Here, here, Rocketeer

July 5, 1991

There are quite a few people in Hollywood who would like to see The Rocketeer film (opening June 21 in (as the saying goes) a theater near you) crash and burn in its own contrail. The reason for this can be summed up in two words: Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Katzenberg, the head honcho at Disney, made far more notoriety than he would have liked some months ago when a memo of his became widely circulated throughout the Hollywood community and even landed in the pages of Variety.

The memo went into remarkable detail over the concept that the most important thing in making a Disney film was the bottom line. The bucks. Everything was secondary to that: salaries, effects, creativity, etc. Nothing and no one was as important as the bottom line figure. Furthermore, every penny had to be accounted for, and costs had to be curbed wherever it was possible. Disney would not tolerate the sky-high budgets of films such as Terminator II (over $80 million) or Hudson Hawk (over $50 million). There was no star so important that they couldn’t be bypassed for someone more affordable. There wasn’t any special effect so vital that it couldn’t be trimmed or dispensed with entirely.

The memo went on and on like this, arousing all sorts of ire within the creative and critical community since this businessman was preaching about the need for the real movie makers to kowtow to the money men.

There was, however, one film that Katzenberg singled out as being exempt from the need to hold costs to a minimum. That film was The Rocketeer, which–with a price tag of over $30 million–was going to be (in Katzenberg’s opinion) Disney’s major money maker for the summer.

So hinging on this film was not only Katzenberg’s credibility, but a major licensing tie-in effort. As to the latter, the large array of Ðìçk Tracy merchandise marked down to half-price on the shelves of card stores throughout the country is still a major sore spot. As to the former, movie pundits were gleefully anticipating Katzenberg shooting himself in the foot with his own exception to his rules.

As one observer kindly put it, Katzenberg’s prestige–already somewhat battered–hinges on a movie based on some cult comic book hero that no one has ever heard of. And heck, lots more people heard of Ðìçk Tracy than Cliff Secord, and look how disappointingly Tracy performed. The deduction that Hollywood geniuses drew from this was not that Ðìçk Tracy was a so-so film, (although I liked it better than most people did, I think), but rather that Disney didn’t know how to produce films based on comic book heroes.

And if Disney can’t produce a successful film based on a comic book hero that people have heard of, how much less successful will they be making a film based on a hero that “no one” has heard of.

Well, I’m here to tell you (after that lengthy preamble) that the Hollywood pundits are going to be disappointed again.

Do not think that my opinion in this instance is clouded by the fact that I have ties to the film. My reactions are sufficiently along the lines of others who have seen it that I’m certain I can view this film with a critical eye, and my critical eye was pretty impressed.

The 1930s was an incredible period of growth for the field of aviation. Wiley Post set a speed record for flying around the world, only to have that record overturned several years later by Howard Hughes (yes, that Howard Hughes). Doug Corrigan, denied by officials a permit to make a trans-Atlantic flight, made the flight anyway and, upon landing in Ireland, ingenuously claimed that there was no criminal intent: He’d been trying to fly from New York to California and had simply misnavigated, thus earning the sobriquet of “Wrong Way” Corrigan. Barnstormers and flying circuses were one of the big forms of entertainment, and the aviators were a breed apart. They were heroes.

Dave Stevens captured that spirit of adventure and heroism in his original “Rocketeer” work, and now in the film (which Stevens co-produced), script writers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo (who have had some passing experience with comic book characters) and director Joe Johnston have brought that “off we go” attitude to the movie screen through the look and feel of The Rocketeer.

Without tipping major plot elements, I can simply tell you that all the basics of the original “Rocketeer” story are present. Flier Cliff Secord happens upon a rocketpack and, seeing possibilities of becoming an airshow sensation, launches himself (literally) into a career as the Rocketeer, aided and abetted by associate, friend and mentor Peevy (played by Doug Wildey in the comic and Alan Arkin in the movie).

Along the way he has to dodge the efforts of agents from both sides of the law who are trying to get the rocketpack back again, all the while trying to conquer the one thing he fears in this world: telling his girlfriend Betty (ooh, I’m sorry, I meant to say “Jenny”) how he feels about her.

The casting in all respects is dead on. Bill Campbell’s resemblance to Cliff Secord is absolutely uncanny, and he manages to convey the flyboy look and mentality that one would expect of those daredevil aviators, as well as simple earnest and sincerity. All he wants to do is be the best he can. He’s not dark. He’s not grim and/or gritty. He’s not homicidal. He’s not moody, or alcoholic, or psychotic, or a recovering psychotic, or even a mutant. He’s just a nice, simple hero from what people would like to refer to as a simpler time (although how simple things could have been with Hitler overrunning Europe is utterly beyond me.) You like the guy immediately, and you want him to succeed.

Alan Arkin is appropriate world weary. At times you can almost hear him thinking, “Why am I even bothering to talk to the kid, because he’ll do what he wants anyway.” The great thing about Peevy, as written and acted, is that he’s the kind of friend who will do everything he can to convince you that your course of action is foolhardy. But once you’ve made it clear that that’s what you’re going to do, he’ll back you all the way. And that’s the most valuable kind of friend you can have.

Timothy Dalton, looking thrilled to be away from James Bond, has a ball as he cuts up opponents and scenery as Neville Sinclair, the number three box office star in America. He plays him as a cross between Basil Rathbone and Tyrone Power, with just a touch of Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian (particularly late in the film during a memorable exit.)

Jennifer Connelly as heroine Jenny Blake gets to look lovely, smile, melt some hearts, get kidnapped (naturally) and get rescued (what, am I giving something away? Yeah, sure.) Does she act? Who knows? Who cares? Is that a chauvanistic attitude? Well, to hëll with it. I would have to say that Jennifer Connelly, especially in an evening gown, is easily the better visual effect of the entire film.

Speaking of visual effects, that is what it comes down to, isn’t it. Did Ken Ralston and the boys at Industrial Light and Magic (without whom, it would appear, the majority of the fantasy/adventure movie industry would not exist) manage to make you believe that a man could fly?

When I first read the script (in order to do the adaptation), my reaction was that this was a very solid script, and that if the visual effects boys could pull off the stunts, then this was going to be a smash. (As opposed to my reaction when I read the script for Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, which was just godawful. As of this writing it hasn’t opened yet, and I’ll be interested to see whether they managed to overcome the many story and character deficiencies. It’s possible they will.)

Well, by and large ILM comes through. The weakest moments are when bluescreening is done; no matter what you do, bluescreening doesn’t look like anything except bluescreening. The strongest moments come when the Rocketeer interacts with the ground (like skidding to a halt across a pond like a skipping stone, or leaping from table to table in a restaurant), but that’s not as much ILM as the wire work of Aerial Wire Stunts.

Perhaps that’s the problem. As opposed to, say, Total Recall or Robocop where the effects works is seamless, in The Rocketeer you’re distantly aware of which aspect of visual effects trickery is being used (“Okay, they bluescreened him about to land on the plane, but now they’ll have to cut to a close up with live action or else a puppet–ah, it’s a puppet!”) There’s nothing here that’s going to fool anyone who knows anything about how visual effects are done.

Then again, despite how far effects have come, it still seems as if flying is the trickiest one to pull off realistically. I would assume that, sooner or later, computer animation is going to jump that gap (as it did so well in the late, lamented “Captain Power” TV program.) For all I know, computer work was used in Rocketeer and I simply missed it.

The film looks right. In addition to Campbell’s resemblance to Secord, production designer Jim Bissell and costume designer Marilyn Vance-Straker have perfectly re-created the visual world of Steven’s “Rocketeer,” right down to the Bulldog Cafe and the Rocketeer’s helmeted costume (which, Peevy succinctly observes, makes Cliff look like “A hood ornament.”)

As opposed to the breakneck pace of the latter half of the film, the first forty minutes or so is relatively quiet. To a degree, I blame that on composer James Horner. Never in The Rocketeer does he begin to approach the memorable scores he created for Aliens or Willow (the latter currently being used as background music for trailers of “Robin Hood”–unless Horner scored that as well, and he’s just recycling his music.) When you have a John Williams doing the score, even lengthy expository sequences become gripping, filled with anticipation. Horner’s opening credits music, meant (I would think) to evoke feelings of soaring gracefully through the air, merely induces coma. This is an adventure film, you wonder to yourself, as you fidget in your seat right at the very beginning.

The rest of Horner’s uninspired score does nothing to elevate matters, leaving the audience to check its collective watch and wonder “jeez, when does this guy take off already.’ Once he does, however, there’s no stopping him. But it takes three quarters of an hour.

All in all, it’s one hëll of a good ride. And best of all, as opposed to some other action flicks, this one’s rated PG so that you can bring your kids and not have a mini moral crisis over it.

The Rocketeer. What a blast.

Peter David, writer of stuff, also wishes to clear up a bit of confusion that’s going around. He is not the selfsame Peter David who wrote “Triumph in the Gulf,” a nonfiction book about the Gulf war presently on the stands. That Peter David is the international editor of “The Economist,” and is British. What’s annoying is the people who say to me, “Finally you’ve written a REAL book.” Gee, thanks.