Uh... I'm not even 100% sure what I mean by "pulp." But that's the best category I could think to make up for Sky Captain, and it occurs to me other movies could fit into the category, though some of them might be very different. Most of them might have a sci-fi/fantasy element, some might not. I dunno. Whatever, maybe I'll change my mind later, but for now, let's go with this. Whatever the hell it means....

Let's begin...

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
IMDb; Movie Tome; Rotten Tomatoes

Okay. This movie is going for a particular look and feel, that of old 1930's style pulps and movie serials. I think it achieves it pretty well, but then again, I'm not real familiar with the genre, even though I quite like the genre, or at least the idea of it. Of course, the characters aren't tremendously well fleshed out, but I think the story totally calls for sort of cliched characters, to fit the theme, and the characters do fit that theme, in my inexpert opinion. One of these characters is Sky Captain, aka Joe Sullivan, who flies a fighter plane and is the leader of an army for hire, though we don't meet anyone in his group other than Dex. We see his base and there are plenty of people around, but they're not important to the story. Another major character is Polly Perkins (who we like), a plucky reporter with whom Joe shares a somewhat strained history, and who is looking into the matter of the disappearance of six scientists, when suddenly giant robots attack New York City, after she's been contacted by a scientist named Dr. Walter Jennings, who claims (correctly) he will be the next scientist targeted by whoever is responsible for these disapperances (and, as it turns out, the robot attack). The person responsible is Dr. Totenkopf, of whom little is known except that he was the head of a secret project during WWI, and the missing scientists were also involved, called Unit 11. Joe and Polly end up investigating the matter together. Dex is another important character, apparently the head tech in Sky Captain's team (he invented a sort of laser gun, and tracks the signal that's controlling the robots, and so forth). He also gets kidnapped by an assassin who works for Totenkopf, which makes Joe more determined than ever to find the villain, and rescue his friend, and put a stop to the whole nefarious (doomsday) plot. So, Joe and Polly end up flying to Nepal, and stop briefly in the mythical Shangri-La. They also get some help from an old friend of Joe's, Franky Cook (who we like). Um... well, I don't want to give too much away. It's a pretty decent movie. And I enjoyed the running gag about Polly not wanting to waste the couple of shots she has left on her camera. That's all I want to say.