Director Joe Johnston
Starring Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin
Rated PG
Score 4.5/6

A young pilot stumbles onto a prototype jetpack that allows him to become a high-flying masked hero.

Okay, The Rocketeer is based on a comic book character of the same name created by comic book artist and writer Dave Stevens, first published in 1982. You might be interested to know that The Rocketeer, creator Dave Stevens and screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo envisioned it as the first entry of a trilogy, but of course this never happened. It should also be noted that supposedly from 2017, efforts have been made by Disney toward a remake and apparently an animated series reboot has been developed for Disney Junior and from what I understand it is supposed to premiere sometime in the fall of this year.

I have vague memories of watching this around the time it was originally released, though I suppose what prompted me to re-watch The Rocketeer was watching a video ‘10 Things You Didn’t Know About Rocketeer’ on YouTube.
What I immediately noticed about The Rocketeer was that unlike other comic book movie was that The Rocketeer was a lot brighter and was not dark and brooding like so many other comic book movies. This is a very fun, watchable movie, without giving to much away there is an exchange I enjoyed between Timothy Dalton’s Neville Sinclair and Eddie Valentine portrayed by Paul Sorvino where I could have sworn that the movie was having a moment of self-awareness.
It should be noted that some of the special effects for the rocket look a little dated but that is only to be expected from a movie from the early 90’s and there not dated to the point of being comical so they wont take away much from the movie watching experience.
Though I am a little unfamiliar with his work Billy Campbell was good as Cliff and it was good to see that Jennifer Connelly didn’t play the stereotypical love interest. I loved Timothy Dalton’s performance he makes for such a great villain. I also enjoyed Terry O’Quinn’s performance as Howard Hughes.