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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Difference between revisions

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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (view source)

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* [[Bedmate Reveal]]: After an [[Outrun the Fireball]] moment, Polly wakes up naked in a bed next to an equally naked Joe. An embarrassed Polly tells him to turn around, which a grinning Joe does only to find he's also in bed with their guide, Kaji, who [[Fan Disservice|is also naked.]]
* [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]]: Polly and Joe bicker throughout the movie.
{{quote|'''Joe:''' Could we just for once die without all this bickering? }}
* [[Bilingual Dialogue]]: Polly can understand both written and spoken German.
* [[Bring It]]: Dr. Totenkopf's female [[The Dragon]] makes a gesture to Sky Captain before fighting him outside the rocket ship.
* [[Brits With Battleships]]: ''Flying'' battleships.
* [[Camera Obscurer]]: Polly Perkins spends much of the movie with only one frame left on her only roll of film, and wants to save it for a truly awesome photo. In the film's denouement, {{spoiler|she decides to take a photo of Joe Sullivan, only for Joe to look at her and say "Lenscap.".}}
* [[Catch Phrase]]: Joe (Sky Captain) says "Good boy, Dex" whenever his [[Sidekick]] Dex does something good.
* [[Chair Reveal]]: Dr. Totenkopf. {{spoiler|Only it turns out he's been [[Dead All Along]].}}
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The two metal tubes that Polly Perkins received from Dr. Jennings. Also, Dex's gun.
* [[Chroma Key]]: The actors used only the most basic sets and props, with CGI backgrounds used in every shot.
* [[Cut and Paste Environments]] -: Toward the beginning of the movie, just after the robots attack Manhattan, Sky Captain lands at his base and drives his plane into a huge hangar. At the top of the doors of the hangar are these huge windows of 8x10 panes. In every window, some of the panes are broken. In every window, it's ''EXACTLY THE SAME PANES'' that are broken.
* [[Cutting the Gordian Knot]] -: Polly and the door to Dr. Jenning's lab.
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* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: Filmed in colourcolor and desaturated, then resaturatedre-saturated again to make it more like a painting than a photorealisticphoto-realistic movie.
* [[Diesel Punk]]: With a healthy helping of [[Nikola Tesla|Tesla Punk]] to boot.
* [[Disintegrator Ray]]: [[Gadgeteer Genius]] Dex is shown testing a [[Buck Rogers]] raygun that can burn a hole through solid metal with luminous <s>Lifesavers</s> rings of energy.
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* [[Gratuitous German]]: The German in this movie is often mangled.
** A particularly noticeable example is a button labeled with "Dringlichkeitsfreigabe", which then gets translated as "Emergency Release", while it actually means "Urgency Release". It should be "Notfallfreigabe/-abkopplung/-entriegelung/-freisetzung".
** The German newspaper headline about the robot invasion translates to ''"Very Big Metallc [sic!] Machines Steal Steal Reserves"''.
* [[The Grotesque]]: The sole survivor of Dr. Totenkopf's uranium mining and experiments.
* [[Gunship Rescue]]. {{spoiler|An entire fleet of heliocarriers turns up to rescue the protagonists at the end, though they don't really need saving by that stage.}} And Dex has a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment {{spoiler|when he arrives in a hoversled just in time to save Joe and Polly from the swarm of flying killer robots}}.
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* [[Herr Doctor]]: All the scientists are German and Austrian.
* [[Hologram Projection Imperfection]]: As the protagonists approach Dr. Totenkopf's office a Tesla-type generator creates a [[Huge Holographic Head]] of Totenkopf that explains his motives and warns them to get out or die. Both the image and voice are distorted when powering up, highlighting the more primitive 1930's zeerust technology of the film. {{spoiler|The imperfections also hint this is a case of [[The Tape Knew You Would Say That]].}}
* [[Homage|Homages]]: The attack by giant bipedal robots is copied from the 1941 Superman cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters". Their laser sound-effects are the same as the Martian [[Disintegrator Ray]] in the 1953 ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'' film; similarly Polly's phoned-in report on the attack uses lines lifted from the famous [[Orson Welles]] radio broadcast. On seeing one of the robots, Dex mutters "[[Shazam]]!" The silhouette of [[Godzilla]] can be seen in a newspaper from Japan. During an underwater sequence we see both the wreck of the [[Titanic]] and the ship from ''[[King Kong]]'', complete with ape-holding cage. King Kong himself can be seen at the top of the Empire State Building during one shot with the robots in the streets. The flying robots on Totenkopf's island have the same chest controls as Commando Cody's [[Jet Pack]]. Et ceteraEtc.
* [[Hostage for Macguffin]]: When Dr. Totenkopf's thugs capture Polly Perkins in the uranium mine.
* [[Hot Scoop]]: Polly.
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'''Dex:''' "Well, there's only one way to find out."
''(Sky Captain and Polly step across the [[Door of Doom|booby-trapped threshold]], holding hands, in lock-step and are relieved to be unharmed)''<br />
'''Dex:''' "...I meant throw something." }}
* [[Justified Title]]: The [[Character Name and the Noun Phrase]] title is obviously a reference to the retro-futuristic nature of the movie, but "Sky Captain" is the nickname of the main character, and the villain calls his scheme {{spoiler|to seed life on another planet}} the "World of Tomorrow".
* [[Let's Split Up, Gang!]]: Sky Captain, while in Dr. Totenkopf's abandoned uranium mine.
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* [[Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot]]: Kidnapping scientists -> {{spoiler|Plot to build a spaceship that will destroy the Earth's atmosphere.}}
* [[Misguided Missile]]: Twice, both by Frankie and Sky Captain.
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Dr. Totenkopf ([[Gratuitous German|Death Head in German]]) . {{spoiler|Subverted, he's [[Dead All Along]]}} and it is implied that he was rather a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]. It's more commonly used by Germans as name for the bare skull. Hence the skull motif.
* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: Angelina Jolie is in the movie for all of 15 minutes, but you'd think she was a main character.
* [[Noodle Incident]]: Polly is visibly annoyed when fellow fliers (and [[Love Triangle|implied ex-lovers]]) Franky and Joe share an incomprehensible nostalgia moment.
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* [[Shoulder Cannon]]: The missile launcher of the [[Giant Robot]] guarding the underwater entrance to Dr. Totenkopf's island.
* [[Shout-Out]]: '''By the dozen'''. Everything from ''The Land That Time Forgot'', ''[[The Neverending Story (film)|The Neverending Story]]'', Apple's ''1984'' commercial, ''[[Star Wars]] Episode I'' and the anime film ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky]]''.
** Some people view the movie as a [[Spiritual Licensee]] of ''[[Crimson Skies]].''.
** Godzilla appears on one of the newspaper headlines in a "blink and you'll miss it" cameo.
** "[[War of the Worlds|They've reached Sixth Avenue. They've reached Fifth Avenue. They're a hundred yards away. Oh, my God.]]"
* [[Sidekick]]: Dex, to Joe (Sky Captain). But there's a lot more to Dex then this, he may ''look'' like a skinny little nerd but he's [[Took a Level In Badass|taken a level in badass]] and has matters well in hand when Joe finally arrives to 'rescue' him. To his credit Joe doesn't seem very surprised and just asks for a heads up on the plan.
* [[Sitting Duck]]: The Flying Legion is caught on the ground by an air raid launched by what can only be described as pulp sci-fi [[UCA Vs]].
* [[Stripped to the Bone]]: One of the escaping {{spoiler|scientists}} on Totenkopf's island gets skeletonised by a bolt of electricity from a [[Nikola Tesla|Tesla coil]].
* [[Stylistic Suck]]: aA couple of effects were CGI'ed to resemble early stop-motion effects from serials. Note: This does not apply to the film's overall [[Zeerust|sepia-tone]] look, which is [[Doing It for the Art|quite elaborate]].
* [[Surprise Vehicle]] -: Dex, in one of Totenkopf's hoversleds.
* [[That Was the Last Entry]]: When the group finally gets to Totenkopf's office, they find his papers and discover that "the last entry in his journal was made on October 11, 1918", 20 years before the setting of the film. Shortly thereafter, they find his mummified body.
* [[There Was a Door]]: Inverted.
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