I Finally Watched ‘Skyline’

I finally watched Skyline last night, even though a few of you warned me not to. Now I understand why.

Skyline is a poorly conceived excuse for a film told in the most simplistic and amateur way possible. To be honest, I don’t know how anyone was able to review it without going down the line plot point by plot point. I’m actually upset I didn’t live blog the experience, but I’m happy to give a rundown now, and please excuse me if I go on for too long.

Skyline is directed by sibling duo Colin and Greg Strause (AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem), or as they are referred to in the credits… “Brothers Strause” which comes across so extraordinarily pretentious. But I guess it’s not as bad as it looks. It turns out they decided to go by a joint name after Colin won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Art Direction for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ video, “Californication” even though both worked on the project.

Now, to be fair, while their films are terrible, their effects work is quite good. Even in Skyline.

Skyline‘s flaws are revealed very early. As blue orbs descend from the sky in the film’s opening moments we are introduced first to Jarrod’s (Eric Balfour) girlfriend, Elaine (Scottie Thompson). While your first reaction may be to ask Who is Scottie Thompson? and/or Eric Balfour is still in movies? the important thing to note here is Elaine is preggers. Yup, we’re witness to a bit of morning sickness. Yuck… amirite?

This scene, however, is a flash forward 15 hours into the film’s storyline. Quickly we bounce back in time as Elaine and Jarrod are flying to Los Angeles to visit Terry (Donald Faison). Terry is a rap star (what, what!) that drives a Lamborghini and it’s his birthday (holla!). Terry and Jarrod have been best buds since back in the day when they were J-Rock and T$ (that’s T-Money for the uninitiated). Terry is living it up in an LA high rise where he’s married to Brittany Daniel and cheating on her with Crystal Reed.

So, for those keeping track, we have one preggers girlfriend and one instance of adultery to add “depth” to the entire group. Moving on…

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Terry’s introduction. It’s glorious.

After pulling up in his Lamborghini we next see him entering his penthouse apartment, mid-sentence in a telephone conversation, “Yeah, well you should have thought about that before you shot the piece of shit!” Click! What?!?! What was going on there? Who shot who? No matter, it’s my birthday!

The birthday party is where Terry springs the big surprise on Jarrod. He wants him to come to Los Angeles to work with him. Check that, he needs him to come to Los Angeles. What for? To do some computer stuff for his rap video. Upon hearing this, Elaine runs off and when Jarrod catches up with her she drops the bomb.

Okay, I’m going to stop for a second. Jarrod asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?” The question could just as easily have been, “Why didn’t you just say you were pregnant in the first place rather than ‘I’m late’? You’re not just late, you’re pregnant.” Ugh, let’s resume…

Everything that went into this scene and all that was supposed to be taken out of it is embarrassing. In just these few minutes the screenwriters wanted you to connect with the conundrum of a cliched pregnancy we’ve seen in countless films as well as debate what would happen as a result of the affair. An affair that comes to light in one of the silliest ways imaginable, but I won’t ruin the surprise here.

Had this film been an intentional parody, maybe this would have worked. Too bad it’s played straight-faced, wooden and anything but the joke it turns out being.

Skyline was written by first time screenwriters Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell who previously worked on Iron Man 2 and AVPR with the Strause Brothers. They obviously weren’t cut out for screenwriting as they have no idea how to piece together a script, develop characters, create a plot or give an audience reason to care. But what’s worse is Universal picked this up and put it into production.

Aliens come down to Earth to take human brains and put them into their own heads. The purpose of this is unknown and not even the Strause brothers know what’s going on as they detail in their commentary. Colin says, “You see these weird bat-things hanging from the ceiling and they’re crapping out these old alien brains that they probably got from some other planet, and now they’re putting in their brand new shiny human brains.”

Greg adds, “Yeah, so the human brains are sort of like alien crack huh?”

Colin seems to agree, but not really, “Yeah, like a battery or somethin’.”

What is known is they are aliens and they have fancy blue neon lights and big ships they most likely had built by the Independence Day aliens. They also have in their employ a few giant monsters and things that look like the sentinels in The Matrix. And speaking of those blue lights, Colin really goes deep in the commentary at one point saying, “And we like the idea that if the bad creature’s [brain] was this beautiful blue, then the good creature’s has to be red. It’s almost like you’re kind of playing with the opposites of the color.”

Is it? Is that what it’s like?

I imagine the finale is what really pissed most people off more than anything else. Audiences are willing to forgive any manner of terrible screenwriting, bad acting, poor plotting, etc. as long as you give them something to go home with. In this department Skyline fails miserably.

For those that haven’t seen it I won’t ruin it entirely (though, you may want to skip the quotes below), but I listened to the Strause brothers’ commentary and they say this final sequence almost cost more than the entire movie and they also reveal the “secret” to the whole thing.

Colin says, “The secret idea with this movie is that it’s basically like a comic book movie and this is the prequel.”

Greg again adds his ever important two cents, “Yeah, this is the origin story.”

Colin then explains the nature of how these things work, “Normally you do the regular movie first and then you’d come back and shoot the prequel later. We basically shot the prequel first. And being able to do that, and ending it on this cool big rock music kind of thing, is to kind of show that, Oh, crap this is not the movie you were coming in to see. You didn’t realize this whole movie was about… of all the humans in the entire world, this is the one guy that actually built up a resistance and became an alien. It’s his origin story and then about how she gets off the ship and you can kind of see where this whole story can actually unfold into some really interesting places in Skyline 2, 3, 4.”

Yeesh! You get all that?

To be entirely fair, had this movie not been released by Universal Pictures in theaters and instead ushered onto something like the SyFy channel the hate wouldn’t have been so widespread. The problem is that it was given this large theatrical release when it belonged on television or just never made at all. The latter being the more logical choice.

I can say this, though. For as bad as this film is, I didn’t mind laughing at it. The kiss near the end almost floored me.