Trailer Trash (Not About the Chili Edition)

I hate this trailer. Yes, there's nothing too painful about it. It's short, there's virtually no dialogue, but for one reason or another I find it grating. I think it's best you just watch it and I meet you on the other side:



Perhaps it is the fact that Stephen Hawking is to this movie what the Mayans were to the Roland Emmerich schlockfest 2012: A prophet of our coming doom that we were too ignorant to recognize. Two differences:

1) A group of dead Mayans are a whole lot more mysterious than, well, Stephen Hawking. Yes, he's smarter than I can ever dream to be, but he's alive. He's here to answer for what he said. The Mayans who we claim "predicted" the end of the known universe in 2012 are dead, thus making it all the more convenient for us to create our own apocalyptic fiction based on a misinterpretation, and we get a two and a half hour movie of John Cusack running and screaming. Will Hawking's words be as large a backdrop for the entire film of Skyline? Perhaps not, and let's hope so. Again, my complaint may seem odd, but I guess that's just me.

2) The "coming doom" is not a warning against our carelessness towards the environment, politics, Happening-style killer trees or the like. Instead the thing "WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED" to is "hey, maybe we shouldn't send a radio message out to no one."

Either way, it doesn't matter. This will merely end up being an alien invasion movie the likes of which we've seen millions of times since Independence Day. On top of that, this cast is shockingly low-rent. You know you're in trouble when it's likely the most famous actor in your film is Turk from Scrubs.


To add to my current frustrations, here is the summary from Wikipedia in its entirety:

"After a night of partying, a group of friends are distracted when beams of light awaken everyone in Los Angeles, that then attracts every person like a moth to a flame. As the night progresses, they soon discover that once addicted to the light they vanish into thin air, as well as extraterrestrial forces that later threaten to swallow the entire human race."

 "A moth to a flame." Nice touch. "After a night of partying". Nicer touch. This leaves open the possibility that the film ends with them finding out they were drunk the whole time.

Skyline was directed, most infuriatingly, by the directing team that calls themselves "The Brothers Strause". Not since a man called Kaos directed Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever have I been so angry at a filmmaker's alias. While "Brothers Strause" is not an alias, per se, it is still annoying because you could hear the two (Colin and Greg) giggling as they decided to bill themselves as such. This is only their second feature, after Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, which I hated. So, this film looks incredibly promising really.

There is only one alien movie in recent memory I can recall truly liking, and that is Steven Spielberg's criminally underrated War of the Worlds from 2005. While, admittedly, the final 20 minutes is weak, the rest of the film is one of the few alien invasion thrillers that takes the violence of the events seriously. We watch millions of human beings die, but the way Spielberg films it we derive little pleasure from the destruction. We are watching our very world crumble. Skyline looks like another entry in the endless saga of films which depict mass death so that it is enjoyable, but it doesn't matter because there will be a small group of ragtag heroes that makes it out alive. Not without one of them dying so the rest can live, however. I bet it's Turk.

(By the way, I have just written a 650-word piece on 95 seconds of video. You're welcome.)