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With more than a nod to 30's pulp film serials (Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers most obviously) this retro sci-fi sees Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow set out to save tomorrow.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Famous scientists around the world have mysteriously disappeared and Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins along with ace aviator Sky Captain are on the case. Risking their lives as they travel to exotic places around world, can the fearless duo stop Dr. Totenkopf, the evil mastermind behind a plot to destroy the earth?

Starring Hollywood big names: Gwyneth Paltrow as Polly Perkins, Jude Law as the eponymous legendary flyer, the Sky Captain, Giovanni Ribisi as Dex and Lara Croft herself; Angelina Jolie as Franky Cook, this is a real big name spectacle. Featuring state-of-the-art special effects never seen before, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow truly represents a trailblazing moment in cinematic history.

Blue Screen

Filmed entirely against blue screen, incorporating over 2000 effects shots and at more than six years in the making every frame of the movie has been digitally filled in after principal photography was completed with the live actors. This groundbreaking achievement in film is the brainchild of first-time writer and director Kerry Conran. Conran worked on Sky Captain’ in collaboration with producer Jon Avnet – and incredibly, its Conran’s first venture into the world of major motion pictures.

Although Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow has virtually no sets and uses no locations, Conran uses the latest in digital technology to immerse audiences in a breathtakingly detailed and lush, long-lost sci-fi world, where pulp fiction fantasies come to life. Flying high above New York City, the film opens with the Hindenburg III, a behemoth airship, docking atop the Empire State Building, the world's tallest port-of-call.

Striking Visual Style

The films' huge silver robots bear a striking resemblance to the automatons from the iconic 1950s Superman cartoons - as does the response from the stylised New York cops who march out to fight them – ‘tommy’ guns blazing. The air battles are all Zeppelins and propeller driven planes, piloted by plucky (visible) air aces, versus sleek, faceless silver machines. The battleground sees the landmarks of New York all on display, as per usual, with echoes of more 1930s pulp fiction (King Kong?) as the air war takes the Captain around the Empire State building.

Seeming to lean heavily for imagery and source material on the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon film serials of the 1930's, as well as on the likes of British comics character Dan Dare, this is basically an animated effects feature. With occasional ‘real’ people in the foreground. But then, that’s no criticism – after all the majority of the last Star Wars feature: Attack Of The Clones. leant so heavily on computer generated backdrops for it’s grandeur, sets and event characters, that the process is already well understood as part and parcel of a film experience to the public, in particular in genre pieces such as this.

Travelling to the roof of the World – the Himalayan Alps and (echoing the origin of another pulp hero of the 1930's - The Shadow) to the tranquil valley of Shangri-la, our heroes are trapped in an enormous ice cave wired with explosives in true cliffhanger serial style. Polly and the Sky Captain battle terrifying flying robots, make an incredible mid-air landing on a mobile airstrip thousands of feet in the sky, and experience the wonder of underwater flight as they search for Dr. Totenkopf. Totenkopf is the villainous evil mastermind (very much in the 'Ming The Merciless' from Flash Gordon mold) ehind a plot to destroy the world. Another innovation for this film is that the 'part' of Totenkopf is performed by legendary British screen and stage actor Sir Laurence Olivier (Henry V, Clash of The Titans, Sleuth, Wild Geese II, The Battle of Britain, The Seven Percent Solution and far too many others to list...) - long deceased by the time the film was being shot (he died in 1989). The director achieved this coup by using CGI-manipulated archive footage of Olivier.

Will these two determined souls find the elusive Totenkopf in time? With the help of the courageous captain Franky Cook - commander of an all-female amphibious squadron - and technical genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), Polly Perkins and Sky Captain may be our planet's only hope.

For more information visit the official Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow website: www.skycaptain.com

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is out on DVD now, as both a standard and double disc 'Collectors Edition' - which features two audio commentaries, deleted scenes, a gag reel and behind the scenes 'making of' featurettes.

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More information available in DVD / Home Video