Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

LINKS
—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

I’m sure you’ve already read about the unusual filming style, so I’ll spare the repetition. The movie holds up to its praise, and surprisingly, it also delivers an action-packed plot with exceptionally witty dialogue. Let me also say that Jude Law has never let me down in his performances or story selections. Much like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, or Harrison Ford, I can rest easy that a movie will be good if Jude Law has agreed to play a lead role.

One of the things I liked most about this film was the success of the stock characters. Every writing class will tell you to stay away from them (also called type characters). These are characters driven by stereotype, whose actions are predictable because you have already seen them in hundreds of movies and books. Stock characters are cliché, and writers are told to create unique characters with three-dimensional personalities and unusual ticks. Somehow, Sky Captain serves us stock characters on a silver platter and we eat them up like cocktail shrimp! We love their predictability! It is as if the writer takes us back hundreds of years and introduces us to the archetypes (the original stock characters): the original hero, Joe Sullivan, the original nosy reporter, Polly Perkins, and the original GI Jane, Sgt. Franky Cook. Fully predicting the next move, we laugh out loud as the characters follow our every expectation and surprise us with witty banter. I absolutely loved it!

Perhaps this return to archetypes runs a little deeper. The story itself toys with the notion of destroying humanity because it is beyond repair. If so much hatred exists in the world, then man must ultimately be doomed to destruction. The only way to save mankind is to destroy it, recreate Adam and Eve (of course, saving the animals too!) and start over again in space. A strange notion, yes, but it is hardly new. The archetype of this story is Noah’s Ark, where God looks upon the earth and sees that it is evil. Saving one righteous man and his family (and two of every animal, of course), God wipes out every living thing on earth with a flood. As the waters dry, mankind is given a chance to start over on a new earth, and the rainbow becomes God’s promise to never flood the earth again.

Spoiler Warning!! Proceed to the “End Spoiler� if you don’t wish to hear the ending!!

The only difference is that in Sky Captain, the God character (Totenkopf) asks for forgiveness rather than making a promise for the future. As it turns out, Totenkopf had died some 20 years earlier and his drones had continued his work after his death. Furthermore, Totenkopf had scribbled a note, “Forgive Me,� and died, impotent to stop the drones from completing his work. This is a strange and sad concept of God – or is it a concept of God? To be honest, I cannot confirm the writer’s intent here. In reality, it could go either way. Here’s how:

1. If Totenkopf (literally meaning “dead head� in German) is supposed to represent God, then the writer’s intent is to suggest that there is no God at all. The Wizard of Oz references and the electronic talking face suggest that God’s only power is in the smokescreen and mirrors created by the Bible. Furthermore, the fact that Totenkopf is already dead implies that God is not a living being with eternal life and ultimate power, but rather a man-made creation designed to hide man’s frail thinking (ie. the Forgive Me note).

2. The alternative is that Totenkopf is supposed to represent man’s attempt to play God. In fact, Sky Captain makes the comment at one point in the film, “He was trying to play God.� This comment implies that man can only pretend at such a game and can never hold the eternal wisdom needed to care for the earth – as evidenced by Totenkopf’s death, his inability to stop the machines and his admission to being wrong (again, the Forgive Me note). The implication is that man’s attempt to play God ends only in his own destruction, the potential destruction of mankind, and the ruler’s exposure as a weak, faulty, dead head. (Can anyone say Hitler?)

END SPOILER

Now, unfortunately, this discussion of God, Noah’s Ark, and man’s frailty doesn’t answer the question of whether destroying the earth to let man start over is the right thing to do. But, I can say this: God found it fitting to do so in Noah’s day, and he has promised to do it again after Christ’s return. Clearly, in Sky Captain, the answer was to save mankind instead. Joe Sullivan was willing to die to secure the safety of mankind. I don’t find this answer any different than Jesus’s willingness to die to secure the eternal salvation for all who believe.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that God loves us and hates sin. Perhaps the parallel is that God doesn’t like to see man destroying himself any more than Mr. Dead Head did. But rather than recreating a genetically altered, sinless Adam and Eve, God gave the world a second chance through his promises; the promise of a Messiah who would save man from his sin, the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, and the promises of the Holy Spirit to help guide us through this crazy life. I loved Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I can’t wait to see it again and pick up all of the tiny references, jokes, and parallels that I missed the first time!

LINKS
—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections