#‘my agent says he’ll get me on [IMDB]’ you mean you’re not already on it?

[thefakerachelray]

I can accept complicated murder plots regularly happening in the same apartment building but I draw the line at the implication that Charles doesn’t already have an IMDB page

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #111 - The Rocketeer

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) It has been five years since I last watched The Rocketeer and I got a big kick out of it then as I did now.

2) Director Joe Johnston is the man behind such good films like Honey I Shrunk The Audience and Jumanj but also Jurassic Park III and The Wolfman from 2010. HOWEVER: It was his work on this film that landed him the gig on Captain America: The First Avenger.

3) I typically don’t get excited for scores composed by James Horner. My big exceptions are The Amazing Spider-Man and this film. In fact I didn’t even know James Horner composed the music for The Rocketeer. I 100% thought it was Alan Silvestri because the film has that kind of wonder to it. Listening to the main theme from The Rocketeer has the same weightlessness and wonder which makes you feel like you’re flying and I love that.

4) The relationship between Cliff (the titular Rocketeer) and Peevy (his older friend/inventing mentor) is established right away with their banter and Cliff’s disregard for Peevy’s rule. For me personally it’s a more interesting relationship than the one between Cliff and his love interest Jenny, but more on that later.

5) Cliff is right away established as adventurous. Not only from the fact that he’s a pilot but his willingness to push boundaries, to test his plane, all with a smile and a picture of his girlfriend. Nice little choices which tell us who this character is.

6) Holy shit Terry O’Quinn is Howard Hughes.

I didn’t even recognize him the first time around. Damn. Well, he’s pretty good in this movie too!

7) Jon Polito was a character actor most noted for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers and his work on “Homicide: Life on the Street”. He passed away in September but you can remember him in films like this.

8) I love this line.

Peevy [when Cliff wonders if the rocket pack is a bomb]: “No, too complex to be a bomb.”

I mean it’s true, but it also gets to the point that there’s not much thought put into a senseless killing device.

9) Timothy Dalton as the villainous Sinclair.

Dalton is a lot of fun in the role. Sinclair is basically an Errol Flynn type when it comes to acting, and his role as an actor infects all parts of his life. He’s fake! A phony! He’ll say or do anything to get what he wants which, in this case, is the rocket. Dalton brings a nice charisma to the role just as he did when playing the part of James Bond. The film wouldn’t be the same without him.

10) The reason this film has become the cult classic it has is largely for it’s pulpy feel. It has a great amount of humor and a great amount of fun in the same vein as Indiana Jones. Johnston as a director is at his best when he gets to revel in fun adventures. That’s true of his work on Jumanji, Captain America, and this film. It just has a great flavor!

11) Jennifer Connelly as Jenny.

So Jennifer Connelly is actually really good and brings an interesting element to the character of Jenny and I have no issue with her in the role at all. But it feels like the writing for Jenny isn’t always consistent. Sometimes she’s this brave anti-damsel in distress who’s able to take care of herself and outsmart the bad guy. The rest of the time? She’s the typical girlfriend character with contrived relationship drama just to make the film supposedly interesting. As I said Connelly is wonderful in the role, I just wish the writing were had as consistent a quality as her performance did.

12) Okay, this is where my knowledge of Universal Monster movies comes in REAL handy:

This is Lothar, a brute who works for Sinclair. Think his face looks kinda unique? Well it does. And that’s on purpose. He is meant to look like Rondo Hatton, who played similar B-movie type characters before his death. Most notably for the Universal Horror film House of Horrors.

Hatton was exposed to poisonous gas during WW1, which caused his acromegaly (a slowly progressive deforming of bones in the head, hands and feet, and internal/external soft tissues caused by disease of the pituitary gland, which onsets after the individual has reached his full genetic height and production of growth hormones resume, but the bone structure can no longer produce symmetric growth, as in giantism). Hatton died of this issue before his final two films as The Creeper (House of Horrors and The Brute Man, the later of which considered to be one of the worst films every made) were released. But he lives on in the memory of cinephiles everywhere.

13) So Margo Martindale is in this movie. I can’t find a picture of her anywhere online to prove it, but she plays Millie the owner of the diner on the airfield. I had no idea she was in this movie until this viewing.

14) Earlier in the movie Cliff gets in a bad accident on the airstrip that could’ve killed him. He doesn’t tell his girlfriend this because he doesn’t want to scare her so one of the guys at the restaurant lets it slip by mistake. And when Cliff tells her he didn’t want to worry her this is Jenny’s response:

Jenny: “You’d rather make a fool out of me?”

THAT’S what you care about!? She then gives Cliff grief for not telling her about the important things, that she should be the first to know not the last. Except later he tries to do this by meeting her on the film set after finding the rocket and she gives him grief because she wanted him to tell her, “the important things.” And she just can’t listen to him and learn why it’s important? Then after a little fight when they’ve apparently been together for years she decides to go on a date with a movie star.

This right here is why I don’t think the writing for Jenny is consistent. The contrived relationship problems just so Cliff has, “woman troubles,” just doesn’t really make any sense to me. At all. If you’re going to write relationship problems, please do it believably.

15) The first scene where Cliff appears as The Rocketeer, to save a friend of his from a flying accident, is such fun. It’s not nearly as memorable as something from say Raiders of the Lost Ark but it still carries the same sense of wonder and imagination that makes this film such a great ride.

16) I hate this because it’s real.

WC Fields [a famous movie friend of Sinclair’s, upon meeting Jenny on her date with Sinclair]: “Charmed my dar. [Camera pans down to her breasts.] Doubly charmed.”

17) Also I’ll say Sinclair hitting on Jenny on a date is sorta creepy. Not as creepy necessarily as other older dudes hitting on younger girls in movies, but when Timothy Dalton was graduating high school Jennifer Connelly was four years old.

18) I think the reason the film isn’t as much a classic as it is would probably be due to the fact that in two of its three big action pieces most of the action is born out of comedy. The club in the brawl is half Cliff messing up and knocking into shit and then getting captured only for Jenny to rescue him. It’s fun! But the film is only 1hr 48min with three action pieces and two of them have shown that Cliff doesn’t really have any idea what he’s doing.

19) It is when Jenny has been kidnapped and is in Sinclair’s house that she’s at her best. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say: when the girl is kidnapped she’s at her most interesting. But it’s true! (Also, before I forget, this film does pass the Bechdel and Sexy Lamp Tests.)

It’s a super creepy and rape-y scene. Jenny wakes up after getting dosed with chloroform in Sinclair’s bed and he comes in and talks to her about how he loves her. Except she’s calling him out a little because she knows all his talks of “love” are quotes from movies he’s done! She then goes along with it a bit, acting like she’ll sleep with him, and taking a dress he gives her to wear (which, it’s weird that he keeps dresses specifically to dress his sexual partners in right? Like if he were a cross dresser that’d be fine, but he keeps these dresses FOR the women who come to his house. That’s a weird control thing.) she uses the fact that he’s distracted/objectifying her to knock him out. She then gets dressed and goes...

Jenny: “I finally played a scene with Neville Sinclair.”

20) And then the twist that pisses me off way more in 2017 than it should:

Neville Sinclair is a f***ing nazi.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

I really hate f***ing nazis. Just wait until I recap the Indiana Jones movies. F***ing nazis.

21) I actually repeat the phrase, “f***ing nazis,” a few times before this film ends in my notes. Most notably when Howard Hughes shows a German propoganda films which shows f***ing nazis wearing rocket packs and taking over the word.

F***ing nazis can go f*** themselves.

(I’m censoring myself because The Rocketeer is only rated PG and I already got my one middle finger in here.)

22) You know what’s awesome? Both about this film and history? Mobsters hate f***ing nazis. According to IMDb:

When Eddie Valentine and his gang learn that Neville Sinclair is a Nazi, they quit working for him and join up with the FBI agents against the Nazi thugs hidden in the shadows. This reflects the attitude of real-life American gangsters during this era, in that they did not like fascism, particularly because Benito Mussolini persecuted the Sicilian Families back in the Old Country. Nor did any Jewish mobsters like Adolf Hitler. In fact, organized crime was one of the biggest allies the American government and law enforcement had when it came to rooting out Nazi spies and collaborators.

F***ing nazis were so f***ing evil that the freaking MOB worked with the freaking FEDS to beat them! F***ing nazis.

23) I’m reasonably sure this is a recreation of a Rocketeer comic cover:

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

Because Cliff takes the gun, stands up there like that, then goes to the blimp where Jenny is being held captive and IMMEDIATELY loses the gun. I’m glad he doesn’t use any guns in this movie though. I’m a little tired of action movies where the good guys use guns.

24) So earlier in this film the rocket pack is leaking and Cliff uses his “lucky gum wad” to stop the leakage. When he hands the rocket over to Sinclair to save Jenny, he takes the gum off. Chekov’s Gum.

25) Sinclair has a line in this film after Cliff asks him where his stuntman is about how he does his own stunts. Timothy Dalton largely did his own stunts for the two 007s films he did.

26) This line is sweet.

Cliff [after Howard Hughes asks him what it was like to fly]: “It was the closest I’ll ever get to heaven, Mr. Hughes. (Looks at Jenny.) Well, maybe not.”

The Rocketeer is a lot of fun and a cult classic for a reason. Its blend of action adventure and pulpy serial-film is in the same vein as Indiana Jones and I suggest anyone who’s looking for that kind of film or a superhero film that’s not Marvel or DC watch it.