Super Movies! The one that was the first Disney superhero movie

 

Title: The Rocketeer

What Year?: 1991

Classification: Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

In the last month or so, I’ve been going through the process of evaluating which of my review features to continue. For this feature in particular, what I quickly recognized is that, despite the theme and a number of very early candidates, I never really had a plan for what to do. If anything, this feature has been about how eclectic “comic book” movies really are. In further pondering what I might want to do before wrapping this up, I had no trouble at all coming up with a lineup of movies, most of which I had had in mind for a very long time. In the midst of them, there was one more I thought of mostly because I had recently heard it mentioned elsewhere recently. On further consideration, I decided that this was indeed the one that the feature wouldn’t be complete without, all the more so as I considered its history. With that, I present The Rocketeer, a movie that kid me didn’t like.

Our story begins with our generically masculine hero Cliff going on a test flight of a plane that in real life killed almost everyone who ever flew it. Surprisingly, he only crashes after the plane is damaged in a gun battle between criminals and uncertainly identified law enforcement agents that ends with a fiery car crash on the runway. When Cliff and his mechanic buddy (not named Buddy, but it wouldn’t have been surprising) look around their hangar, they discover the bad guys left something behind, a shiny experimental rocket pack. Meanwhile, we meet Cliff’s love interest, Jenny, a struggling actress trying to get a role alongside a jerk movie star named Neville Sinclair. The shenanigans and mishaps continue as Cliff tries out the rocket pack and also gets Jenny fired. After a public rescue in costume, he acquires the name The Rocketeer, but also draws the attention of the bad guys, particularly a huge and nearly invulnerable goon named Lothar. They want the rocket pack, and soon they kidnap Jenny to get it. To save her, Cliff must go to face the leader of the bad guys- none other than the movie star Sinclair!

The Rocketeer was a 1991 movie by Disney/ Buena Vista, based on a comic by Dave Stevens first published in 1982. Stevens reportedly pitched a film based on his character to several studios before it was optioned by Disney around 1986, in parallel with several other comic/ superhero properties. The film was directed by ILM veteran Joe Johnston, following his successful debut with Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, with Billy Campbell in the title role, Jennifer Connelly as Jenny and Timothy Dalton as Sinclair. Other cast included Alan Arkin as the mechanic Peevy and former basketball player Tiny Ron Taylor as Lothar. The movie received a high-profile release and intensive merchandising, though plans for a toy line were cancelled by Disney. The film was a commercial disappointment, despite favorable critical reviews, earning $46.7 million against an estimated budget of up to $40M. A parody of the film was created for the Disney cartoon Talespin, titled “Bullethead Baloo”, which aired before the movie’s release.

Going to my experiences, I very clearly remember seeing this movie on VHS around the time of its original release. My strongest further recollection is that I was more impressed by the cartoon parody than the actual movie. When I got to thinking about it again, I ordered a Blu Ray rather than go through the wait for it to come through my Netflix queue. As I watched it, I found it strange and unsatisfying for reasons I couldn’t quite define, almost certainly the same reaction as I had as a kid. As I have worked out my thoughts for this review, what finally dawned on me is that this a movie that tries to evoke nostalgia for a bygone era without demonstrating any real understanding of it. The strange part about this is that there were in fact plenty of successful attempts through the 1980s and ‘90s either to revive 1930s properties or create original works set within the period: Indiana Jones, Flash Gordon, Darkman, even the revived Batman franchise, which effectively built up from the premise of an alternate universe where Art Deco never died. And then what gets most irritating is that I encountered and liked many of these works before and since, as well as plenty of stuff actually from the 1930s. (Stanley Weinbaum gets a name drop.) If I don’t like or “get” a movie like this, the problem cannot be just with me.

Turning to the movie itself, the obvious problems come out in the casting, with the Rocketeer/ Campbell being the most prominent casualty. This is admittedly very subjective, but I personally cannot get any sense of fun from the character or the actor. To make the obvious comparison, Indiana Jones spends more time screwing up than accomplishing anything, but it was always fun to watch Harrison Ford playing him. Just to show this isn’t arm-waving, I offer Arkin and especially Dalton for contrast, easily the best of the male cast and the two who most genuinely feel like they belong here. Lothar is an extra element that doesn’t work as well as it should; it’s all good fun, but the Rondo Hatton makeup is distracting and no more effective than the likes of Richard Kiel and Bill Heinzman were without it. But to me, the egregious offender is Connelly, who never does much more than coast along. Again, this is a personal call, but I find her even more devoid of energy and enthusiasm than Campbell, and the “chemistry” between them is even more bafflingly lacking. (I am aware they were apparently “involved” in real life, but I decline to comment on that.) I find all the more fault as she is quite possibly the best performer in the whole movie, yet I still can’t find at any moment when it seems like she wants to do anything but read her lines, collect her paycheck and get off the set.

With all that in mind, there are still problems well beyond what routine analysis can account for. This is where the critic really can’t get much further without looking at the comic, which I didn’t care to add to my time and expenses for one movie review. The gut feeling I get, however, is that this feels like what would happen if someone looked at any given comic book and drew exactly the wrong conclusions about the medium. It has all the action, the machines and costumes, even a fair amount of humor, but almost none of the vivid characters, the social commentary or moral values that make the best examples interesting. In parallel to these flaws is the simple fact that this was given to an effects guy, with the typical outcome (see Silent Running) of “good” effects that not only fail to make up for other problems but are themselves undermined by subtle flaws in framing and pacing. I could easily add a further rant about the James Horner soundtrack, which feels like Horner not just copying himself but deliberately watering it down. And that brings us to the elephant in the room, the almost incalculable “Disney” factor, in which almost everything feels as tame and slowed down as a kiddie ride.

Now I’m going longer than usual, and I still don’t have the “one scene”. Just by blind random, I’m going with our introduction to Dalton’s character. We find him on the set of what is presumably a historical adventure, matching blades and banter with a villain as a masked adventurer. There’s a full-fledged “meta” feel as Dalton hams up the role within a role, effectively enough that we could well believe this is how he would behave with or without cameras rolling. In the middle of it all, our Errol Flynn analog removes his mask for a dramatic reveal that draws a cry from the onlooking starlet, but of course means nothing to us. The defeat of the villain is quickly put out of the way so he can lay down innuendo on the leading lady. It’s exactly the kind of effective moment that makes a flawed movie more frustrating. It’s clear in this scene that those involved in the film understood the time and setting they were portraying. So why does the film as a whole keep failing to connect with the time and ultimately the audience.

In conclusion, this is where I would usually explain my rating. This time, however, all I can say is that I was genuinely surprised to give a rating this low to such a clearly competent production. The only movie I’ve covered so far that I can compare it to is Lady Snowblood, but unlike that movie, I feel no hesitation and even less regret. The deeper parallel is that both movies represent “should” have had no trouble connecting with me in particular. For all my life, I have appreciated 1930s media, both from the period and about it, possibly even more than Japanese cinema. The problem with this movie is not that I can’t appreciate what it is trying to do, but that it absolutely fails, to a degree that is only fully apparent if you know the period and source material as well as I do now. Even so, I can’t believe this was entirely lost on regular viewers and impressionable kids when the movie came out, or it wouldn’t have been struggling at the box office in the same timeframe where movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Batman were succeeding. The lesson is that authenticity matters, no matter how limited the audience’s frame of reference. And if you can’t do that, you’re better off doing something else.