Last weekend I mentioned that I couldn’t wait for Friday night because I was going to see the movie Skyline. Well, my friend Scott and I did go see this movie last night, and I decided to write a review of it without giving any of the plot away… I hope.
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Truthfully, we knew we were in trouble when it took almost a minute to get through all those notifications of producers and studioes before anything got going. What we didn’t know is that the movie would only last about 90 minutes and never really go anywhere; well, at least I had some candy.
The basic premise of Skyline is that one morning at 4:37AM these blue streams of light start dropping out of the sky. Next thing you know, anyone who’s looking at these lights has the veins in their body start popping and they’re drawn to the light, with the next thing occurring is their being sucked into one of tens of alien ships that are hovering around somewhere.
The movie starts out that way, no preamble… and then it goes into flashback mode, 15 hours before that. What the hey? Not only that, but the flashback doesn’t set anything up really, and it only lasts about 10 minutes before we’re back to the lights again, only this time with a mix of what we saw earlier and what was going on that we didn’t see, but now know what’s coming.
From this point on we have fear and we have aliens. There are big aliens, smaller aliens, small flying aliens and the super large alien ships. The two early heroes watch as thousands of bodies are sucked into the ships, and for whatever reason they’re able to look at the light from a distance and not turn into something that’s going to get sucked in.
Everything takes place in one building, although when the military starts fighting back, we get to see planes and helicopters trying to take on these things. Only they’re indestructible. I just have to throw this one out. A stealth fighter hits one of the large alien ships with a nuclear warhead missile. You know that because of the way everything around explodes upon impact. The ship actually goes down, and there’s this large shockwave coming… only it doesn’t break any windows, there’s no fallout, and no radiation. And the ship puts itself back together. Later a guy is able to knock the glass out of another window with his elbow. A nuclear explosion can’t break glass, but an elbow can? Oh yeah; the ship that got blown up… it puts itself back together again, as does every alien that gets creamed by a missile or machine guy or bazooka or… whatever.
The only thing left to talk about is the ending of the movie. I’m not going to give it away, but I will say it was one of the stupidest endings I’ve ever seen to a movie. Scott asked while we were leaving the movie what it was about; I honestly don’t know. It had no real purpose; I guess they figured if there was a real alien attack that there wouldn’t be any conversation at all. Then again, if there was a real alien attack with ships this large I’m betting the military would have known it, we’d have all been told to leave the big cities, and maybe so many people wouldn’t have been killed at all. I mean, as kids we had air raid warnings going all over the place and practiced hiding under tables, both day and night. Not a single warning that there’s an alien invasion coming? Nothing on TV? Please!
I do have to add this. The budget for this movie was only $10 million, and most of the money had to go into the aliens, some of which looked pretty cool. The writing was bad, the storyline was bad, and no one looked particularly great. And one of whom I thought was one of the stars of the movie gets killed early, and of course it’s the black guy, and he was the only person in the movie I knew. Oh yeah; early in the movie the people in the movie think the water is safe, so that’s why they try to get to the water. I was thinking Signs at this juncture, but at the end of the movie you see that anyone who was in the water was killed as well.
I was trying to think of the last time I eagerly wanted to see a movie that failed like this; I can’t. I guess my string of picking winners is over; have to start anew. Skip this one, or wait until it comes on TV; don’t even rent it. You’ll hate yourself if you do. But if you’re not going to listen to me and are thinking about purchasing it anyway, then buy
Skyline from me. 😉
See Mitch should take your wife to see rom-com instead lol Yikes what stuck out for me in this post was you eating candy!!! What more to say eh??!! Won’t ask what the BS was after that. I’d probably have apoplexy lol
Patricia Perth Australia
It was really bad, Pat. What’s rom-com? Must be an Aussie expression. lol
I think rom-com might mean romantic comedy.
Thank you for the review Mitch I actually really wanted to go to see this movie after I saw a cool commercial on tv about it. But I think I’ll pass this one too.
Yeah, stay away Alex; it’s really bad. As for rom-com, I did look it up and you got it right.
The tagline says, “Don’t Look Up.” Maybe they meant while you’re in the theater.
That’s funny Charles; you might be right. I just saw on Rotten Tomatoes that critics rated it 11 out of 100, but other audiences seem to be rating it 75% favorable. What the heck are they watching?
Fear and aliens, what more do you need? Plot?
😉
Well Val, you always need a reason why aliens are messing with you, and that’s what we’re missing here. that and some dialogue and a little bit of good sense. lol
Well, that’s Hollywood for ya! No, we don’t need a reason why aliens are messing with us – if we understood that or even knew it, we might find a way to live peacefully with them and then the movie would be five minutes long!
Besides, who says we’d be notified that something was going on? I’m sure there’s a lot that goes on that the government doesn’t tell us, right?
The last movie I was sorry I saw was Paranormal. We had booked tickets to see something else on our anniversary and gone out for a lovely dinner, prior. What we didn’t know was that the theater changed auditoriums at the last minute and our movie was showing elsewhere. That home movie effect didn’t do well with my stomach and I spent the first ten minutes TRYING to watch and the next 10 minutes with my face buried in Bruce’s shoulder. I got out just in time to lose my dinner in the ladies room and spent the rest of our anniversary in bed, feeling terrible!
Paranormal 2? I don’t think so!
🙂
Althea, I wouldn’t have even considered going to a movie like that, and what happened to you proves my case. I don’t like being scared, even if I know it’s fake.
Sure reminds me of The Day of the Triffids!
Go see Megamind – took my family to it last week and it was hilariously enjoyable. One of the best movies I’ve seen in an awhile…
That might happen, Barb, but next up is Harry Potter, so that trumps all else.
My husband mentioned that movie but we opted to see RED instead. Now that was a GREAT movie and it featured some “boomer” stars. Thanks for letting us know where we shouldn’t waste our money. By the way, I saw For Colored Girls also and thought it was a MASTERPIECE!
Bev, I thought about possibly going to see Colored Girls, which isn’t my style of movie, but my wife didn’t seem interested, which stunned me, so I’m off the hook.
That is interesting that your wife wasn’t interested. I couldn’t relate personally to the “stuff” depicted in the movie but I thought what Tyler Perry did with a book of poems was nothing short of PHENOMENAL!!! That’s what your wife has to look at. Now if she has never heard of the poems then I can see how she might not be interested.
I’d never heard of the poems either. My wife is a hard one to call on what she will or won’t like.
I think I am going to watch it next weekend. I am so disappointed from the latest sci-fi movies. I hope it will be different and better, but I doubt. I don’t remember when I watched a good new movie.
Hard to give away the plot when there wasn’t much of one, Mitch. Hey, that’s way it goes. First real stinker we’ve ever gone to. We’ll do better next time!
I know, out of more than 30 years our first dog. This week, though… Potter!!!
I really don’t like movies with no symetry… an I can’t spell that word either! LOL 🙂
You were short one letter; symmetry. lol And you’re right, we like our movies to make at least a little bit of sense. Probably why I might be one of the few people who didn’t like The Birds by Hitchcock.
Well Mitch i have still seen the movie SkyLine. I have seen the preview of that movie. but thing is that Hollywood already made so many movie on the Alien. and again they are choosing the same topic. i know but how much we a tolerate Alien movie more.
Petter, there can’t be enough movies about aliens for me, although the actual Alien movies were a bit much for me. As I say, I don’t mind monsters and aliens, but I hate things sneaking up on me.
OK, well… I *like* schlocky sci-fi movies. The old classics (50s and 60s) before they had CGI effects and multi-million dollar budgets for each film are gteat stuff to me. So, I *might* like this, but I think I’ll wait till it shows up in the $5.00 bargain bin at Wal-Mart to buy it.
High tech violence is just not enough to make a decent movie. Thanks!
Darn Allan; thought I had a sale. lol Yeah, I’d wait. Visually there’s some interesting stuff, but overall, it just seemed to be poorly made. I guess that’s what “only” $10 million will get you these days.