Polly-Gone

It's not often that a movie makes use of an ambigram, but this film does... or rather, tries to. The eponymous character, Joe the Sky Captain (Jude Law), has an airplane with call sign: "h11od". Near the end of the movie, his on-again-off-again love interest, Polly (Gwyneth Paltrow), realizes his true feelings when she spots the plane's reflection in a lake and sees her name, "polly."

How cool is that! A mainstream movie had writers or art directors or someone involved clever enough to use this bit of wordplay.

Oh, but wait... "h11od" reflected (vertically) on the surface of water would not read as "polly", it would read as "ylloq" (the scenes in the movie never show the original and its "reflection" in the same frame -- if they had, surely someone would have realized this goof). Someone confused rotation with reflection (if Polly had seen Joe fly by in the plane upside-down, then she would have spotted her name).

To use the lake-reflection gimmick, the plane's call sign should have read "bo11h".

I'm stunned at how close this wordplay came to being correct... and yet was screwed up. How could someone miss the mark at the last step?!

Oh well, with luck, the next movie with an ambigram will get it right...

Here's an image of the plane which is available as a toy model, evidently.

-- Eric

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