When I left the 17-minute preview screening for Guardians of the Galaxy -a ridiculous marketing event designed to get word-of-mouth going on a movie Disney is wringing their hands bloody over (and one that I, admittedly, did feed into)-, I could tell the glorified ad’s job had been accomplished in a roundabout way. My desire to run out and see GotG was completely unchanged, which was a pleasant result, seeing as I expected the footage to either increase my hype levels to frustrating levels, or leave me despairing at having to rewatch a sizeable chunk of the movie again when it’s released in whole. I remain cautiously optimistic about Guardians, but the film I did want to run home and watch right away was Slither, the 2006 horror-comedy director James Gunn made before getting the Marvel gig.
Though I only caught up with it recently, I loooooove Slither, so much so that it’s one of the few films I’ve ever finished, then immediately hit the play button on again as soon as it ended. It was such a shockingly successful blend of tone and style that it became the main reason for me to be excited for Guardians of the Galaxy in the first place, seeing as it’s a comic property that would require a deft touch to translate to film. In light of the Ant-Man debacle, the fear is that Marvel and Disney are sanding off all the rough, weird edges of their movies in the name of keeping a homogenous house style, and without rough weirdness, there’s no point in making a Guardians of the Galaxy adaptation at all.
Anywho, that’s a really winding way of leading up to saying that, last night, with literally hundreds of movies and TV shows available for my viewing pleasures, I decide to watch Disney’s 1991 box office failure, The Rocketeer. The throughline of thinking here is that The Rocketeer was directed by Joe Johnston, who went on to make Captain America: The First Avenger more than a decade-and-a-half later for the very same house of mouse. And, at least for, the gamble on my evening paid off. The Rocketeer has become something of a hidden gem among those who remember the then-ambitious adaptation of the ‘80s graphic novel, a throwback to ‘50s adventure serials with the heart of a superhero story. Watching The Rocketeer, it becomes a completely obvious why Marvel wanted Johnston for Captain America, but it offers plenty to those uninterested in the genealogy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Rocketeer’s got Timothy Dalton playing a Nazi-collaborating Errol Flynn insert, Paul Sorvino in full old timey gangster mode, and even Margo Martindale as a pan-wielding, no-nonsense waitress; how was this movie not a massive hit?
Well, that’s not that hard to figure out, even excluding that its box office competition at the time was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and City Slickers. The Rocketeer seems a clear attempt to recapture the ‘40s nostalgia at play when Raiders of the Lost Ark made memories of The Greatest Generation into high-flying adventures, but The Rocketeer forgot to steal Indie’s bad boy charisma. That’s not to say star Billy Campbell is wrong for the starring role, quite the opposite; his boyish good looks and non-threatening charm are exactly what the character requires. The problem is that, this being a film from Disney, The Rocketeer is utterly earnest and without cynicism, which even for audiences in 1991, would seem a little hard to swallow.
Ironically, Disney has since gone on to buy Marvel, whose Iron Man and Captain America adaptations owe a lot to The Rocketeer, while Disney’s own attempts at throwbacks these days are a treacley mush. They got it right the first time in ‘91, as The Rocketeer holds up very well for any viewer interested in theatrical superheroics that’s also tired of the bloat swallowing the genre whole these days.