Sky High (2005 film)

Sky High
Directed by	Mike Mitchell
Written by	Paul Hernandez Robert Schooley Mark McCorkle
Produced by	Andrew Gunn
Starring	Michael Angarano Kurt Russell Kelly Preston Danielle Panabaker Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Cinematography	Shelly Johnson
Edited by	Peter Amundson
Music by	Michael Giacchino
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Release dates	July 29, 2005
Running time	102 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35 million

Sky High is a superhero film from Walt Disney Pictures that opened in the United States on July 29, 2005. It was directed by Mike Mitchell and was written by Paul Hernandez, Robert Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

Plot

Sky High is the story of fourteen-year-old William Theodore Stronghold (Michael Angarano), the son of two famous superheroes: Steve Stronghold, a.k.a. the incredibly strong, seemingly invulnerable Commander (Kurt Russell), and the high-speed flying Jetstream (Kelly Preston). However, Will does not actually know if he has any powers of his own, and has not told his parents this. He and his best friend, Layla (Danielle Panabaker) are facing their first day of high school, which is even more daunting for Will since he will attend his parents' alma mater, a school for superheroes called Sky High. Along with other super-powered teenagers, Will and Layla are driven to school in a flying schoolbus piloted by a man named Ron Wilson (Kevin Heffernan). When the kids arrive, they are accosted by two bullies, Speed (Will Harris) and Lash (Jake Sandvig) but are saved by the interference of School Committee President Gwen Grayson (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her friend Penny (Malika and Khadijah Haqq); Will immediately develops a crush on Gwen. Will's parents, in the meantime, defeat a giant robot, and his father takes its eye as a trophy.

After a welcoming speech given by Principal Powers (Lynda Carter), the kids go through "Power Placement", a process used by Sky High to determine if students will go into the 'Hero' class or the 'Sidekick' class. The kids have to demonstrate their powers, and Coach Boomer (Bruce Campbell) will decide if they are hero material or a sidekick. Will does not know what his power is, and attempts to explain this to the coach, but Boomer will not listen and Will almost gets flattened by a car, then thrown into a concrete beam during the test; the school nurse, Nurse Spex (Cloris Leachman) explains to him during his examination that his powers may be latent, or they may never surface. Ron Wilson is an example of a child's powers never surfacing. Will is relegated to the school's "sidekick program" (or, as it is called, "Hero Support") which happens to be taught by his father's old sidekick, All-American Boy (Dave Foley). Layla refuses to have her powers tested and is also relegated to the same class. There, the two meet and quickly befriend other kids with seemingly useless powers: Zack (Nicholas Braun), who can glow in the dark; Magenta (Kelly Vitz) who can shapeshift into a guinea pig, and Ethan (Dee Jay Daniels), who can melt into a puddle. They also meet the "Mad Science" teacher, Mr. Medulla (Kevin McDonald), after an accidental lab explosion.

Coming home, Will doesn't dare to tell his parents he is a sidekick. Steve gives him access to the "Secret Sanctum" below their house, where he shows off his trophy collection, in particular a weapon known as The Pacifier, once used by his armored nemesis, Royal Pain. The weapon broke during the fight, seemingly disintegrating the villain. The Commander never figured out what the weapon could do. During Steve's conversation with Will, two unseen villains spy on them using the giant robot's eye.

When Will invites his friends over, Steve comments on their powers, and Will confesses the truth about his lack of powers to his parents. They try to be supportive, but are still visibly disappointed.

At school, the sidekicks dodge taunts and jeers by their "hero" colleagues. Matters worsen when, at lunch, Will is knocked onto pyrokinetic Warren Peace (Steven Strait), whose villain father was imprisoned by the Commander ("quadruple life sentence, no hope of parole till after his third life"). The two engage in a lunchroom brawl, during which Will suddenly gains his father's super strength. Principal Powers eventually intervenes and gives the two students detention in a room that neutralizes all superpowers. Will tries to make amends with Warren, who just shrugs him off and threatens him.

Now that he has a superpower, Will is promoted to hero class. Gwen begins romantically pursuing him, and Layla, who has had a crush on Will since they became friends, becomes understandably jealous. Will offers to take Layla to dinner at a Chinese restaurant and she agrees. But when Will gets home, Gwen is waiting for him. Gwen meets his parents and invites them to receive a special award at the homecoming dance. She also gets Will to agree to take her as his date to the dance. Unfortunately, Gwen's appearance makes Will forget the date he had with Layla, who ends up sitting alone at the restaurant. She meets Warren, who works there, and he advises her to tell Will the truth of her feelings for him. She tries to tell Will the next day but changes her mind when Will, still oblivious to Layla's feelings for him, tells her about his homecoming date with Gwen. She decides to ask Warren to be her date to the dance in order to make Will jealous, and Warren agrees.

One night, while his parents are out on a mission, Gwen persuades Will to invite the homecoming committee to his house, which ends up becoming a party after she invites the whole Hero class. She convinces Will to take her to the Sanctum to kiss, and he doesn't notice when the Pacifier disappears. When Layla walks by Will's house and, noticing the noise, arrives at the party, Gwen tells her that Will doesn't want to even be her friend, so she leaves. When Will finds out what happened, he breaks up with Gwen and tries to end the party, but is caught by his parents. After the "Hero" class clears out, Will decides not to go to the homecoming dance at all, much to the chagrin of his parents. He calls Layla and asks her in a message to meet him at the Chinese restaraunt, but she does not show up. Instead, Warren sits down with Will and informs him that Layla likes him.

When homecoming night arrives, Will entertains himself by looking through his parents' old yearbook, and realizes that Gwen looks just like Sue Tenny, an old classmate of his parents. Sue Tenny was a nerdy girl whose power - technopathy, the same power as Gwen's - was not seen as "important" in her day, and she was relegated to sidekick class. She ran away from home and school due to the lack of appreciation for her powers. Noticing that the Pacifier is gone, Will comes to a sudden realization, and calls Ron to take him to the school. Before the two arrive, Gwen reveals to the people at the dance that she is Royal Pain, a.k.a. Sue Tenny. After leaving school, Sue developed the Pacifier, a device that turns adults into babies, and became Royal Pain. The Pacifier's explosion had transformed her into a baby, who was rescued by her sidekick, Stitches (Jim Rash). After Stitches raised her from her second childhood, she took her Gwen identity to infiltrate the school once she was old enough again. She then dons her Royal Pain costume and begins her attack, turning The Commander and Jetstream into babies. With help from Penny, Lash and Speed, who were her partners from the start, she turns most of the rest of the student body and the teachers into infants, with the exceptions of Zack, Ethan, Magenta, Warren, and Layla, who escape. Royal Pain's plan is to raise all the babies to be super villains. Layla, Warren, Ethan, Zack and Magenta meet up with Will. They decide to send him to battle Royal Pain while they deal with the other super-villains. They defeat their nemeses, and Penny informs Layla that the school will fall from the sky in ten minutes due to a device Gwen/Sue planted. They send Magenta down a tiny corridor in guinea pig form to find and disarm the device. Meanwhile, Will gets knocked out of the school by Gwen, but he discovers, conveniently enough, that he can also fly and returns to defeat her. She activates the device early and the school almost crashes to the ground before Magenta gnaws the device's wires off.

Afterwards, Medula, who is still highly intelligent even in baby form, helps reverse the Pacifier and everyone is turned back into adults/teenagers. The Commander gives his award to the sidekicks, finally admitting that they are heroes too. Then the homecoming dance continues, and Will and Layla hold each other as the two kiss in the sky.

In the end, the villains are seen in the Detention Room, with all powers nullified. Will then makes the closing statement that: "My girlfriend became my arch-enemy, my arch-enemy became my best friend, and my best friend became my girlfriend. But hey, that's high school." Will also revealed that Ron had obtained powers after falling into a vat of radioactive waste.

Character histories

Students

Similar to the Power Rangers series, the students' civilian clothing throughout the film consistently matches particular color schemes, perhaps foreshadowing their future hero costumes.

• Michael Angarano as William "Will" Theodore Stronghold: Will is a freshman at Sky High. His parents are the two most famous superheroes of the day, the Commander and Jetstream. He is anxious at the outset of the film because he has no superpowers yet, which changes when he first develops super-strength and then flight. Near the end of the film when a few other characters battle each other, Will fights with Royal Pain and wins. His clothes are primarily red, white, and blue.
• Danielle Panabaker as Layla Williams: Will and Layla have known each other since first grade, when she told him that she could control (and speak to) plants; they have been best friends ever since. She is a pacifist and a vegan. She also has a crush on Will, which she covered up at the beginning of the film. Layla does not believe in using her plant manipulating power unless the situation demands it (although this seems to conflict with her casual use of her powers at the beginning of the movie, and later-on when she made a flower droop in the Paper Lantern). Her clothes are primarily green and light green. During the final battle she takes on Penny but refuses to use her powers even when Penny taunts her because of her pacifist nature; but when Penny hits her, it angers her enough that she invokes her powers and easily defeats Penny by wrapping her up in vines.
• Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwen Grayson (Royal Pain / Sue Tenney): A senior at Sky High; Will has a crush on her. Her true name is Sue Tenny. She is a straight-A student and a technopath, and she shows a mean streak towards Will's friends. However, she is, in fact, the Stronghold family's nemesis the Royal Pain, who was laughed off a generation ago as the prototypical school geek despite her skills as a technopath. During a fight with the Commander and Jetstream, her signature weapon, the Pacifier, malfunctioned and exploded, causing her to revert to a baby. Taken in and re-raised by her own sidekick, she creates a new identity as Gwen Grayson, and re-enrolls at Sky High, intent on finally putting her nefarious scheme to create an evil academy into action, as revenge against the Commander and Jetstream. She nearly succeeds, but Will's friends stop her minions and Ron Wilson, Bus Driver stops her sidekick from escaping with all of the babies. She fights Will, and almost wins after she punches him through a window, but ultimately is the loser when he discovers he has the power to fly and she is defeated and subsequently arrested. Her clothes are primarily pink, purple and gray. While wearing her Royal Pain armor, Gwen's voice is heavily distorted into a bass tone (performed by Patrick Warburton) similar to Anakin Skywalker wearing his Darth Vader armor.
• Steven Strait as Warren Peace: Warren is the son of an unnamed superheroine and a supervillain known as Baron Battle (whom the Commander put in prison; Warren therefore initially considered Will his archenemy). Warren is the quintessential rebel and a pyrokinetic. Brooding at school but more bearable outside, from the way he interacted with Will and Layla while working at the paper lantern. He eventually becomes good friends with Will and the others. He works at the Paper Lantern Chinese Restaurant, and can somewhat speak in Cantonese. His name is obviously a play on War and Peace. It was his aggression towards Will that accidentally allowed the latter to gain, for the very first time, access over his abilities. The two were later paired to a Save the Citizen after Lash and Speed challenged them (and consented by Boomer), knowing that all hell will break loose if those two were in the same team. Things didn't go quite as expected and Warren and Will became the first to defeat Lash and Speed. Warren fights Speed toward the end of the film and wins. His clothes are primarily black, with hints of red. He may also be indestructable as he was able to take at least two superpowered punches from Will, get knocked into a beam and thrown through several walls and pillars and get back up like it never happened. If that was the case then he may be the first superpowered teen to exhibit more than one supernatural ability before Will. He was last seen taking the hand of a blond-haired girl who appears to have cryokinetic powers as her hand glowed with the said energy. He summoned up some of his own flames and doused them into her hand before asking her to dance with him
• Dee Jay Daniels as Ethan: A Hero Support who is friends with Will, he can melt into a small puddle (which earned him the nickname "Popsicle"). He is often the butt of practical jokes, like getting his head dunked in the toilet by Lash and Speed, although he does fight Lash in the climax and wins. His clothes are primarily orange.
• Kelly Vitz as Magenta/Maj: Will's friend whose ability is to shapeshift into a guinea pig complete with purple highlights/streaks in her fur- she has purple highlights in her hair normally. She does not like to be pushed around. Her clothes, as well as her guinea pig form, are primarily purple and black. In the final battle she disables the jammer on the gravity drive in her guinea pig form, saving the school.
• Nicholas Braun as Zach Braun/Zach Attack: Will's spacey friend, who has the ability to glow - in the dark. His power actually proved useful when he, Warren, Layla, Magenta, and Ethan made their way though the vents since Warren couldn't use his powers to light up their way without igniting the rest of the vicinity and burn them alive in the process. He has a crush on Magenta. His clothes are primarily white and neon yellow.
• Malika and Khadijah Haqq as Penny: Gwen's best friend who can replicate herself and is therefore the entire cheerleading team. She, along with Lash and Speed, eventually were a part of Gwen Grayson/Sue Tenny/Royal Pain's plan. In the latter half of the film, she and Layla fight. At first Penny seems to have the uppers hand, trapping Layla into a corner. But she loses when she angers Layla by hitting her, and Layla responds by making the plants outside a nearby window attack Penny and her doppelgangers. She, along with Royal Pain, Lash, and Speed are sent to the detention center in the end. Her clothes are primarily orange and blue. Throughout the film they resemble cheerleading uniforms.
• Jake Sandvig as Lash: One of the resident bullies at Sky High. He and best friend Speed love tormenting the sidekicks and anyone else with no apparent powers. His superpower is his elasticity and he is, logically, champion of the game Save the Citizen, along with Speed, until Will and Warren break the records. His clothes consistently feature black and white striped arms. He is defeated by Ethan at the end when Ethan tricks him and then flushes his head down a toilet and it gets stuck there.
• Will Harris as Speed: Lash's best friend, who joins him in his bullying and is always his partner in the game Save the Citizen. He, despite being heavyset, has super-speed. His clothes consistently feature black and white, similar to Lash. It takes both Warren and Ethan to defeat him in the end because his super-speed gives him an advantage, allowing him to dodge Warren's fireballs. He loses when Ethan melts in front of him causing him to slip and go sliding down the hall, out of control. Warren finishes him off by hitting him with a fireball, sending him head first into a wall.

Adults

• Kurt Russell as Steve Stronghold/The Commander: Will's father, Steve Stronghold and his wife, Josie, run the most successful real estate agency in the city of Maxville. As the Commander, he is one of the world's strongest superheroes, displaying super-strength and durability. He is sometimes blinded by his own ego, but when it comes to his family, Steve is always there to support his son. As Steve, he wears glasses to hide his identity (a play on Superman); as the Commander, he wears a red, white, and blue costume. The castle logo on his chest presumably represents a stronghold, in reference to his real name.
• Kelly Preston as Josie Stronghold/Jetstream: Will's mother, Josie Stronghold, and her husband Steve are successful real estate agents. As Jetstream, she can fly and is touted as being an expert in hand-to-hand combat. In addition, she is the classic motherly figure, which Will often finds embarrassing. Just like her husband, she wears glasses as Josie and a red, white, and blue costume as Jetstream.
• Lynda Carter as Principal Powers: The Sky High principal. (Note: At one point in the movie, Principal Powers states "I'm not Wonder Woman, ya know" – a little in-joke to Lynda Carter's role as Wonder Woman in the 1970s.). According to Carter, Powers "is a comet."
• Bruce Campbell as Coach Boomer/Sonic Boom: The gym teacher at Sky High, also known as Sonic Boom due to his ability to release sonic waves from his vocal chords, which he conveniently uses to bark at any student who don't live up to his expectations. His shouts are powerful enough to be heard by the entire school, usually shattering glasses in the process. Principal Powers appears to be the only one completely used to this kind of behavior. He is in charge of Power Placement and supervises "Save the Citizen." He will not hesitate to put his least favorite students in sidekick class. He is mentioned by the Commander as having never "made the big time" as a superhero, which would explain his bad temper.
• Kevin Heffernan as Ron Wilson - Bus Driver : The Sky High bus driver-slash-pilot. Ron is the son of two superheroes, but he does not have any powers. Basically comparable to Hagrid, he develops a sense of camaderie with Will. He feels a great sense of pride in driving the "superheroes of tomorrow" to school. He helps save the day by flying Will to the school when he couldn't fly yet, and knocking out Stitches stopping him from taking off with a busload of babies. At the end of the film, it is stated that he falls into a vat of toxic waste and gains powers (apparently the ability to grow, like Giant-Man) and begins working for the mayor.
• Cloris Leachman as Nurse Spex: A kind and eccentric elderly lady with the ability of X-ray vision. She explains to Will that he may not get any powers at all.
• Jim Rash as Mr. Grayson/Stitches: Royal Pain's bumbling sidekick, and Gwen Grayson/Sue Tenney's "father", who raised her after she was turned into a baby as if she was his very own daughter. He wears a jester's outfit. A running joke throughout the film was when Royal Pain was ever angered by Stitches, he would grab the sidekick by the throat and choke him, while Stitches would gag out "Uncle, Uncle, Uncle!!" At the climax he attempts to take a bus full of babies away but is knocked out by Ron Wilson: Bus Driver, who says that he (Ron) is the only one qualified to transport super kids.
• Dave Foley as All American Boy/Mr. Boy: The Commander's old Hero Support. He now works as Hero Support teacher at Sky High. Although he takes pride in educating the Hero Support of tomorrow, he always seems depressed that his greatest accomplishment is just being Commander's sidekick (and is shaken to find that the Commander had never mentioned to Will that he had had a sidekick before teaming with Jetstream). Being the former sidekick, he seems to have no extraordinary abilities whatsoever other than enhanced athleticism. He also harbors a long-standing crush on Jetstream.
• Kevin McDonald as Mr. Medulla: The Mad Science teacher, with super brainpower – so much that he is still smarter than the average adult as a baby. This allows him to help the young students to restore himself and the other homecoming attendees to their proper ages. Both McDonald and Foley (above) come from sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall.

Setting

Sky High, the school in which the film is set, is a high school campus (complete with gymnasium and other buildings) that is placed on a flying metal island. The island is equipped with anti-gravity technology that allows it to hover above the city, at an altitude above the cloud layer so it cannot be seen from the ground. The school constantly changes position, and the location is only known by faculty.

The curriculum at Sky High is strictly for heroes and sidekicks. One's course path is determined by a test that all new students must take. Depending on powers, students are placed as heroes or sidekicks. Heroes take more action-oriented courses like "Foundations of Mad Science" while sidekicks take classes such as "Motorcycle Sidecar Basics" and "Grammar for Sidekicks". Heroes and sidekicks both attend the gym class, which resembles more of an American Gladiators deathmatch arena than a real gym class.

The school is biased toward the heroes, giving them nicer-looking classrooms higher up in the school, whereas the sidekicks' classrooms are apparently in the basement levels, with little light. Apparently after the sidekicks saved the school in spectacular fashion, there were to be reforms for more equitable treatment.

Sky High has extracurricular activities and clubs like regular schools (the yearbook shows that Gwen was a member of the science club). "Save the Citizen" is a traditional match played with two heroes and two villains. Two are chosen to save a doll-citizen while the other two are to keep them from achieving the said goal. The doll-citizen is hung over a large machine that consists of a number of whirling serrated blades. The rope descends every five seconds for three minutes, at which point the citizen will be mulched by the machine. At one time, Mr. Boy remembers, with a half-serious glee, the days when they used 'real citizens' for the contest.

TV premiere

On September 9, 2007, Sky High premiered on ABC Family at 8pm with an encore at 10pm.

On September 28, 2007, Sky High premiered on the Disney Channel at 9pm with a second preview of the next new Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb at 10:45.

Filming locations

File:Oviatt-library-small.jpg

Oviatt Library at CSU Northridge

• Exterior shots of the Sky High school were filmed at the Oviatt Library at California State University in Northridge.

Reception and box office figures

Sky High was reviewed favorably in general. On RottenTomatoes, it earned a "fresh" rating of 72% positive reviews (85 positive, 33 negative). Critics on this website were generally favorable on the firmly tongue-in-cheek nature of the film, which knowingly spoofed comic clichés, but others found it too cheesy. Commercially, on an estimated budget of $35 million USD, it earned just under $64 million in the USA alone.

Soundtrack

Sky High Original Soundtrack is composed of covers of songs from the 1980s. Track listing for the Sky High Original Soundtrack:

1. "I Melt With You" – Bowling for Soup. (Originally by: Modern English)
2. "Through Being Cool" – They Might Be Giants. (Originally by: Devo)
3. "Save It For Later" – Flashlight Brown. (Originally by: The Beat)
4. "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" – Christian Burns. (Originally by: Tears for Fears)
5. "One Thing Leads To Another" – Steven Strait. (Originally by: The Fixx)
6. "Lies" – The Click Five. (Originally by: Thompson Twins)
7. "Voices Carry" – Vitamin C. (Originally by: 'Til Tuesday)
8. "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" – Elefant. (Originally by: The Smiths)
9. "True" – Cary Brothers. (Originally by: Spandau Ballet)
10. "Just What I Needed" – Caleigh Peters. (Originally by: The Cars)
11. "Can't Stop The World" – Ginger Sling. (Originally by: The Go-Go's)
12. "And She Was" – Keaton Simons. (Originally by: Talking Heads)
13. "Twist And Crawl" – Skindred. (Originally by: The Beat)

The song that was played during most romantic scenes was "Nd Dey Say" by Nelly.

Trivia

• Mr. Grayson, the sidekick, gets his name from Robin aka Dick Grayson, Batman's sidekick.
• Cloris Leachman, who plays Nurse Spex, played Wonder Woman's (Lynda Carter) mother in the 1970s television series.
• Both parents of Will Stronghold wear glasses which mocks the fact that in Superman, he always wore glasses when going about his daily life, making him seemingly unrecognizable to everyone around him.
• Nurse Spex references Spider-man, saying that some superheroes get their superpowers after a bite from a radioactive insect.
• It is hinted that Warren Peace's dad, Baron Battle, has the power of resurrection, as Ethan said that Baron Battle has a quadruple-life sentence, and would not be eligible for parole until after his third life.
• The character Warren's name is clearly intended to be a humorous pun - Warren's father was a villain, and his mother was a hero, hence the joke; Warren (phonetically "War-An'") Peace - War and Peace.
• The comic book series PS238 explores the same premise at an elementary school; the comic book series Hero Camp explores it at a summer camp.
• The 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie Up, Up, and Away has a strikingly similar plot and premise.
• In the character Will's room, there are several posters advertising The Aquabats, a band where the members dress up as superheroes, as well as a poster of the band Weezer showing two female superheroes.
• When the character Layla is waiting for Will at the Paper Lantern, she has in front of her a plate of "meat" Chinese food, even though she clearly states at the start that she is a vegan when she declines the bacon and eggs offered by Jetstream. It is also possible that the "meat" is vegetarian "mock meat", which is available in many conscientious chinese restaurants.
• Jonathan Ke Quan was chosen to be stunt choreographer but after his injury he was later replaced by Elter Bartolaba.
• A notable portion of the production crew were Thai, and the name "(Mr. Uon. Vancable)" was chosen because it sounds like how one with a Thai accent would say the word "Invincible."
• In the scene where Lynda Carter's character exits the detention room where all the villians are, she replies to a comment saying : "I'm not Wonder Woman you know" (a reference to her character as Wonder Woman).
• In the movie, Mrs. Stronghold/Josie Jetstream says that Layla and Will have been friends since they were toddlers, but Layla tells Warren Peace at the Paper Lantern that they have been best friends since they were in first grade, finally, Will tells Gwen at the unplanned Heroes party that he and Layla have been friends since the first grade.
• In the film, The Commander (Kurt Russell) has super strength. Kurt Russell also had super strength in an earlier Disney Film, The Strongest Man in the World.
• Despite Gwen Grayson showing off her ability to "technopathically" build working mad science devices in seconds, as Royal Pain she has difficulty controling a joystick for the secret camera and needs to push buttons on her armor physically to control some of its functions.
• After the sidekicks save the school, the Commander claps his former sidekick, now the Hero Support teacher, on the shoulder and says "Whatever you're teaching these kids, keep teaching them.. it.", the last in many instances showing that while the Commander may be super strong, he is definitely not super-bright.

External links

• Sky High at IMDb
• Disney's official Sky High site
• Sky Hype! a Sky High RPG