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Skyline (grading & discussion)

Rate 'Skyline'

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Ethros

Ethros

Vice Admiral
Admiral
The latest alien invasion movie, Skyline, is out today

After a night of partying, a group of friends are distracted when beams of light awaken everyone in Los Angeles, that then attract every person like a moth to a flame. As the night progresses, they soon discover that once exposed to the light, they vanish into thin air, caused by extraterrestrial forces that later threaten to swallow the entire human species
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skyline.jpg



I've just got home from seeing it this afternoon...

Hmm... hardly a classic. Crap characters and dialogue. All the main character were basically a bunch of pricks. Pretty poor plot, didn't what the hell was going on most of the time, basically its an excuse for monsters go smash smash. And the ending, the last couple of minutes or so, wtf? I don't know if it was setting up a sequel or not but if it is that'll be a weird film
 
I wanted to see this, but the near-universal terrible reviews have changed my mind...anyone want to spoil the big WTF ending in spoiler code for me? :)
 
I wouldn't say it was terrible. The effects and the alien/monsters were great, and the aerial battle of the military jets vs the alien shps was awesome. But overall it was very meh. Don't think I would bother watching it again
 
ParticleMan said:
I wanted to see this, but the near-universal terrible reviews have changed my mind...anyone want to spoil the big WTF ending in spoiler code for me? :)
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Basically it was more eyerolly than wtf. Guy built up a resistance to the light over the course of the film, and at the end the aliens take his brain and use it in one of their bodies and he takes control and goes on a rampage to save his girlfriend.

Just got back from seeing it. It is a very meh film. Not really terrible but not really worth seeing either. Between the scene near the end where they kiss and the end of the film my eyes almost fell out of my head from too much rolling.
 
^ re: the spoiler: that's lame. What with all those bodies floating upwards, I was hoping for something much kinkier. :devil:
 
Pretty much what I expected out of this film so I'll give it a pretty good.
 
This sounds like a spiritual sequel to Dragon Wars. Of course, I kinda liked Dragon Wars, if only for the cgi action :p
 
Skyline

Rated: PG-13

My Grade: .... C- Generously

--------------------------------------------

Ugh. Take one part "Independence Day", one part "Cloverfield" and two or three parts of pretty much every SciFi/SkFy Channel movie of the week and you get this movie.

There's a lot of potential here. It's all wasted on bullshit, not capitalized on or simply wasted. Then this movie has a complete abortion of an ending. Ugh.

Things start off promising enough... sort of. But it also starts off with many of the movie's mistakes. We start off at night in an Los Angeles where a series of blue-white lights descend on the city, the lights shine into a penthouse waking up our "star couple." They're drawn in by it, eerie stuff happens, another occupant of place disappears and our male-lead (Milo from 24) starts getting white-eyes and darkened veins as he looks into this light. Flashback to 18 hours earlier as Milo and his girlfriend are arriving in L.A. to visit a friend, parties, drinks, plot development that ultimately leads to nowhere and we're back to where we started. Milo's quickly taken out of his trance when he's taken away from the light and then our "story" begins. Which is mostly our cast pickering in the penthouse, hooking up with a building attendant who provides our "person of antagonism", more bickering in the apartment, some nifty FX/fight shots. More bickering in the apartment, more fights and a clumbsy, clunky, ending.

There's nothing at all here to watch! The special effects are good, there's some interesting ideas here but it is all wasted on an abortion of an ending. Ugh.

Special effects are good and there's an interesting premise here but the movie wastes it on bullshit and cliches making it difficult to tell if this movie wanted us to take it seriously or a s a tongue-in-cheek take on this genre of film. Where we supposed to be asking questions and salivating for a sequel? Or was the ending supposed to satisfy us with a conclusion?

The movie focuses entirely on our out-of-the-loop characters (providing our part Cloverfield) which is fine and good and there's even some potential plot points thrown out there but then half of them are eliminated in character deaths and then false tension is injected with a character who butts heads with the "hero." What may have helped this movie was if... Sigh. If it was a little bit longer, some bullshit is taken out and some interesting stuff put in. At one point the military arrives to attack the aliens and it seems to even rescue or "heroes" and at this point you think they'll be pulled into "more of the thick of things" but such ideas are quickly killed. Once we're in the final few minutes it really seems like we're going to get into things but then the movie ends in the middle of a large development.

Ugh.

This movie is not worth seeing in the theaters.

This movie is not worth seeing on video.

This movie might be worth seeing on TV. Might.

The movie will be worth seeing with Rifftrax.

Don't waste your time.

I only gave it such a "high" grade because lower grades I reserve for movies that are far worse. I rarely hand out D's (the only D that stands out in my recent memory was the sense-rape that was "Transformers 2") this movie almost deserves one but there's an ounce of two of potential here in the name of eye candy, special effects and maybe a hint of concept. A concept that is wasted.
 
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Have had no desire whatsoever to see this film and from the limited reviews so far looks like I will be passing on this.
 
Not so much.


Not even Scottie Thompson running around in tank tops can compensate for the horrendously stupid ending.
 
Admiral2 said:
Not so much.


Not even Scottie Thompson running around in tank tops can compensate for the horrendously stupid ending.
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I'm not sure a better ending would've really saved this (even though the ending was incredibly lame). The whole movie was just wasted junk. About the only coolest part was the aerial battle between the military and the aliens followed by one of the better movie representations of a nuke going off. But, just, ugh.

If they kept Scottie Thompson in the boy-shorts I might be inclined to rate this movie better.

So the landlord/building attendant guy who wanted to stay in the condo. What was his plan to stay in there after the nuke going off (radiation) and, you know, the fact that they had no water!
 
Trekker4747 said:
We start off at night in an Los Angeles
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^

That in and of itself is the first mistake. Nothing good can come from that.

As far as the rest... I have no desire to see this. I might have been inclined to enjoy it on no more than a "B-movie" level, but after seeing it compared to the utter shitstink that was Cloverfield, I think I'll pass.
 
I wanted to see how $10 million is spent onscreen.

I understand it went pretty much to the effects....and not the script....direction...or acting.

I will be waiting for the DVD rental.
 
The effects in the movie are very, very good. As realistic as can be seen although I think the explosions had a fake/too orange look to them many explosions had in the mid/late-90s with the early days of CGI. But the explosion when a nuke detonates is pretty awesome.

This movie and "District 9" I think shows how great effects can look on a low budget. Unfortunately a bit more money needed to be spent on story and plot. The actors themselves, heck, are okay. There's even some decent elements of "plot" there but it's all wasted or injected with bullshit. If the "Brothers Strause" are going to give themselves such a pretentious name like that they better fucking deliver. They can deliver effects, awesome, but considering their two major directorial outings (one of the AVP movies and now Skyline) are major nut-shots with a poison-tainted mace they can't get away with such stuff.

They need to write better, more interesting, stories. But, fuck, it's never a good sign when a movie is not screened for critics.

And really this movie would simply just be "bad" if it wasn't for the fucking ending which bumps this thing into "terrible" territory. The ending obviously done just to set-up a sequel. And considering the movies budget was around $10m and that it made around $11m domestically this weekend a sequel would probably be financially worthwhile for the studio and/or investors. Ugh. Is all I'll say.

That's all this movie is. Just one. Big. UGH!
 
Mildly diverting, looked good... naught but a pretty trifle. I cared more about the characters than in Cloverfield, but that's not hard. :D


...and I'm fairly sure you can't fly a stealth bomber like that. :lol:
 
I subjected a buddy to this, and I've apologized several times since.

However, there's a chance that this movie was a commentary on special effects movies in general. "Look into the light and you'll get sucked in" can be taken as a jaded look at movies like Avatar.

As Trekker4747 says, the special effects are very good and perfectly blended in with the live action elements, but these days that's pretty common. I'm more interested now in exciting new visions brought to life with these special effects. The beast in Cloverfield was scary looking. The mechanoid/critters in Skyline didn't seem terribly original, combining elements of the machine squids from the Matrix with the aliens from Independence Day and a lot of blue lights.

The aliens also seemed magically unstoppable, and the early attack where the population of LA is nearly consumed by their attraction to the aliens' lights made me wonder if this was some sort of take on the Christian rapture -- a concept that might have made this sorry waste a bit more palatable if angelic collection of immortal souls took on a hellish twist.

But there was no such boldness of vision in evidence on the screen. Like Cloverfield, the main characters weren't in the loop at all, but they had a conveniently comprehensive view of the invasion from the penthouse suite of their luxury high-rise. So while the Cloverfield beast rampaged in obscurity while the cast and audience only caught spooky glimpses of the horror, the aliens in Skyline ran amok under telescopic observation (literally) and in full detail.

The movie had its surprise moments, but almost all of them were in the commercials, so you always know what's coming. And it doesn't ever make it outside of the high rise until the very end, making the whole thing seem horribly claustrophobic. The aliens needed periodic lulls to allow the main characters to get out and explore the city more.

If this had been a YouTube video, it would have earned a lot more interest. But after paying a lot of money for something that I'm used to seeing for almost free on SciFi Saturdays, this film deserves the worst score possible.

It's worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space ... but don't take that as any sort of encouragement.

EDIT TO ADD:
Klaus, that wasn't a stealth bomber. It was a stealth drone. This and the use of armed Predator drones was the only thing about the movie that I really liked. The military hammered the bad guys without pause right from the start. Although, predictably, with little effect.
 
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