Today a sci-fi adventure celebrates its free-TV premiere on RTL 2 that impresses with competently staged action and plenty of trash charm. Read here why Skylines is worth watching.
One thing first: Skylines, the film, has absolutely nothing to do with the unfortunately cancelled German Netflix series Skylines. Even though I would absolutely trust this science fiction series to incorporate musical interludes at some point. Skylines is the third installment of an alien adventure with a big load of B-movie charm, an anything-goes mentality, and visible joy in getting everything it can out of its small budget.
The Fast and Furious of sci-fi series
In another article I referred to Skyline as the Fast and Furious of sci-fi films and there’s a simple reason for that. Since the first entry in the series, Skyline from 2010, it has completely transformed. That Skyline wasn’t a particularly watchable film and had a generic alien invasion storyline that made World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles look like a Shakespearean adaptation.
Seven years later, screenwriter Liam O’Donnell sat down in the director’s chair and came up with the sequel Beyond Skyline, a wonderfully chaotic reimagining that fought the aliens with down-to-earth martial arts action. Even The Raid star Iko Uwais was in the cast.
Skylines is the third in a series, but prior knowledge is not needed
Skylines is now set about five years after the events of the last film. After the invasion attempt and the resistance, humanity lives among the ruins of their major cities together with human-alien hybrids. When a virus spreads that puts the hybrids under the control of the alien invaders, a mercenary team heads to the alien menace’s home planet to save Earth.
Or something like that.
The mythology of the Skyline series is now so complex that I’ve lost track of it all (yes, I’ve seen these films). What I do remember, though, is that as soon as the crew crash-lands on the planet, a hard B-movie variation on James Cameron’s Aliens – The Return takes off, abandoning a small group of fighter:ins on an alien planet fraught with danger. This is extremely competently directed and filled with creative action ideas.
