Tim Burton’s take on Batman in 1989 made Hollywood studios sit up and take notice of comic books, but instead of giving audiences the Teen Titans or the X-Men, they went back to the pulp serials of the 30s and pulled Dick Tracy, The Shadow, and The Phantom out of mothballs. Disney decided to do something different, and adapted a comic from 1982 but set in the 1930s, bringing The Rocketeer to the big screen 1991.
With an iconic outfit, a former James Bond as the villain, a rising star as the damsel in distress, and the weight of Disney’s marketing machine behind it, The Rocketeer should have been a success. Instead, the pulp throwback failed to launch and lost Disney millions in the process, thanks to the massive marketing campaign and poor timing, running up against a little sci-fi movie you may have heard of called Terminator 2.
The Rocketeer is Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell), a young stunt pilot who comes across a rocket pack that gangsters stole from Howard Hughes, and thanks to his mechanic Peevy (Alan Arkin) fixing it up, he’s able to take to the skies. You will believe a man can fly when the Rocketeer makes his public debut, saving an old stunt pilot who fills in for Cliff, and becomes an instant sensation. With no powers and a lot of responsibility, Cliff gets tossed into the middle of a conspiracy involving Nazis, the FBI, and a dashing swashbuckling Hollywood A-lister.
From James Bond To Moustache-Twirling Villain
As fun as it is watching Cliff fly, older viewers will appreciate Timothy Dalton, a short-lived but memorable James Bond, as Neville Sinclair, a scene-stealing villain who stops just short of twirling his mustache. Movie fans during the Summer of 1991 were spoiled getting to watch both Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, who chewed up the scenery, and Dalton’s over-the-top 30s movie star, who spat out every line with the gravitas of a West London Shakespearean production. It’s an explosive performance that did not get the attention it deserved at the time.
Dalton had to go over the top with his performance because the actual plot of The Rocketeer is paper-thin, and there are fewer scenes of Cliff flying than you think. The Nazis want the rocket pack to create a legion of flying soldiers, Howard Hughes and the Americans want it for the same reason, but for the forces of good, and Cliff’s in the middle, because he needs to use it now to save his girlfriend, Jenny (Jennifer Connelly), from Neville’s clutches. That’s it, that’s the whole movie, and it’s awesome.
What the film lacks in plot, it makes up for with striking imagery straight out of a pulp novel, and the dialogue to match. During the Summer of ‘91, you couldn’t get away from the image of Cliff’s iconic pose next to the American flag before he takes the fight to the airborne Nazis.
At the same time, mobster Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino) finally realizes he’s been working for a Nazi, and drops the line “I may not make an honest buck, but I’m 100% American,” a line and moment that’s been used countless times since, including during the 90s Batman and Captain America cross-over special when Joker turns against Red Skull.
Sabotaged By A Massive Marketing Blitz
The Rocketeer has great moments, but compared to today’s superhero blockbusters, it’s also slow-paced and stuffed with dialogue. It looks like a great film for kids, but even in 1991, it struggled to attract an audience.
Opening in under 2,000 theaters, it pulled in only $9.6 million in its opening weekend, eventually legging out to $46.7 million, barely surpassing its $40 million budget, though unadjusted for inflation, it earned more than 2024’s Borderlands. The problem is that the film may have been affordable, but the marketing campaign cost more than the film itself.
In 1991, you couldn’t get away from The Rocketeer tie-in promotions with everything from Pizza Hut to souvenir magazines, a Disney Channel special, a licensed NES game, M&M’s, and a novelization from Peter David, in the middle of his legendary run on The Incredible Hulk comic that Disney made sure was at every single Scholastic book fair that year. The eye-popping sum of $19 million was spent on TV commercials alone, half the film’s entire budget.
The movie itself is a fun pulp adventure, but by the time it came out, everyone was burned out by the nonstop marketing campaign, and to make it worse for the film, the summer of 1991 was packed with hits. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out the week before, and Terminator 2 came out two weeks later, preventing the teenage audience, who already thought The Rocketeer wasn’t cool, from catching it in theaters.
The average theater goer wanted to see one of the best sci-fi movies of all time, and the most excellent Robin Hood of our lifetimes, over a superhero no one knew existed until the movie was announced.
Decades Later, The Rocketeer Is A Classic
Time ended up being kind to The Rocketeer. Without the suffocating push of Disney’s marketing and the option of seeing other legendary films simultaneously, audiences have decided that the adventure of Cliff Secord is a low-key great film.
It helps that Jennifer Connelly would go on to have the type of career most actors could only dream of, and even as the damsel in distress, she owns the role. Connelly makes Jenny an active participant in unraveling the conspiracy, and matches Dalton’s manic energy in her own, understated way by making the most of every second of screentime.
The Rocketeer failed, but it didn’t have to, and it wasn’t the first time Disney would drop the ball on a great film by failing to market it correctly. Twenty years later, John Carter suffered the same fate, and today, Tron: Ares is set to be another in the long line of high-concept films let down by the marketing department.
If you haven’t seen The Rocketeer, you owe it to yourself to watch one of the best superhero movies of the ’90s, streaming now on Disney+.
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