Sky Captain

Mike and I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this afternoon. Saw it on a matinee, which cuts down a bit on the pain. Not sure if this one is going to make its money back, since the crowds looked pretty thin.

The movie itself has a very interesting look -- the director uses a number of post techniques to make the film look like a very early color film, although the color is used to highlight specific characters and elements rather than being washed-out throughout. The background is 30s pulp fiction, and unless you can buy into the pulp science, the movie is a non-starter. Strange devices powered by Electricity and Robots are the order of the day, although some of the computers towards the end look suspiciously modern.

Jude Law and Gweneth Paltrow do a good job of acting to the blue-screen, but in the end the world ends up being rather curiously empty of people, and when other actors show up, it usually feels like an imposition rather than flowing well.

The concept of a set-less movie is interesting, but it may be a technique whose time has not yet come. Although it lets you film big cinematic sequences much more cheaply, overall it's not an inexpensive technique -- at $70 million, it's the most expensive movielisted in current box-office ratings by a large margin. The next most expensive movie listed is Resident Evil 2, at $50M production cost, although a number of movies released this summer had budgets in the $80M-$160M range.