Thursday, September 23, 2004

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS

I'm not someone who disses movies for being principally vehicles for special effects. The "Lookee what we can do!" impulse is one of the tings that defines the art form which is inseparable from advances in technology. Virginia Wolfe said that there could never really be a mature film criticism, because the medium kept changing so fast that there were no standards of comparison.

What I do object to, is boring the audience by being self-indulgent with the special effects and trying to make the impressions they create last for the duration of a two-hour movie. For non-computer geeks, the impact of the effects in the recent release Sky Captain really only lasts for about forty-five minutes. After that, it is all the same stuff over and over. Picture yourself on even the coolest new roller coaster for forty-five minutes. Once you done it, you've done it. The thrill is so much in the newness of it.

Inexcusably, Sky Captain has nothing to hold the viewer's brain and emotions once the CGI attractions wear thin. The plot holes in the story are big enough to drop a fifteen story steel robot through. The characters have no arc. No one changes or grows. So, by the usual definition, there's no drama here.

By way of dubious achievement, Sky Captain could be considered the first film that is purely a vehicle for CGI, which is served by the human actors - Oscar winners Gywnneth, Jude and Angelina. That is, we generally disdain movies that are pure "star vehicles." This is a movie that "uses" human actors to serve the effects. It would be fascinatingly icky, if it wasn't a complete failure as entertainment.

[FADE IN, SEPIA] Pass, Dex.

33 comments:

John Farrell said...

Excellent point on the 'self-indulgence' aspect, Barbara--and I think it's true. If only some directors with a biting sense of wit could be more self-indulgent about expressing it....

Anonymous said...

Actually, there IS a very crudely executed character arc for the nominal "romantic" leads: they come to the conclusion that their attraction to each other, courage and mutual usefulness (such as it is) in the face of danger, outweigh the betrayals they've committed against each other in the past. It's pretty horribly written and it's unevenly acted, but it is *there*.

The problem, so far as I can see, is that the director/writer/production designer acts like he's never seen any B&W film more advanced than Phantom Empire (no wait, I take that back; Ph. Empire had more creative editing than this), and the artsy-craftsy script doctors who were supposed to punch up the characterizations write like the only thing from this period that they've seen are bad, soapy "women's pictures". I found Sky Captain mildly amusing,, but I couldn't help imagining what it would be like in the hands of a halfway witty Howard Hawks wannabe

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Unknown said...

Am I the only person that just had fun watching it? Granted, I'm a computer geek who enjoyed the effects, but after a while I mostly forgot about them and was simply entertained. It's not like I was looking for Casablanca in CGI. It was like a comic book come to life. It wasn't realistic. The character develoment was shallow. The plot was thread-bare. So what? I think this movie harkens back to a time when movies were more often simple entertainment than overblown attempts at art or relevance. Lighten up and pass the popcorn.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I noticed that weird "lector" thing on Medical Investigation too. My guess is that they just couldn't figure out how to explain the long-winded phrase "extraordinary minster of Holy Communion"! Otherwise, though, they didn't diss the Church - in fact they treated it pretty respectfully except for a scene of someone testing "consecrated hosts" for the infectious agent.

Diana

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