superman Returns with Marlon Brando.
- Conran and Avnet cut costs considerably by shooting the entire movie in 26 days, far less than the three-to-four month schedules usually allotted to blockbuster films, on high-definition video using a Sony HDW-F900 and working on three blue screens at Elstree Studios in London.
- The producer remembered Conran “working 18 to 20 hours a day for a long period of time”, with some 2,000 CG shots done in one year and the team having to write code to work out how to do the effects.
