Skyline

"Skyline" was actually the movie I bought tickets to instead of "Saw 3D".  My reasoning there was that I simply did not want to give Twisted Pictures any more profit on that film - I want "Saw" to end and stay ended.  I'll go to see it, but they aint getting my ten bucks, nope.  Also its considerably cheaper thanks to "Skyline" being a regular movie while "Saw 3D" is in 3D - lucky thing I have my own personal set of spare 3D glasses that I keep for just these kinds of occasions.  Afterwards I actually did go see "Skyline", meaning that yes there were some laws broken and I feel like a terrible person for it.  But then when you realize that the movies I stole from here were "Skyline" and "Saw 3D", true rivals if there ever were for the stupidest friggin' movie of November 2010.  I don't feel quite so bad anymore.  Plus "Skyline" was such a dumb movie that it actually made me feel much better about "Saw 3D". It was the exact B-movie I needed at that moment.

Of course, that doesn't mean that "Skyline" is in any way a good movie.  Its terrible.  But its a special kind of terrible:  a goofy alien invasion movie.  I really can't fault a movie for trying to do that.  Of course, even then, "Skyline" fails.  The Cinema Snob compared it to an Asylum movie (those were the guys who made the recent straight-to-video cure for sleep disorders, "Titantic 2"), and truly he was dead-on.  This movie rips off so many things its almost like somebody took every alien invasion movie of the last fifteen years and put them in a giant blender creating a smoothie so thick of unoriginality you'll need to drink it with a spoon.  If you could prove that there was a single original idea that went into the making of "Skyline", I would put my computer in the fryer and eat it with a side of french fries.  And even then, compared to everything its ripping off, "Skyline" just isn't that good.  Its boring actually.

"Skyline" isn't a total mess like "Saw 3D", but it sure is not worth going to see.  You won't get furious over it, because there's nothing to get mad at here, but you won't find yourself ever buying the DVD when it comes out.  In twenty years, nobody's ever going to remember "Skyline", its just bland nothingness.

Want to know when its a bad sign for the movie you're about to watch, check if the opening credits claim to be directed by anybody who are pretentious enough to use the name "The Brothers Strauss".  These guys are so desperate to be taken seriously, its amazing.  Why haven't the Brother Strauss been contracted to direct a "Twilight SAGA" film yet?  Seems perfected.

I think I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite movies of all time is without a doubt "Independence Day" the patriotic space alien epic in which President Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Jeff Goldblum defeat an entire race of alien invaders using nothing but a Mac Powerbook 5300 and a whole lot of fighter jets.  That movie along with "Jurassic Park" and "Star Wars" defined my childhood and thus have defined my entire life (I'm an intensely mature person, by the way).  I must have seen it at least a hundred times.  No matter what anybody says, I will never stop loving "Independence Day" -  its one of the greatest movies ever made, admit it.  A lot of critics hate it, probably for good reason, but they can't admit that it isn't AWESOME.  No film has managed to ever top "ID4"'s level of scale, explosive tension, and awesome alien battles to this very day.  It even was the inspiration for the second-best level of "Star Fox 64".  So since "Skyline" is following territory that was already done to perfection with a movie that came out fifteen years ago, it doesn't have much of a fighting chance.  Even "Independence Day"'s special effects need no updating - they were perfect in 1996, they're perfect today.

When I was a kid I wondered why "Independence Day" never had a sequel.  After some thought I pretty much hit the nail right on the head:  what's left to do?  The aliens destroyed all the American cities that matter (would you really pay eight bucks to see aliens destroy Scranton?) and we still beat them.  There's no place for an alien invasion movie to go anymore.  Of course, if a movie did slavishly rip-off of "Independence Day" from start to finish, I'd probably love it.  When they try something new, its boring and not as good.  So I didn't like "War of the Worlds"*, there just wasn't enough epicness to it.  Who cares about one family when "Independence Day" was able to show us all of America!?  Also, if you can't back up your alien invasion movie with great scenes of cities getting destroyed, you might as well go home before you embarrass yourself.  And honestly, "Skyline" suffers from the same problems as "War of the Worlds", only considerably worse.  "War of the Worlds" at least tried to make its characters seem like average American folk who we could relate to, "Skyline" goes a different route.

The general plot of "Skyline" involves a group of twenty-something Hollywood phonies having a party in the penthouse of some phony Hollywood high-rise and acting like complete cockers the entire evening - then aliens attack.  I don't know if the Strausses actively intended for you to hate every human character in the movie, but the dickish characterization seems so deliberate that I can't believe this was an accident.  One character drives up with in a ridiculous Ferrari that was so expensive-looking that the audience was more stunned by it than the damn aliens.  This is a car you'd only see on "Top Gear" with Jeremy Clarkson complaining that it doesn't steer well at four billion MPG.  Glad to see that underneath all the fame and success, this character is just like us, huh?  Another character uses a telescope to spy on two guys having sex with each other while the uppity douchebag Hollywood people have a good laugh.  There are the two main characters who have flown in from what they claim is normal middle-class life, but its nonsense.  This couple is fabulously attractive and fit right in with the rest of the jerks.  I'm surprised that a serial killer isn't hiding to murder these people.  When the aliens do attack, you're left with a small core group of characters in the high-rise watching as the aliens rampage throughout the city.  Of course half the surviving group is supermodel-level chicks just making this movie even more preposterous.  At no point do I ever feel like these are people like myself (minus the cohorting with supermodels... I wish).  They're eye candy.

The aliens** come with Spaceball 1 in Megamaid form and suck up the entire population of Los Angeles in a giant vacuum.  This honestly is a really cool visual scene, one of a few, but not nearly enough to save this movie.  The aliens' power is that if they shine a blue light in your face you turn into a zombie for a second and so can get abducted.  Of course, the light is amazingly inconsistent as to whether it will mind control you or not, and for some reason repeated exposure may or may not poison you.  If you're stopped from going full zombie, you return to normal.  Why are the aliens stealing people?  Well, you don't find out at first, but at the end you learn why.  The aliens - and you're gonna love this - are here to EAT OUR BRAINS.  Yes.  They're here for BRAINS.  Of course, we never really get to see much beyond this one high-rise so really exactly what effect these alien invaders have on the rest of the world is something of a mystery.  No, you don't see the President reacting to the attack or the soldiers on the ground preparing the counterattack, the only people this movie cares about are the pile of Hollywood jerks and the other oddballs they run into.  Actually this movie weirdly takes a lot of cues from Zombie films.  The survivors are debating if one character is infected or not, they're planning an escape, wondering if they could be safe in the penthouse, etc.  This is like "Alien of the Dead".  Meanwhile outside all this awesome stuff is happening.  Who thought that having an alien invasion movie have 90% of its action in one room was a good idea?

Things only start getting interesting towards the end when the main characters' brain is eaten (spoiler).  Of course, his brain is too "spicy" (the movie shows it being bright red) and he manages to take over an alien body and then save his girlfriend.  Its an interesting twist... but then the movie ends right at the very second that it could have been original in some place.  The very second I'm wondering where this movie could go, end credits roll.

"Skyline" was made for only twenty million dollars and it shows.  It doesn't show in the CG effects, which are amazing, but it shows in the whole feel of the film.  I've never really bought this claim that rampant CG has ruined filmmaking, because if something looks good it looks good, that's it.  I don't really care if the actor was actually talking to a tennis ball on a string, just as long as Yoda pops up at the end.  But in this movie the actors never really interact with the aliens.  They're always off in the background, sometimes throwing tentacles to eat one of them.  It all feels very fake.  I know for a fact that this movie was just filmed in the apartment complex a Strauss Brother lives for like three days and afterwards the CG guys did everything.  When aliens actually hit a wall or something, you can tell the dent it makes is fake, thrown in Photoshop in post-production.  They didn't have the budget to actually smash a set.  There's an amazing fighter jet battle stolen straight out of "Independence Day" but not one pilot shows up because I don't think they could have even built a fake cockpit for an actor to pretend to fly a plane within.  Its incredible that CG has become so cheap that even small productions can get amazing effects, but it shouldn't be the whole movie.  This movie feels cheap.  It gets worse when supposedly a nuclear bomb goes off in LA, and yet the high-rise is completely untouched by any shockwave.  You mean they couldn't even have the windows shatter?  They don't even give us much a shake.  This feels less like a movie and more like a daydream I would have while bored on summer vacation.  And my daydreams were better written than this!

By the way, during the plane battle, I did say aloud:  "Eagle 20, Fox 3!"  I just started quoting "Independence Day" lines to myself for like five minutes.  That was fun.  I wish more of this movie was a carbon copy of "ID4", because that movie was awesome!  This... isn't.

The only thing that's really fun about "Skyline" is trying to find how many details are rip-offs from other films.  So in that vein, let me begin:

WHAT IS "SKYLINE" RIPPING OFF NOW?

1. "Independence Day":  Aliens invade with huge floating ships that have tons of little ships that fight American air armadas over major metropolitan areas.  The aliens also use bright glowing lights as an attack.  As some kind of reference, the movie even clearly shows us the US Bank Tower, the same skyscraper the aliens blew up in "ID4".  Also, they try to nuke*** the space ships and it doesn't work.  Aliens also attack cities all around the world at the same time.

2. "War of the Worlds":  The humans get sucked into the alien spaceship to be harvested as food, specifically their BRAINS.  Plus there's a scene where the aliens use tentacles to feel around if the humans are hiding, total rip-off of the basement scene from the earlier movie.

3. "Cloverfield":  The movie starts with a party filled with annoying characters which is interrupted by a monster appearing.  Rather than seeing the entire event, we stick with the annoying characters.  At times the movie even seems to use shaky-cam POV for no reason.  The army fights the monsters in the streets with jeeps and machine guns, to no effect.

4. "District 9":  The main character turns into an alien after being exposed to an alien virus or something.  Keeps his own free will.

5. "The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy":  Completely ripping off the plot of one of their episodes, "Little Rock of Horrors" in which Billy finds a meteorite alien and feeds it BRAINS until Mandy gets fed up with it and attacks.  She has her brain eaten, but then she takes over the alien because her brain is too "spicy".

And there's probably tons more that I missed.  If you want, feel free to tell me in the comments as to what other movies the Strauss Bros. decided to steal from.  I'd love to see the complete list one day.

So that's "Skyline", honestly ultimately a really boring movie.  This is like an experiment:  how much can amazing visual effects stand on their own without the rest of the movie to back them up?  Turns out that it isn't very far.  I was checking my watch in between the parts that ripped-off "Independence Day".  Don't see this, just see rent "ID4".  There's no reason to accept substitutes.  Its just a pointless alien movie, probably will generate a profit and might get a sequel, but who cares?  I wasted too much time on this crap already.  In twenty years, nobody will remember "Skyline", it will just be another film in this blog's archive.  But as for "Independence Day" that is an immortal classic.

"BRAINS, BRAINS, I won't lie, I'll eat their brains 'til they're zombified. Sure they might think it's deranged But they won't give it a thought After I've eaten their brain!"

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* "War of the Worlds", by the way, was partially filmed in my hometown.  The bridge that gets destroyed was actually the bridge I commuted over to go to Middle School.  I could even show you guys the house where Tom Cruise's character lived.  Fun note:  the production guys did some camera crane testing down the street from my house.  Those were awesome times.  Too bad the movie sucked.

** The movie never says the word "alien" throughout the entire running time, which is just stupid.  They're obliviously aliens!  Brothers Strauss, what the heck are you playing at now?  What else would the cast think they are?  Is Jigsaw actually driving the mothership?  Is this actually the final climax that "Saw 3D" lacked?  Just call them "aliens", don't pretend like this isn't a cheesy SciFi movie.  Your plot could have been a SciFi Channel original movie, don't get coy with me.

*** For some bizarre reason the US military decides to send in a stealth bomber to shoot a nuclear missile right at the space ship.  Of course, that's not how you use a stealth bomber.  Its supposed to be stealthy, as in the aliens can't see it.  You don't fly it right at their nose.  You wait until nighttime, fly a mile above it and drop a nuke right at them.  For that matter, why not just launch a missile?  Why bother with an air armada at all?  Were you that desperate to rip-off "ID4", movie?