By Jason Apuzzo. Imagine this storyline: foreign invaders launch a spectacular strike on a major American city, killing thousands of people and destroying huge buildings in the process. The strike takes place in the early morning hours, when most citizens are still sleeping or just getting up for the day. At the same time, these invaders aren’t merely out to kill – but in a weird way they’re also here to ‘convert’ and/or steal the minds of their human prey, so humanity can be subsumed into their larger cause. And upon this ‘conversion,’ human beings begin to feel unnaturally powerful and aggressive – just before suicidally extinguishing themselves.
Oh, and the only human recourse to this horrific invasion is the massive intervention of the U.S. military, up to and perhaps including nuclear strikes.
Sound familiar?
No, this isn’t a movie about 9/11 – and yet it might as well be. Following in the footsteps of J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (and to some extent Abrams’ Star Trek) – not to mention, of course, James Cameron’s Avatar – Skyline is the latest sci-fi film to use a 9/11-style event as a framing device for its story of alien-vs.-human conflict.
How good Skyline is, however, is another question entirely.
The easiest and most obvious thing to say about Skyline is that it’s a low-budget, indie riff on the increasingly familiar alien invasion theme, and that it exploits certain aspects of post-9/11 anxiety to full effect. Much like J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield or Star Trek, Skyline puts a group of largely vacuous 20-somethings into a high-pressure, Pearl Harbor-style situation in which its young leads need to to grow up and mature – very quickly.
"OMG!" An LA blonde under attack from alien invaders.
At the same time, what Skyline makes perfectly apparent – and here, comparisons to Cloverfield and Gareth Edwards’ recent low-budget alien invasion thriller Monsters are apt – is that a burgeoning problem with the ‘alien invasion genre’ is the overall vacuity and narcissism of the young people depicted.
To put the matter simply, you may not care whether these young people survive at all.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
But back to the story. If you’ve seen Independence Day, Cloverfield, or War of the Worlds (either version) – or, for that matter, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers – you know the drill here. Big ships with big bugs/fish inside them show up over a major American city – Los Angeles, in this case – and start laying waste to the place. Are the details of the invasion important in the case of Skyline? Not particularly – except that in Skyline, these malevolent alien creatures aren’t simply interested in conquest and destruction. The alien invaders in Skyline are actually creatures of light who use a kind of unearthly, blue penumbra to attract the attention of human beings, much like drawing moths to a flame. And once human beings stare into this light, the human mind is actually subsumed by the aliens – who apparently need the energy and vitality of human minds in order to keep going. [Why, in that case, they would travel to Los Angeles of all places to harvest brains is never explained.] The creatures then extract the brains from human bodies – through an unpleasant process similar to that from Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (or Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters, for that matter) – chuck the human bodies, and go about their merry way.
Except that, in what is perhaps the film’s one interesting twist, we also learn that human minds can ultimately affect the outlook of the aliens, as well …
Like moths drawn to a flame.
So that’s the basic setup for Skyline. And even if the film has a kind of derivative, late-night TV feel to it – almost like an Asylum movie on CGI steroids – there are some things to recommend it. First of all, the second half of Skyline features some exceptional action sequences – particularly of the U.S. military vs. alien invader variety – that are really spectacular, and astonishing for having been accomplished on a budget under $10 million. Unlike in Independence Day, the huge aliens in Skyline – some of which look like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings – come down out of their ships and get down and dirty in the streets of LA. They climb buildings, fight helicopters, squash cars, and generally cause headaches of both a literal and figurative variety. Kudos to the Strause brothers – who both directed this film and handled its visual FX – for staging such gnarly and compelling action sequences with their modest resources.
Also, it’s great to see the intervention of the American military treated in such a positive and heroic light. Skyline goes in the exact opposite direction of Avatar and Monsters by depicting the U.S. military as almost (if not exclusively) our primary hope in this kind of crisis.
How gung-ho is Skyline? Downtown LA gets nuked by the U.S. Air Force as a preventative measure – and nobody utters a peep of complaint. Admittedly, it is LA we’re talking about here …
Channeling anxieties over catastrophic attacks.
In a recent exchange I had with the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, one of the things I pointed out was that the whole theme of alien invasion is one that tends to pull filmmakers in the direction of a more ‘conservative’ view of the world, films like Monsters or TV shows like The Event notwithstanding. Skyline is a perfect example of this. The film’s retro-, Cold War vibe is right out of the 1980s or 1950s – although the film makes a few clumsy efforts to make everything seem ‘relevant’ to today’s MTV generation (i.e., hip-hop music, and a cast that looks like it’s straight out of The Hills). With some exceptions, I expect most films in this new alien invasion genre to follow this overall Cold War pattern, updated (obviously) for the era of the War on Terror. Continue reading Fears of Another 9/11? LFM Reviews Skyline
By Joe Bendel. When did skepticism become a term of derision in the scientific community? In truth, Bjørn Lomborg is not a so-called global warming “denier.” He agrees the Earth’s overall temperature is rising, but he takes issue with some of the more inflated estimates. It seems Lomborg’s primary sin though, is his application of rigorous risk assessments and cost-benefit analysis to the global warming debate. Having been likened to Adolf Hitler (yes, seriously) by Dr. Rajendra Pachuari of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Lomborg gets a chance to speak for what he considers the maligned middle ground of the warming debate in Ondi Timoner’s new documentary, Cool It, which opened this past Friday in select theaters nationwide.
The Danish Lomborg always considered himself “lefter than left,” but when he chanced across an article by the late iconoclastic economist Julian Simon, his apostasy began. Simon argued, contrary to popular belief, that the state of the Earth was actually improving – in large measure due to the benefits of capitalist prosperity. Professor Lomborg took up the refutation of Simon’s book as a long-term class project, but his class found itself confirming far more than they contradicted. When he published their findings in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg’s name quickly became anathema to many of his academic colleagues.
Indeed, the extent to which Lomborg has been vilified, even persecuted, for deviating from politically correct orthodoxy is simply scandalous. Yet the Dane appears to be a happy warrior, embracing the warming debate as the next great fight. In conceding the general warming premise, he glosses over many legitimate questions about the integrity of the data often sited. Yet, he still gives warming partisans fits. For instance, Lomborg is tacky enough to actually run the numbers on the Kyoto Protocols, finding that at a projected cost of $250 billion in lost GDP annually, the EU’s plan to cut emissions 20% below 1990 levels will only cool the planet a negligible 0.1 degrees F. That is an inconvenient truth.
Indeed, the Al Gore documentary takes it in the shines and the credibility throughout Cool. Not simply held up as an example of reckless scare-mongering, Lomborg eviscerates several of Gore’s claims that gained particular traction in the public consciousness, including the Hurricane Katrina canard. Perhaps the best example of Lomborg’s rigorous methodology comes courtesy of the poor polar bears supposedly jeopardized by global warming. According to Lomborg, at the cost of $250 billion annually, implementing Kyoto might save one single polar bear a year (whose population has been steadily increasing over the past several years). In contrast, he suggests those truly concerned about polar bears work to crack down on poachers who kill 250 to 300 each year. Continue reading The Somewhat Skeptical Environmentalist: Cool It
By Joe Bendel. Kofi Annan has blood on his hands. He might not have personally fired a shot in Rwanda, but his actions ensured the violent Hutu extremists remained heavily armed. So claims Lietenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the French-Canadian military commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. Based on Dallaire’s memoir, Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands with the Devil, opening today, is an incisive indictment of the UN’s willful negligence during the 1994 mass killings.
Dallaire is a haunted man, haunted by the ghosts of 800,000 Rwandans who were murdered while he stood idly by, handcuffed by the UN’s restrictive rules of engagement and a lack of supplies. It need not have been so. As he first arrives at his post, the situation appears promising. All sides profess to want peace and are actively engaged in UN sponsored negotiations. Yet there are troubling signs, like the growing presence of informal Hutu militias strutting through the streets.
Initially, the UN Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) seems to get a lucky break when a well-placed source steps forward with information about huge weapons stockpiles in the ruling Hutu party headquarters. However, before Dallaire can launch his planned operation to seize the arms, the UN peacekeeping command orders him to stand down. Instead of confiscating the arms, he is to inform the hard-line Hutu president of what they know, and he is forbidden to offer asylum to his informer. At this point, the die is cast. Annan and the UN might as well have issued a proclamation declaring genocide season officially open.
A strong likeness of the real Dallaire, Roy Dupuis (who could also pass for Bruce Campbell’s older brother) gives a depressingly good performance, vividly showing the General’s military bearing cracking under the weight of the horror and futility of his position. Indeed, Shake is a rare film that genuinely respects military figures, like Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal – portrayed with genuine humanity by Québécois actor Michel Mongeau. Continue reading LFM Review: Shake Hands with Devil and Genocide in Our Times
By Jason Apuzzo. Opening this Friday in New York (and expanding across North America in coming weeks) is a superb new film called Disco & Atomic War – a film that both my Libertas colleague Joe Bendel and I agree is one of the most extraordinary documentaries of the year.
Disco & Atomic War deals with how Western popular entertainment ‘bootlegged’ into the Eastern Bloc or played on pirate TV stations – entertainments like Star Wars and Knight Rider and Dallas and the Emmanuelle films – played an enormous role in undermining the Soviet system. [You can read my LA Film Festival review of the film here.]
We’ve previously streamed Disco in its entirety here at Libertas, and overall I can’t recommend this film enough – among other reasons due to its obvious applicability to the current war on terror that we’re fighting, and how that might be won. The film also happens to be very drily amusing – almost a comedy in its own right.
[Here, incidentally, is a new interview with the film’s director, Jaak Kilmi.]
I’ve embedded a witty and unusual trailer from the film above. Enjoy!
By Jason Apuzzo. A really hilarious and courageous little comedy called The Infidel, starring the talented and irrepressible Omid Djalili, just got its DVD release on the new Tribeca Films label. We really loved this film here at Libertas (see our glowing review of it here), and we recommend that everyone pick up a copy today.
The Infidel tells the story of an unassuming Muslim guy in the UK who discovers, by happenstance, that he was actually born Jewish. This wouldn’t be such a problem, except for the fact that his daughter is about to marry the stepson of a radical, jihad-promoting imam from Pakistan.
And that, as they say, is when the hijinks begin.
I’ve embedded the scene above in which Omid finds out about his true heritage. It’s a gas. Enjoy!
Based on the reporting I’ve seen on this film, it appears that Ms. Johansson’s alien character eventually discovers that Earth men aren’t so bad after all. That’s a relief. Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of Ms. Johansson as an actress, although there are clearly other things worth admiring about her. In general I find her cold and dull on-screen – even if she wasn’t bad in Michael Bay’s underrated The Island – so we’ll see whether she can pull this off. Many people have already been commenting on the similarity of Under the Skin‘s plotline to that of the Species series; the storyline is similar, of course, but the concept of the ‘sexually voracious female from outer space’ has actually been around since the 1950s (1954’s Devil Girl from Mars comes to mind, for example).
We’ll definitely keep an eye on this one – both eyes, actually. No word on whether it will be done in 3D. Here’s hoping it is.
• Our first Invasion Alert! merited a response from the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, and we want to thank Patrick for his engagement with our ideas here. In response to Patrick’s thoughtful comments, I wanted to say a few things, briefly: first of all, when I said in my last Invasion Alert! that the new wave of ‘political’ sci-fi films are channeling anxieties about (among other things) the somewhat radical turn in American politics of late, I meant that these anxieties are obviously being felt on both the Left and the Right.
It’s quite evident that filmmakers on the Left like James Cameron, for example, are using their films to address what they perceive to be new strains of corporatist/anti-environmental extremism on the Right, as well as what they consider to be American ‘imperial’ overreach around the world. Those were clearly messages from Avatar.
"Look, aliens!" Rosie Huntington in "Transformers 3."
Or there’s Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, which is obviously a response to what Edwards considers to be right-wing American ‘extremism’ on the immigration issue; or there’s NBC’s The Event, which is using an alien invasion scenario to backhandedly comment on ostensive human rights abuses by the CIA during the Bush years. So sci-fi is being used as an open platform for many different people to comment on many different things right now, and frequently from a liberal perspective. (And undoubtedly many – if not most – sci-fi films coming down the pike will betray no political perspective at all.)
At the same time, it seems highly likely to me that this new alien invasion genre – which actually encompasses about 40 projects right now (either films or TV shows on the books) – will follow thematic patterns similar to the 1950s and 1980s that will pull the material toward a more ‘conservative’/Cold War view of the world. Because let’s face it, none of these proposed alien invasion projects involve friendly alien invasions of America’s Heartland, if you know what I mean.
And although most of these projects will probably be riffing off the War on Terror (Battle: Los Angeles and Dreamworks’ proposed Halo adaptation come to mind here), it’s interesting to note that the plotines for several of the more recently announced alien invasion projects even seem to have a retro-Cold War feel to them – I’m thinking of Sam Raimi’s Earth Defense Force (which actually begins with America fighting the communist Chinese), or Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov’s The Darkest Hour and Apollo 18, or even Michael Bay’s Transformers 3, which apparently features a retro-style, U.S.-vs.-Russia spacerace storyline.
So we’ll see how all this develops. Whatever else, it should be fun to watch. Thanks to Patrick for keeping an eye on us, here.
"Shoot me some more inane dialogue there, sport!"
• We have to talk Tron, of course. The film has a new and final trailer out, which looks spectacular (as always) … and also completely shallow. So that’s now what I’m expecting from this film, along with a light dusting of liberal nonsense about Jeff Bridges’ former company becoming a defense contractor. [Gasp!] In any case, Disney is really going to the mat on this one, releasing one new, boffo poster after another (see here) and even opening Tron stores. They’d better hope the film doesn’t lay an egg. Plus, Olivia Wilde just posed for Vanity Fair. She’s certainly cute; it’s too bad she’s so annoying.
• One of the big announcements of the past week on the Alien Invasion Front was the pickup of Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov’s Apollo 18 project. Bekmambetov is already shooting (in 3D) right now The Darkest Hour, another alien invasion thriller, set in Moscow. Apollo 18 will be riffing off the real-world history of the space race, apparently; here is how the project is described:
With the recent discovery of Russian film footage that suggests that America’s Apollo 18 space mission actually did occur, despite being canceled by President Nixon in the early 1970s, The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today that it has acquired the rights to a provocative new film project, titled Apollo 18. To be directed by Trevor Cawood from a screenplay by Brian Miller, the documentary-style sci-fi thriller will be produced by Russian filmmaker Timur Behmambetov …
A quintessential Cold War story, Apollo 18 casts light on the covert and undocumented lunar mission that officially “never happened.” Bekmambetov, hired by Russia to shoot a documentary about the Russian space station, recently came across footage in its space archives that bolsters the idea that an Apollo 18 mission did, in fact, take place, and reveals startling evidence of extraterrestrial life forms. This actual footage will be part of Apollo 18, a paranormal thriller that will interpolate fact and fiction.
• If you have any doubts about whether sci-fi is going political right now, check out this poster for the new Brit sci-fi adaptation of Henry V, starring Michael Caine and Ray Winstone. In case you can’t see it, the poster’s tagline reads: “How will they justify why they went to war?” Hmmm …
• The whole blonde Scarlett Johansson alien thing reminds me, by the way, that the old Roger Corman-Traci Lords alien invasion cult classic Not of This Earth (1988) just go released on DVD this week. This cheeky, fun little flick – featuring Traci Lords fighting off an alien invader while in a nurse’s outfit (when she’s clothed, that is) – is definitely worth checking out, although it’s not as good as Corman’s original. Also just out on DVD this week is Season 1 of ABC’s reboot of V. Season Two of that series debuts in January. On a somewhat lamer note, here are the full, excruciating details on the huge forthcoming Avatar Blu-ray set, as enumerated by James Cameron himself. [Sigh.] The money in my wallet for that Blu-ray might be called ‘unobtanium.’
• Here are some more new set photos of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Transformers 3. Hooray!
• Paramount apparently needs to get rolling on its long-in-development adaptation of Dune, or else Frank Herbert’s family will be pulling the rights from that studio. I’ve always thought Dune deserved much better than what it got years ago from David Lynch; with that said, part of the problem here is that George Lucas has been successfully using Star Wars to riff off Dune for years, so there’s some question as to whether it’s worth going back to that well. We’ll see. It’s worth noting here that Paramount recently wanted director Peter Berg to do the Dune adaptation, until he decamped to Universal to direct the $200 million alien invasion thriller, Battleship …
• … and a lot of insider dirt is being dished right now about Universal’s $200 million alien invasion thriller Battleship, starring Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson. (Clips of the film just got shown yesterday in Rhode Island for the first time.) Apparently Ron Meyer’s head may be rolling because the film was hastily greenlit at a steep price and with a bizarre, trendy premise (i.e., aliens landing on Earth and getting themselves into a naval battle). Stranger still, it seems that Hasbro has been calling a lot of the shots at Universal lately – no doubt due to the success of their other alien invasion franchise, Transformers.
A novel idea that Universal might want to consider – in part because of the money it would savie them – is developing their own, original ideas in-house. Just a thought.
• All eyes are on the Skyline, so to speak, set to open Friday. The LA Times just did an interesting feature on the film’s low-budget origins (see here), ShockTillYouDrop is running one of its interesting set-visits from the film (see here), and you can catch cast interviews (here) and new clips from the film (see here, here and here), as well. JoBlo’s site is also running a feature on the film’s young new hottie, Crystal Reed.
So will the film be any good? Or will it have an ideological subtext worth mentioning? I have no idea. I’m actually trying to avoid the film’s media onslaught right now, because I’d like to be at least somewhat surprised by what I see in the theater. So far it’s looking like the film will be on the vapid side; or at least, they’re not letting anything loose in the media indicating that the film is treading on any new ground. The question is whether this film will have negative repercussions for the alien invasion genre generally, if it fails. In the short term I think the answer is ‘yes’; but in the long term? Not a chance.
• If anybody is still interested in Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, Aint It Cool News interviews him here. He’s not done with sci-fi, apparently. Too bad.
• On the TV front, Steven Spielberg’s big-budget sci-fi series Terra Nova is having cost-overrun problems. [Side note: Harrison Ford says there’s no new update on Spielberg’s Indy 5 yet, as George Lucas and his team are still apparently working on the script.] Also, did you known that NBC’s alien invasion show The Event is more or less turning out as I predicted (see here and here)? A lot of snarky people swamped Libertas months ago and told me how crazy I was when I predicted what direction that show was going in. I notice they’re not coming back to gloat. It’s actually easy to predict this stuff; all you need to know are: 1) liberals, and; 2) how sci-fi works.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … the unnervingly hot Brooklyn Decker, star of the forthcoming, $200 million alien invasion thriller Battleship, also has a new trailer out for Just Go With It, in which she stars with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. If this movie heads where I think it’s heading, with Sandler dropping Decker for Aniston … I’m going to wretch. Who actually likes Jennifer Aniston these days?
And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
