“The Rocketeer” (1991) launched the 1990s boom of nostalgic proto-superhero films set in the time before “Superman’s” 1938 invention, and it set the bar high enough that it wouldn’t be matched by “The Shadow,” “The Phantom” or “The Mask of Zorro.”
Director Joe Johnston’s film has everything, in a good way: Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly in star-making turns, rocket-pack flying effects that hold up today, unscrupulous feds and other baddies angling for the pack, classy dinner dates, chases through kitchens with pans flying, tommy-gun shootouts … tied together by James Horner’s score that evokes the idea of brighter days ahead.
Well-served by effects background
This 1930s-set film put Johnston on the map as a director, and he’s well-served here by his background in special effects on the “Star Wars” trilogy. (Twenty years later, he’d tap into World War II superheroism again with “Captain America: The First Avenger.”) Sure, there are moments when we can guess that Cliff/The Rocketeer (“Once and Again’s” Campbell) is has been green-screened and composited, but never to the point that it takes you out of the film.
“The Rocketeer” (1991)
Director: Joe Johnston
Writers: Dave Stevens, Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo
Stars: Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin
Connelly is a special effect, too. Perhaps the most beautiful starlet of the time, she has the ivory-skinned look of the classic film era. Somewhat refreshingly, every man who encounters prospective actress Jenny is struck by her beauty; this isn’t one of those films where the gorgeous female lead is supposed to be the Everywoman who just can’t land a guy or get her life together. She is down-to-earth, though, and Jenny’s small-town romance with Cliff has Old Hollywood innocence.
But Connelly’s most striking scenes are with Timothy Dalton’s Neville Sinclair, against whom Jenny’s sweetness is a sharp contrast. Audiences in 1991 were no doubt thinking of Dalton as James Bond, whom he played in 1987 and 1989 entries, and that sets the stage for a twist. Neville, a Hollywood actor, is debonair around Jenny, but ultimately, their scenes spark in a darker fashion.
Also giving on-point turns are “Lost’s” Terry O’Quinn as Howard Hughes, the real-world magnate and inventor of the rocket pack here; Alan Arkin (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) as Peevy, Cliff’s father figure and flying mentor; and Paul Sorvino as a mobster who doesn’t mind making a dishonest buck, but who draws the line at working for Nazis. Tiny Ron Taylor, plus some facial prosthetics, memorably plays the villains’ “Bond”-style hench-beast, Lothar.
Spirit and stakes
Based on the 1982 Pacific Comics graphic novel by Dave Stevens, “The Rocketeer” is from a time when Disney could be counted on to not merely make family friendly films, but to allow them to have spirit and stakes. (Granted, the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe often stand as exceptions to the corporation’s otherwise paint-by-numbers output today.)
The Depression and World War II both factor into the screenplay by Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo and William Dear, but not in a blunt way. The film romanticizes the dawn of aviation through Horner’s score and references to Hughes and the Hollywoodland sign. We get an iconic re-imagining of how the “land” comes to be removed from the sign.
The final showdown on a zeppelin is worthy of this blockbuster, which keeps the stakes high and the action moving – even if some action is found in the Jenny-Neville interplay rather than Cliff and his rocket pack. “The Rocketeer” provides hooks for kids and adults, but not in a way where you can see the gears of the Disney machine turning. As Johnston pays homage to classic moviemaking, he makes a classic proto-superhero film himself.