Skyline (film)

Skyline
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Brothers Strause
Produced by	Brothers Strause Kristian Andresen Liam O'Donnell Brett Ratner
Written by	Joshua Cordes Liam O'Donnell
Starring	Eric Balfour Scottie Thompson Brittany Daniel Donald Faison David Zayas Crystal Reed
Music by	Matthew Margeson
Cinematography	Michael Watson
Editing by	Nicholas Wayman-Harris
Studio	Rogue Hydraulx Entertainment
Distributed by	Relativity Media through Universal Pictures Momentum/Paramount (UK) Hopscotch Films (Australia & New Zealand)
Release date(s)	November 11, 2010 (2010-11-11) (Australia) November 12, 2010 (2010-11-12) (United States)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10–20 million
Box office	$67,520,213

Skyline is a 2010 alien invasion science fiction film directed and produced by the Brothers Strause, directors of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. The film was released on November 12, 2010. It stars Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Donald Faison, and David Zayas. The Brothers Strause asserted before the film's release that Skyline would be the first film in a series, which would include at least one other film.

Plot

Jarrod (Eric Balfour), an artist, and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson) have flown to Los Angeles for Jarrod's best friend Terry's (Donald Faison) birthday party. They spend the night celebrating with Terry's girlfriend, Candice (Brittany Daniel), and his assistant, Denise (Crystal Reed). During the party, one of Terry's employees, Ray (Neil Hopkins), welcomes Jarrod to L.A., thinking he has moved there to join Terry's special effects company. During a private argument about whether or not they should move to L.A., Elaine reveals that she is pregnant.

Early the next morning, bright blue lights descend from the sky, entrancing anyone who looks at them. The light turns their eyes milky white and makes blood vessels stand out on the skin. Captive in the light, immobilized humans are taken up by the machines. Ray suffers this fate, but Jarrod is saved when Terry tackles him. Jarrod returns to normal shortly after. He and Terry decide to investigate the light from the roof of the highrise, where they see several alien ships descend over the blue lights and vacuum up thousands of entranced people. Locked out on the roof, they are almost captured by flying machines, but Elaine opens the door from inside. She is temporarily mesmerized, but Jarrod saves her.

Back in the apartment Jarrod argues that open water would be a safer place than Terry's condo since there are no machines over the sea, so they attempt to reach the marina by car, splitting into two groups: Terry and Denise in one car, Candice, Jarrod, and Elaine in the other. On the way out they meet an arguing couple, Colin (J. Paul Boehmer) and Jen (Tanya Newbould), also attempting to flee the building. Terry's car is the first to leave, but is stomped flat in the exit by a massive walking lifeform. Denise is killed, but Terry escapes. As he attempts to flee into the garage, he is abducted. The survivors flee into the garage where they encounter a squid-like lifeform and it takes Colin. It corners the rest of the group, then suddenly the building's concierge, Oliver (David Zayas), slams into it with an SUV. Colin is still alive inside the 'squid.' As Jen and Oliver attempt to free him, the machine comes to life again, sucks out Colin's brain, and inserts the organ into its head, regaining its energy. As the five flee back into the building, Jen is quickly abducted.

The next day, the United States Air Force launches an attack on the spaceships using X-47B with a fighter screen of MQ-9 Reaper aircraft armed with Longbow Hellfire missiles. Only one X-47B gets through, and shoots an AGM-129A missile with a W80-1 nuclear warhead at the mothership just as it is destroyed. The detonation rips the ship apart and it falls, but as the mushroom cloud later clears it then slowly begins to repair itself. After telling only Elaine that the mesmerizing light made him feel powerful and that he still has that power, Jarrod becomes adamant that safety must be found outside. Oliver wants to stay in and tries to restrain him. Jarrod's eyes turn milky and his veins start to show again: he lifts Oliver off the floor one-handed. He vows that no one will stop him from protecting his family.

Military helicopters come in and insert squads of soldiers in multicam uniforms. Jarrod and Elaine go to the roof hoping to ride a helicopter to safety. Oliver and Candice still hide in the penthouse, but they are found. Candice accidentally exposes herself to the blue light and is absorbed; Oliver sacrifices himself and attempts to kill an alien by turning on a gas stove and igniting a lighter, causing the room to explode along with Oliver and the alien. (It is later revealed that the alien was simply burnt badly but not dead). The army is thrown off the roof by the aliens and one of the squid-like alien lifeforms attacks Jarrod and Elaine. Together, they kill it, but with Jarrod badly hurt, both are hopelessly trapped when the aliens have defeated the military and begin approaching them. Resigned to their fate, they look up into the blue light, embrace and are sucked up.

A brief montage shows that cities such as New York City, London, Hong Kong, and Las Vegas have all been attacked and the aliens appear to have won. Inside the alien spacecraft, Elaine wakes up in an eerie blue gloom on a gory pile of lifeless human bodies. Tubes are sucking human brains into machine husks with humanoid exterior, animating them; probes go through the pile looking for what they can find. Elaine sees Jarrod in the pile but has to watch helplessly as his brain is removed from his head. She herself is spared when a probe finds that she is pregnant. Elaine is transported to another chamber where all the pregnant human women are being sent and Jarrod's brain, glowing red in all of the blue, is inserted into a humanoid.

Animating the alien body, Jarrod seems to retain control, and comes to the aid of Elaine and their unborn child. The movie ends with a series of still images between the credits that depict "Jarrod" protecting Elaine and their child from other aliens. Eventually "Jarrod" defeats them, picks his girlfriend up, and runs off with her.

Cast

• Eric Balfour as Jarrod
• Scottie Thompson as Elaine
• Brittany Daniel as Candice
• Crystal Reed as Denise
• Neil Hopkins as Ray
• David Zayas as Oliver
• Donald Faison as Terry
• Tanya Newbould as Jen
• J. Paul Boehmer as Colin

Production

The project began filming in Marina Del Rey in February 2010 through March 31. Most of the action was shot in the high-rise condo in which Greg Strause lives.

The physical production only cost $500,000. With all the visual effects the total budget was around $10–20 million.

On November 11, 2010, producer Brett Ratner said on the Opie and Anthony Show that the film cost $10 million to make. The Brothers Strause insist that they will film a sequel with their own money and try to find a distributor to release it.

Legal action from Sony

In August 2010 it was reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment was contemplating legal action against Greg and Colin Strause, the directors of Skyline and the owners of Hydraulx Filmz. Sony paid Hydraulx to generate visual effects work for Battle: Los Angeles. But Hydraulx never informed Sony the siblings were directing a rival alien invasion feature, similarly driven by special effects, scheduled for release four months prior to Sony's feature. A rep for the Strauses issued a statement: "Any claims of impropriety are completely baseless. This is a blatant attempt by Sony to force these independent filmmakers to move a release date that has long been set by Universal and Relativity and is outside the filmmakers' control".

On March 17, 2011, Sony released a statement dismissing its arbitration against Hydraulx and the Strause Brothers citing that after the discovery phase they were satisfied that none of the Battle: Los Angeles visual effects were used in Skyline. The Strause Brothers stated, “We’re glad to put this behind us. We’ve been honored to work on several wonderful SPE projects in the past and look forward to future collaborations.”

Music

Composer Matthew Margeson is a colleague of Brian Tyler, who served as one of the film's executive producers.

Skyline: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Film score by Matthew Margeson
Released	November 16, 2010
Length	52:26
Label	Varèse Sarabande

Track listing

All music composed by Matthew Margeson.

Skyline: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Don't Look Up"	1:40
2.	"Abduction"	3:29
3.	"The Escape"	3:32
4.	"Ship Down"	2:12
5.	"Skyline"	2:39
6.	"They're Not Dead"	5:02
7.	"Make a Run for It"	6:15
8.	"The Cavalry"	2:41
9.	"Arrival"	3:41
10.	"The Resurrection"	2:17
11.	"Final Battle"	3:14
12.	"Jarrod is Changing"	3:50
13.	"Vaya Con Dios"	1:28
14.	"Loss of a Friend"	3:58
15.	"Inside the Ship"	4:33
16.	"Damage Control"	1:55
17.	"Iowa" (From the Slipknot album Iowa only used in the trailer)	15:05

Release

The film was released on November 12, 2010 in North America and November 11 in Australia, and is distributed by Universal Pictures. Following the theatrical release, the movie will run on Netflix. A trailer was released August 13 and attached to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Devil. The second trailer was released on September 29 and then attached to My Soul to Take on October 15. Another trailer was also attached to Paranormal Activity 2. The trailer has also been attached to Red and Jackass 3D in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Reception

Critical response

Skyline was not screened to critics prior to its release in the United States, and the reviews upon its release were largely negative. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 15% based on 67 reviews, with an average score of 3.5/10. Similarly, Metacritic rated the film with a score of 26 out of 100, based on 18 critics. Writing in Variety, Joe Leydon panned the film: "Imagine a Kmart mash-up of Transformers and Independence Day and you're appropriately primed for Skyline, an underwhelming and derivative sci-fi thriller that's only marginally more impressive than a run-of-the-mill SyFy Channel telepic." Michael Philips of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the "effects are pretty good, on a fairly limited budget. And that's about all you can say for Skyline." Screen Rant's Ben Kendrick wrote that the film "comes across as a big-screen B-movie with a convoluted plot and too limited of a scope to make the audience feel the worldwide alien-apocalypse that’s supposedly unfolding in the film". In the New York Times, Mike Hale concluded, "it turns out that all the running and hiding and chopping (there’s an axe) was beside the point, which is the sort of thing that can make you angry if you care about the characters, but in this case is kind of a relief."

However, there were positive reviews, including Matthew Sorrento's at Film Threat, who commented, "Skyline, if not always successful, refashions the modern alien invasion motif as the hopeless siege that it should be." Kim Newman from Empire Magazine also endorsed the film, writing, "... delivers all the Saturday night whiz-bang and Sunday morning brain-ripping you could want." Perhaps most positive was The Sun's Alex Zane, who exclaimed, "while it starts out as just a Cloverfield/Independence Day pastiche, this turns into something almost brilliant."

Box office

Skyline opened on November 12, 2010 and grossed $4,752,000 on that opening day. By November 14, the film had grossed $11,678,000 and had made number four for the weekend, behind Megamind's second #1 opening, Unstoppable, and Due Date. As of December 11 the film had made $21,393,620 in the United States and $43,677,358 internationally for a worldwide total of $73,950,941.

Home media

Skyline was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 22, 2011.

External links

• Official website
• Skyline at the Internet Movie Database
• Skyline at Box Office Mojo
• Skyline at Rotten Tomatoes