Ok, this movie was a complete piece of shit and it pissed me off on many levels. However, even though this film had layer upon layer of crunchy suckiness mixed in with half-digested pieces of corn, there was one aspect that stood above the rest as an example of foul depravity and utter abomination. That being, Gweneth Paltrow’s irritating portrayal of the repugnant “plucky” reporter Polly Something-or-other.

The thing that makes Paltrow’s performance especially intolerable is the fact that she probably thought that she was portraying a “strong” woman, an admirable role-model for today‘s youth. Christ...what a crock of shit!

The fact is that movies and television do indeed present a model for behavior. Both women and men watch television and presume that is the way they are supposed to act in order to fit into their society. I mentioned this in another article and a woman wrote me to tell me that I was wrong using the evidence of various quotes that she had taken from her favorite TV shows. Point proven, QED!

Now, Polly Bullshit is one of those characters that our society likes to think of as strong, intelligent, plucky (god I hate that word), blah, blah, blah. But the truth is that Polly represents the exact opposite of all those glowing adjectives. Throughout the movie, she is constantly putting herself at needless risk just to prove how strong she is. What is the inevitable result? That Sky Captain has to go back and save her dumb ass. How do you prove you are strong by putting yourself into a danger situation with the expectation that some man will have to come and get you out of it? HOW, HOW! For the love of God will somebody please explain to me how our whole society isn’t up in arms about this whole thing?

There are so many of these God damned, self-absorbed, “strong” women who are just impossible to be around. They’re like basketball players who refuse to pass to the open man and put up brick after brick that falls clanging off the vibrating rim. Look, if you were actually “strong” like you claim then you WOULDN’T have any problem DEFERRING to the authority of another, WHEN THE SITUATION CALLS FOR IT!

News flash to all psycho feminist bitches out there....sometimes strength is demonstrated by knowing when to shut up!

There are several scenes in Sky Captain when Polly has insisted on coming along in Sky Captain’s plane while he fights killer robots and then she...get this...she sits there in the back seat and bitches at him the whole fucking time!

“Sky Captain, turn right!” (This one came, of course, a full five seconds after a right turn was actually feasible. And, of course, when Sky Captain politely asks for an earlier warning for the next time, Polly has to bitch him out. I mean, do women have a gene that makes it impossible for them to give you appropriate directions within a time frame that makes it physically possible to follow them....this is probably why men have just given up and never ask for directions at all.)

“Sky Captain, look out for that killer robot!”

“Sky Captain, pull up!”

Jesus, Polly, he’s the Sky Captain! Shut the fuck up! I mean, the whole time I’m thinking to myself, “wow, it probably takes a fair bit of concentration to maneuver that little plane through that collapsing neon sign while five killer robots and six airplanes are chasing you....It’d probably be easier to concentrate if that bitch wasn’t screaming in your ear.”

This should be a simple matter of self preservation, you don’t sit there and bitch at the surgeon during heart surgery. You don’t presume that you know more than the surgeon. Why on earth does Polly think she needs to scream out irritating and completely obvious advice? Why can’t she just have faith that the “Sky Captain” KNOWS how to handle his airplane?

Maybe it has to do with the fact that pseudo-”Strong” women like Polly, are too weak to allow for any kind of faith in a man at any moment. Any moment that is, except when they are expecting that man to come and save them as they go running off into needless danger for no other purpose than to pad their own egos.

I mean Christ! Why does it have to be all about her? Isn’t this a team? Why does she have to manufacture it so that all of his efforts go to somehow perpetuating her own sense of glory. She seems incensed, as in the battle with the robots, that he ever do anything good and have any self pride. It’s all nag, nag, nag, and constant belittlement. You’ve heard about emotional abuse? You’ve heard women say, “he told me I was worthless for so long that I started to believe it?” Well, it goes both ways. Did it ever cross her mind that maybe he’d be more effective fighting the robots if she stoked is self-confidence?

Polly says only one nice thing to Sky Captain throughout the whole movie, and she only says it to trick him into admitting he can hear her when he was wisely pretending he couldn‘t. Bitch! Sure, at the end of the movie she “supposedly” shows her love for him by using her final picture on him rather than the spectacular extenuating events (like we couldn’t see that one coming a mile away). But what does that prove? Of course she’s going to take his picture! She’s got him so wound in circles that he apparently seems willing to sacrifice everything for her glory. It’s like taking a picture of your dog.

She cares nothing about him, there is a running joke in the movie about how she cut his fuel line so that she could get a picture. Can you imagine the consequences of a portrayal in a movie about a man who cut the fuel line in a female pilot’s plane? There would be riots in the street and all the prints of the film would be burned. But in this film it’s just a little happy joke, well ha ha ha! An attempt to kill a man for no reason whatsoever, that’s a side-splitter. She’s sure a “plucky” gal.

Then there’s the fact that she constantly demands to be treated as an equal partner, but withholds important evidence from Sky Captain, causing said evidence to fall directly into the hands of the enemy as a result of her incompetence. Jesus, I was pulling out my hair. Look, if somebody comes up to you and says:

“The guy who’s trying to destroy the world can’t do it without these two vials!”

Would you carry the two vials around with you even when you were going to the evil guy’s secret lair? I mean, come on, leave them at home. Have a contingency plan. But is the fate of the world less important than your ridiculous notion that you have to appear as a “strong” woman all the fucking time?

The best part of the movie came when Sky Captain punched Polly in the face. The second best part was the way that Gweneth Paltrow sulked through the whole rest of the film after Angelina Jolie showed up and effortlessly blasted all Paltrow’s pathetic sex appeal right out of the water. Jolie just has to count to five, and she’s ten times as sexy as Paltrow ripping her skirt at the seem and sucking on a banana.

The real truth is that films like this still seem to suggest that a woman has to be irrational in order to be “feminine.” Well, I thought Jolie’s character of a commander of some kind of weird floating platform was a lot sexier than Polly Bitch-a-lot. I would suggest that people that thought that Polly’s incompetence was sexy are actually misogynistic pricks who like to see images of weakness portrayed as strength in order to keep women down.

The best thing this movie could have done for the image of women was to have Polly come to some kind of appropriate and horrible end. For example, Sky Captain could be flying along and Polly starts bitching as always and Sky Captain says, “I’ve had enough of your crap!” Then he knocks out all her teeth with a pipe wrench, skull fucks her, and throws her out of the airplane, only to go back to Angelina Jolie’s flying platform and allow her to tie him up and give him orders while she hits him with a whip. The society that approves of that ending is the kind of society I want to live in!

The End