I recently rewatched The Rocketeer and it is amazing how well the film hold up after 20 years. A couple of the flight scenes have slightly dodgy special effects, but other than that I would put ir right alongside any of today's superhero blockbusters. I was thumbing through my Dave Stevens Rocketeer hardcover as I watched it and it really is the comic coming right to life - the characters and designs in the movie are all spot on. Between it and Captain America: The First Avenger, Joe Johnston has made two of my all time favorite comic flicks ever.
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Surprising that no one has picked up and dusted off The Rocketeer for a reboot. But, it is pretty solid and self-contained.
Actually, there is one difference between the original graphic novel and the Disney movie. In the former, the designer/builder of the rocket pack was legendary pulp fiction hero, "Doc" Savage! Unfortunately, someone else had the licensing rights to the Man of Bronze at the time of the film's pre-production. So, Disney went with real-life aerospace industrialist, Howard Hughes (inspiration, btw, for Marvel's Tony Stark) as the genius behind the pack.
P.S.---on a lighter note: how did Billy Secord wind up back in World War I? Some kind of Nazi time-travel device? After all, his crime-fighting debut came just before WWII!
You Know That Per Degaton - he's always meddling with the timestream...
@ Ross: GOOD ONE! :-)
Another lovely cover.
^_^
It's been twenty years since the film was released?!? I feel old...
Re differences between comic and film: Well, even in the comic Secord DID initially mistake Monk & Ham for two of Hughes' lieutenants.
The other major difference, of course, was Secord's girlfriend being a movie actress (and apparently a fairly 'innocent'one, at that) in the film, rather than basically a renamed version of Bettie Paige...
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