I talked to my buddy, Aaron, last night after I finished watching the movie and when I asked him if it was blasphemy to think that The Rocketeer is a better movie than The Dark Knight (2008) or any of the MCU films and he said no it's not. Which is good because I honestly do believe that The Rocketeer is a better movie than The Dark Knight at least in terms of my sensibilities. The tone is perfect where it's not too dark and serious, but it also isn't too over the top and goofy to the point where it undermines the seriousness of the situation that Cliff and Jenny, played by Jennifer Connelly, find themselves in. It feels like a movie. It's fun, it's exciting and I never felt bored while I was watching it.
The cast in this movie is phenomenal. Jennifer Connelly and Timothy Dalton were big names at this time as Dalton had just come off of playing James Bond in the successful The Living Daylights (1987) and the more controversial Licence to Kill (1989). And of course Jennifer Connelly had starred in numerous film genres ranging from Horror to Comedy to Fantasy. The rest of the cast is like a who's who of Star Trek cast members or soon to be Star Trek cast members. Bill Campbell played Captain Okona in the Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2 episode, "The Outrageous Okona", Max Grodenchik would go on to play Rom on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Tiny Ron Taylor would go on to play the Grand Nagus's servant on DS9 as well as a Hirogen commander on Star Trek: Voyager, both Terry O'Quinn and Paul Sorvino would appear in season 7 of TNG, O'Quinn as Admiral Pressman in "The Pegasus" and Sorvino as Worf's step brother, Nikolai Rozhenko in "Homeward", Clint Howard of course appeared as Balok in season 1 of TOS in the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", and Ed Lauter appeared in season 5 of TNG as Cadet Joshua Albert's father in the episode "The First Duty". So you have a lot of Star Trek cast members or soon to be Star Trek cast members in this movie, which is pretty cool.
One of the things that Aaron warned me about before I watched the movie was that Cliff's girlfriend in the comics was named Betty, was a nude model and was inspired by Betty Page, an actress and pin-up model. That knowledge wasn't even on my mind as I was watching the movie, because Jenny, Cliff's girlfriend in the movie, is pretty great and Jennifer Connelly plays her extremely well. Unlike Vicky Vale, Kim Basinger's character in Batman (1989), Jenny isn't a completely useless damsel in distress. Which is pretty cool for a movie made in 1990 and released in 1991. Plus it's an adaptation of the comics, not a direct translation from one medium to another, and so changes are to be expected. Especially since Disney was involved and Jeffrey Katzenberg was in charge of the Walt Disney Studios at the time, so of course things are going to get changed as the movie was being released through Walt Disney Pictures, rather than Touchstone Pictures. So while other people don't like that Betty replaced with Jenny, it's not something that I have a problem with within the scope of the movie that was made, and the studio that produced and released it.
The director of the movie is Joe Johnston, who directed a lot of movies that I've seen over the years. He directed Willow (1988), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), The Pagemaster (1994), Jumanji (1995), and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and he worked on other movies such as the Star Wars Trilogy, the first two Indiana Jones movies, and Howard the Duck (1986) in the visual effects department. So I thought he was the perfect person to direct this movie.
Also the movie's score is pretty great too. James Horner did the score for this movie and so the music during the action scenes and the end credits is very similar to the music he composed for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). Which was an interesting choice, but again it's a choice that worked for the movie because of it's reverence for the old movie serials of the '30s and '40s.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Rocketeer is a very underrated movie that harkens back to a time when movies were made purely for entertainment purposes, not for quick cash grabs like so many movies are made for today. The cast is excellent, the action is stellar and even the special effects hold up pretty well despite them being early '90s effects. There was no CGI used in this movie at all. And I love this movie. I'm giving The Rocketeer 10/10.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102803/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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