Paltrow's Polly pretty much makes me crazy. Yes, she's willful and self-directed and career-driven, but she's also severely lacking in common sense and constantly getting herself into things she can't get herself out of. Some of what she does and how she talks and dresses is to expected, since the film is a pre-World War II farce, but the character goes way overboard (Paltrow's fairly terrible acting certainly doesn't help), and writer/director Kerry Conran (for whom Sky Captain is a freshman effort) seems determined to take her down several pegs whenever possible. One good example of this is the scene when Polly is in Sky Captain's plane with him and gives him bad directions on how to fly through New York City. Hello? This woman is a City Metro reporter--she probably knows her streets.

Angelina Jolie's Frankie is a different story. She's tough, sarcastic, and extremely competent. She's a Royal Navy Commander, which is cool in and of itself, and seems to be nearly as cocky and daredevil as Sky Captain. There are really only two things wrong with her character--the first is the ridiculous notion that she'd ever date Sky Captain, and the second is that she only gets about 5 minutes of screen time total, which is not only a tremendous waste, but gives a definite "this character is a token" vibe that I don't like at all.

There is a third woman in the cast as well, Ling Bai's Mysterious Assassin, the only villain you see much of. This, of course, is problematic, mainly because (spoiler) she turns out to be a robot. I can't help but cringe at the portrayal of an Asian woman as not only at the behest of an old white (German, in this case, but still, white) dude, but actually being literally programmed and run by him. Ick. Plus the racial undercurrent--why are the sympathetic women white while the villain is Asian?

Basically, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a movie set in 1939 with gender and racial politics that more or less suit the time period. However, given the nearly animated farcical quality to the plot and scenery, it wouldn't have been too much of a jump to move the female characters and their interactions beyond what would be expected. This is a challenge Conran didn't take, and his film is the worse for it.