90's Superhero Watch: The Rocketeer (1991)

Watched:  04/01/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Joe Johnston

I can't put my finger on why, but I just felt like watching a movie where someone blew up a bunch of Nazis trying to operate on American soil.  

So, I saw The Rocketeer in the theater back in 1991.  Even 16-year-old me was thrilled it was going to have airplanes and a guy from a comic book and pre-1960's styling.  And it was going to have that girl from Labyrinth!  

Watching it now is a completely different experience but no less joyful.  Back then I didn't get all the references and nods which the movie crams in left and right, using the movie almost as an excuse to reward Hollywood nostalgia nuts.

However, I recall being very *aware* of The Rocketeer as a comic property before the movie came out because comic fan mags and catalogs featured Dave Stevens' Bettie Page inspired art that was used to promote the property.  However, I couldn't find the actual comics.  And, a bit like some pics of P'Gell from The Spirit, it gave me some very wrong ideas about what the comic book was when I finally read it.  

I'd get my hands on the actual Rocketeer comics probably around 2010, and it was way less racy than 13 year old me thought - but still sexier than the movie.

I don't know exactly the timeline or if this is apocryphal, but while artist Olivia made Bettie's face famous, apparently Rocketeer writer/ artist Dave Stevens was in some part responsible for the rise of Bettie Page as a semi-household name.  The work she'd done with Irving Klaw was long in the past and had been mostly underground and extremely niche, and films like Teaserama were pretty far from mainstream cinema.*  Stevens, I believe, knew her and tried to help her.

But the movie is also full of references real and otherwise.  The comic and therefore the movie steals the likeness of real person Rondo Hatton - a horror movie actor with acromegaly - for Lothar, Dalton's sidekick.  Dalton's character, Neville Sinclair, is clear referencing Errol Flynn both as an actor playing, essentially, Robin Hood, but also referencing deeply unfounded allegations that Flynn was a Nazi sympathizer and spy.**

Howard Hughes - played by Terry O'Quinn - is a character in the film during his Hughes Aircraft days.  Making it hilarious that he just ignores Jenny in the film if you know anything about Hughes' taste and proclivities - and that he'd be bouncing between aviation and film during this era.***  

Worth noting that Clark Gable in his Gone With the Wind era and WC Fields both appear in the South Seas Club sequence.  

Locations like the dog-diner echo LA's Bulldog Cafe (established in the late 1920's and part of LA's mimetic architecture, like The Brown Derby).  And, of course there were real air shows like the one seen in the film (more on that in a bit).  

The film takes place in 1938 - as evidenced by the pre-war conditions of Nazis touring America, Bette Davis's 1938 movie Jezebel is playing in a scene and it seems they're finishing their Robin Hood nod.  

The Zeppelin in the movie echoes the use of the Graf Zeppelin as a Nazi propaganda tool - something that ended with the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.  

I am absolutely positive I'm forgetting and missing things - but there you go.

The movie is also chock full of people.   I think in 1991, Alan Arkin was maybe the most famous person in the movie, playing Peevy - our hero's pal, Alfred, man-in-the-chair.  Timothy Dalton was Sinclair (and awesome in the role - kind of stealing the movie).  Of course Jennifer Connelly tops the bill of 2026 recognizable faces as Jenny - de-Bettie Page'd for this film.****  Paul Sorvino plays Valentine, the mob boss.  O'Quinn as Hughes.  Ed Lauter plays an FBI man.  Our beloved Jon Polito plays the airfield owner.  Eddie Jones is a colleague of Peevy and Cliff.  A shockingly young Margo Martindale plays the owner of the cafe.  And William Sanderson is there to deliver like two lines.  (Late edit!  I almost forgot!  Melora Hardin shows up as the singer at the South Seas Club.)

I feel a big bad for Billy Campbell.  He's good as Cliff - an earnest young man.  He's very, very much like Cliff in the comics.  But I think he got thrown under the bus when the movie wasn't a huge hit.  I just think Disney flubbed the marketing.  People who do see the movie tend to like it at minimum.

For what's roughly a superhero movie for 1991, it takes itself just seriously enough.  But it really leans into the notion that the movie takes place essentially over 36 hours or so, so we never see a version of Cliff Secord's Rocketeer that is *good* at being the Rocketeer - something I think they were holding off on til the sequel.  Just imagine if all of Spider-Man took place in 36 hours.  And that's a script problem.

I'll go ahead and point to Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, who most famously worked on the Trancers films and the Flash TV show.  I think they mishandled the timeline and it causes more problems than it solves to keep the pace going.  

The director is Joe Johnston, who is a legend for reasons beyond his directorial career, but he's made some films I absolutely love, including this one and Captain America: The First Avenger (yes, I suspect Rocketeer got him that movie).   

While some FX work very well, and some less so, it all *works*.  The Rocketeer is not shooting lasers, he's just blasting across the sky barely under control.  And all of it - art design, set-design, definitely costuming - sell the hell out of a 1938 Los Angeles and the rural areas just outside.  And, damn, if the look for The Rocketeer with helmet on, flight jacket and rocket-pack in place - isn't maybe the most iconic superhero look created post 1975, I don't know what is.

but not so wildly different from Steve Rogers in that first movie

also late edit: it's such a joy seeing real planes in a movie.  The stunt work at the beginning of the movie was incredible.

*the story of Bettie's life is in many ways tragic, and expands way beyond the scope of a move write-up.  I also won't dwell on the oddness of placing a 1950's Page-look alike in a 1930's context, but that's not an issue in the movie.

**Flynn had plenty of real-life dirt, and in no way am I going to get into it here

***Hughes would film The Outlaw in 1941 - release it in 1943 and make Jane Russell a huge star

****it is possible that the movie wanted a look less associated with the BDSM scene by 1990 and before the adoption of the look for the rock-a-billy scene almost immediately by the mid-90's.