Compare DVD : Rocketeer

Rating: - Before 'The Aviator,' there was 'The Rocketeer.'
`The Rocketeer' is a really fine piece of escapist cinema that, in slightly better world, would have made a lot more money for the studio. But to the misfortune of Disney, this film was released about 10 minutes before `Terminator 2.' The producers of `T2' cynically calculated that the summertime movie-going public, dominated as it is by adolescent males, would prefer the steroid-saturated sadism of Arnold Schwarzenegger. `T2' stole the audience from this film, and `The Rocketeer' quickly faded into relative obscurity. (Based on the box office of similar fantasy pieces set in the 1930's, such as `The Shadow,' `The Phantom,' and `Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow,' it might also be true that the audience for retro-thrills has dwindled. Too bad, because those films were good. The horrid 2005 version of `King Kong,' set in the 1930's, was profitable. But I attribute that to the effectiveness of the studio machine and to the personality cult around director Peter Jackson.)

But `The Rocketeer' is, of course, vastly superior to `T2,' and deserves to be ranked as a classic within the genre of comic book, fantasy, and adventure movies. If your taste runs more toward `The Adventures of Robin Hood' or the Indiana Jones films than, say, the `Die Hard' series or Steven Segal, then `The Rocketeer' is for you.

Also, if you thought `The Aviator,' particularly the airplane sequences were cool, you might get a bang out of this. Howard Hughes plays an important part of the plot, and there is an `in' joke for you.

In addition, fans of old movie serials and old sci-fi should love this. Odds are you already know that the original inspiration for the character of the Rocketeer was the 1949 Republic serial `King of the Rocketmen.'