Movie Review: Beyond Skyline (2017)

Once upon a time, I saw the 2010 science fiction movie Skyline and was probably one of the few people to enjoy it. I liked the design of the aliens, the use of nuclear weapons immediately and their more realistic effects (it's not immediate death to absolutely everything and against something as big as an alien mothership with regenerative capabilities it might not even fully work), and the unorthodox ending.

So when the sequel Beyond Skyline came out, I was willing to see it, although other things took priority and I didn't get around to seeing it until Christmas break. So here's the review...

The Plot

Police officer Mark Corley (Frank Grillo), having just lost his wife, is retrieving his troubled son Trent (Jonny Weston) from jail apparently for the third time when the alien invasion from the first film starts. Avoiding immediate abduction due to being in the subway when the harvesting starts, he and some other characters like the homeless blind veteran Sarge (Antonio Fargas) and transit worker Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) soon find themselves collected by the aliens as well. They avoid having their brains harvested to power the aliens' bio-machines and after meeting Elaine (Samantha Jean) and the alien-ized Jarrod (Tony Black) from the first movie, escape to Laos when the alien ship they're on crashes.

Now they have to team up with some martial-artist Golden Triangle drug traffickers to fight the remaining aliens from the fallen craft. Said aliens are after Elaine's baby, who might not be fully human...

The Good

*For all its foolishness--I'll get to that later--it's a very fast-moving, entertaining film. I watched this on Netflix on my Kindle in three elliptical sessions at the gym and it kept me nice and focused.

*We once again see human counterattack in Los Angeles from the first movie, including a grounds-eye view of "the little UCAV that could" (there was a funny meme about that I'd link to if I could find it) that nukes an alien mothership and temporarily grounds it. They even throw in a bit of nuclear strategy--the homeless veteran Sarge, despite being mostly if not completely blind, knows that it's a short-ranged, low-yield nuke. A military commander seeking to destroy armored alien ships the size of the Astrodome without killing the hundreds of thousand of human survivors in the immediate vicinity would start with small tactical nukes and only break out the city-killers if the city and its population was irretrievably lost and there was no other way to protect the rest of the country.

*When the Los Angeles characters meet the Southeast Asian ones and hide out in what I'm pretty sure is Angkor Wat, I liked how the Laotians describe how the temples that were once built to honor the gods are now bases to fight them. Good line. I also liked how (I assume) the children of the Vietnam War generation, when the Americans claimed they're in the middle of the apocalypse, viewed the aliens as just another "apocalypse" they could survive. The various wars in Southeast Asia, if you include WWII, lasted from 1941 to 1990 and killed millions of people. An alien invasion, at least at first, might seem like more of the same.

*There are martial-arts battles between the Asian characters (and some of the American characters who have police experience or simply use handguns) and alien infantry that, despite the ridiculousness of the whole situation (the alien infantry are armored, at least 1-2 feet taller, and at least 50-100 pounds heavier), are still quite entertaining to watch. And occasionally pretty funny.

The Bad

*During the early sequences in Los Angeles it was hard to keep track of some of the lesser characters' names.

*Too much reuse of clips from the original film. It was difficult to tell when they were doing it for the nuclear-attack sequence, but it was obvious when Elaine was talking to Mark about how Jarrod was able to retain his own personality (despite being transplanted into an alien body) due to repeated non-terminal exposure to the alien hypnosis.

*The childbirth sequence is rather poorly done and entirely too short. They could have prolonged it to build suspense--perhaps alien-Jarrod is fighting off other creatures to keep them off Elaine--but it's completed in-universe in maybe five minutes and Elaine somehow has her pants on the entire time.

*The alien attack on Hawaii is a major a missed opportunity. If Hawaii was bypassed during the initial invasion, that leaves the US navy base at Pearl Harbor untouched. That's a crapton of navy ships with long-range missiles (the submarines and cruisers/destroyers all carry substantial cruise missile complements and the subs can launch cruise missiles from underwater) that could engage the aliens from beyond visual range (i.e. their crews can't be hypnotized). The military brass in Hawaii has no doubt been sitting out there getting reports from the mainland about the aliens' strengths, weaknesses, and what isn't working and planning accordingly. Instead, all we see are some of the big warrior-aliens landing at Honolulu Airport and smashing up some buildings before the alien ship moves off toward Asia. If depicting the battle is too expensive, they could just depict the Los Angeles ship arriving to clean up afterward--lots of sunken Navy ships, sailors getting sucked up from the water, some of the alien ships damaged and repairing themselves from local materials, etc. The Los Angeles ship could simply supply some extra warrior-critters to help mop up the area around the base and then move on.

(Somebody write a fan-fic called "The Second Battle of Pearl Harbor," since I don't have time. There's so little Skyline fan-fic out there you'd be a big fish in a small pond.)

*Given Sarge's apparent age, there's a missed opportunity when everybody ends up in Laos. He could easily be a Vietnam vet and could possibly recognize the place from the smells and sounds despite not being able to see. Hell, he could serve as an interpreter between the English-speaking Americans and the Laotians.

*Just how fast is the alien ship moving? It gets from Los Angeles to Hawaii (2,558 miles) in what seems like an hour or two (an airplane flight would take around 5.5 hours) and then travels the 6,500-ish miles from Hawaii to Laos very soon after that. Something that big moving that quickly shows how advanced these aliens are (after all, one of the Los Angeles ships is able to repair itself and fly again after being grounded by a nuclear strike), but it came off to me as the writers not having much of a sense of scale. Especially the latter part. They could have had the damn thing crash in the Philippines, except even that is still over 5,000 miles from Hawaii. The Pacific Ocean is freaking big, people.

*Where are they getting the clothes for the rapidly-growing baby? She gets from a newborn to looking like a preschooler halfway through the film--in-universe that's only in a day or two. Are they stopping by houses along the way to trade clothes?

*And speaking of the baby, she becomes a Macguffin with a bunch of science so weak it would make Star Trek blush.

*There's a big time skip at the end and events taking place after said time skip that don't make a lot of sense.

*There's a weird flashback/flash-forward thing that doesn't really work that ties in with the above.

The Verdict

An improvement over the original if you don't think too hard. Will see the upcoming sequel (yes there is one). 7.5 out of 10.

A Correction to My Skyline Review

I posted a link to my review of the film Skyline on my alternate history forum and it seems I misidentified one of the aircraft deployed in the initial attack on the alien mothership.

The user whose handle is Wanderlust identified the aircraft carrying the nuclear weapon as a drone, not a manned plane.  She even posted a link identifying what the specific drone is:

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/x47/

Given how (I assume) the military launched the initial attack using drones to avoid the possibility of pilots being hypnotized by the aliens' lights, including a manned aircraft like the B-2 Spirit amid a swarm of Predators and/or Global Hawks doesn't make a lot of sense.  The nuke-bearer being a drone would also explain why it was able to pull the high-G manuevers that it did to evade the alien fliers and gut the alien mothership with the tactical nuke.

Wanderlust also pointed out that since this is a naval project, that would explain the presence of the carrier battle group off the coast.  The user whose handle is The Red theorized that the reason the second attack on the alien swarm above Los Angeles included unarmed helicopters and infantry and a relatively small number of manned aircraft (we don't see masses of F-22s or naval F-14s) is that they assumed the nuke had taken out most of the aliens and were just mopping up.

An unmanned first wave followed by a manned mop-up actually makes strategic sense when dealing with an enemy that can potentially hypnotize and disable human soldiers.  The flaw in the strategy is a lack of intelligence (the mothership was temporarily crippled, not destroyed), which is often a reason military operations fail.  The follow-up attack fails, the carrier fleet is destroyed, and it seems the swarm is triumphant over Southern California.

Movie Review: "Skyline" (SPOILERS)

My friend David and I saw the movie Skylineyesterday, undeterred by the thoroughly awful reviews it's got on RottenTomatoes.com.

I really enjoyed it.  Here's my review...

The Good

The alien invaders, both in terms of concept and execution, are really cool.  They're basically a biomechanical predatory swarm, using their hypnotic blue lights to lure human prey like an anglerfish in the deep oceans would.  Their amazing ability to repair damage suffered using local materials--the remains of buildings and convenient humans--is exposited early on and done consistently.

The scene where the military goes up against one of the alien motherships with a swarm of Predator drones and at least one B-2 Spirit armed with a nuclear bomb was really cool, both the visuals and the music.  The image of the crippled alien mothership, gutted by the nuclear missile, plowing through the city as it falls was just awesome.

The second fight scene when Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and Elaine (Scottie Thompson) flee their penthouse refuge and watch F-22s duke it out with even more alien flyers while a group of soldiers with big .50 caliber rifles snipe at a large alien ground creatures was fun too.

Although the characterization is not one of the film's strongest points, Jarrod does get a character arc.  He starts out as kind of hapless, reacting to stuff that happens to him (his best friend's employee suddenly announcing he's taken a job in California without asking him, Elaine's unexpected pregnancy) and being a bit obnoxious.  After nearly being snatched by the alien light, something that affects him physiologically and psychologically, he "mans up" significantly, overpowering building concierge Oliver (David Zayas) who thinks he's turning into an alien and whaling on an alien flyer threatening him and Elaine using both a brick and a fire axe.  He even flat-out tells Oliver that nobody is going to stop him from protecting "my family," indicating that despite his earlier response to learning of Elaine's pregnancy, he is taking responsibility.

UBER-SPOILER BELOW

Even after being captured and having his brain transplanted into an alien body, Jarrod manages to retain his free will and whups up other aliens intent on dissecting the Elaine after discovering she is pregnant (this continues on into the credits--be sure to stay).  This also serves as a big sequel hook--although the aliens appear triumphant in a montage depicting them floating over Earth's major cities, Jarrod could easily be the inspiration for a revolt among the prisoners aboard one of the aliens' bigger ships.

Oliver gets some awesome moments too, including a part where he fills the penthouse with gas to turn it into a suicide bomb against a large alien ground creature climbing up the building to get him.  Although it takes awhile for Jarrod to "man up," Oliver does so from the beginning--he demands Jarrod wake up and realize the gravity of the situation, favors a cautious approach after some other characters are killed, and is smart to be suspicious of Jarrod's appearance and demeanor.  Oliver's pained reaction to seeing the nuclear flash while looking through the telescope was realistic too.

Also, the film begins with the initial alien invasion and then flashes back to "15 hours before," which is a good way to hook the viewer.  Given the film's weaker characterization, starting with the hijinks of these people and THEN seeing the fit hit the shan a la Cloverfield might not be a good idea.

The movie also foreshadows Elaine's pregnancy by depicting her as being nauseous and even throwing up in the morning and Jarrod assisting a woman with a baby when they leave their airplane.  The second part could also foreshadow Jarrod's growing paternal attitude.  I liked that, even though I knew about Elaine's pregnancy from the reviews.

The Bad

The characters need work.  Jarrod has a character arc and Oliver has a brain and initiative, but it's not clear why Terry (Donald Faison) is cheating on Candice (Brittany Daniel) with Denise (Crystal Reed), a woman whose position is not entirely clear but whom Wikipedia describes as his secretary who for some reason hangs around his penthouse.  Earlier we get the impression Candice is jealous and high-maintenance and Denise is besotted with Terry, but it needs to be elaborated on more.  Another character, the one who assumes Jarrod is coming to LA to work for Terry's company, could have been elaborated on a bit more but is killed off pretty early on.

Oliver's back story could be expanded too.  Although his use of "vaya con Dios" identifies him as being Hispanic, I initially thought he was an Arab.  If he was from, say, Lebanon and has seen war before, that could explain why he has the knowledge and attitude he has.

Plus, he stays in the penthouse and waits for the monster to come to him so he can kill both it and himself rather than fleeing into the interior hallways or the stairwell where it would be hard for the aliens to get him.  It's not clear why.  Earlier in the film, Candice behaves somewhat flirtatiously toward him and she was taken by the aliens just before the ground critter spots him, but if the filmmakers' intent was that Oliver loved her and was so distraught by her death that he decided to become a suicide bomber, it didn't work.

Some of the military tactics need work too.  In a modern air battle, the missiles would be launched from miles away.  The cast would see alien flyers and the mothership being hit out of nowhere before seeing the planes coming.  Granted, the attacking force largely consists of Predator drones, but still.

Also, given the fact nuclear weapons were used in the first counterattack, I would imagine there'd be more available when it turned out the aliens were able to immediately start repairing the fallen mothership--surely whoever commanded the attack would be aware the nuke-carrier could be shot down.  A second nuke at that moment would have killed off the alien critters repairing it by the thousands and possibly even completely destroyed its superstructure.  Granted, there might have been more than one B-2 and the one that got the nuke off could have been the last to be destroyed, but making that clearer would have been helpful.  Perhaps another B-2 approaches the crippled mothership to finish it off and it gets swarmed and killed and its missile intercepted by a suicidal alien flyer?

Considering how Southern California is very defense-heavy, it would have been nice to see a larger variety of human units involved in the counterattack.  In one scene, an F-22 strafes an alien ground beast attacking Jarrod and Elaine, a role best suited for a helicopter or A-10.  Seeing a bunch of Apaches doing a "ride of the Valkyries" through the streets of Los Angeles hosing alien ground critters on top of everything else would have been awesome.

Also, we see a carrier battle group offshore during the second counterattack, but the only fixed-wing planes we actually see are F-22 Raptors.  A carrier would be launching F-14s, a la Top Gun.

Finally, when Jarrod beats a fallen alien flyer, we see a lengthy sped-up montage of him hammering the critter.  That could have been cut in half time-wise and we'd have still gotten the point.

The Verdict

A fun but flawed movie with a surprising defense of traditional masculine virtues like taking responsibility and defense of women and kids against threats.  I will definitely see the sequel.  7/10.