Movies that arrive to little fanfare and end up being trashed by both critics and audiences don’t tend to be the ones that launch multi-film franchises, but nobody told filmmaking siblings Greg and Colin Strause when they unleashed Skyline upon an unsuspecting world.
Having already survived legal action after Sony alleged the duo had pulled a fast one by helming their own alien invasion movie while being employed to work on the visual effects for Battle: Los Angeles at the same time, the turgid invasion flick was wisely hidden from critics ahead of its big screen bow.
13 years on from its release and Skyline still only holds respective Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings of 15 and 18 percent, even if it did haul in close to $70 million at the box office to turn a tidy profit. Then, the strangest thing happened; the sequels were actually pretty good, so much so that you’d never guess they were born from such a diabolical progenitor.
Throwing Frank Grillo and Iko Uwais is always a recipe for a good old-fashioned ass-kicking, something that unsurprisingly worked in the favor of Beyond Skyline, while even threequel Skylines was entertaining on its own merit. And yet, it’s the opener that’s been beaming up streaming subscribers this week, even though it’s the worst of the three by far.
Per FlixPatrol, Skyline has emitted a tractor beam that’s caught Starz users in its maw, with the film having become one of the platform’s Top 10 most-watched features in the United States. Do yourself a favor, though, and seek out the sequels first.
Published: Jun 5, 2023 11:38 am