Even though the first installment recouped its production budget three times over and then some at the box office, nobody was exactly clamoring for a sequel to sci-fi thriller Skyline, for the sole reason that it was terrible.
A 15 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 18 percent user rating hardly bears the hallmarks of a franchise-launching success, but second chapter Beyond Skyline overhauled the concept completely to deliver a vastly superior follow-up. The first film’s co-writer Liam O’Donnell stepped up to write and direct all on his lonesome, and two key tweaks to the formula set it up for success.
The first was to ignore the disaster trappings in favor of a gung-ho action adventure that reveled in the sheer silliness of the premise, while the second masterstroke came in the form of dual-pronged ass-kickers Frank Grillo and Iko Uwais, who brought grizzled gravitas and martial arts expertise to a nonsensical narrative that found the human survivors banding together to battle back against their cosmic oppressors.
The end result was a 67 percent rating on RT, and if you’ve seen Beyond Skyline, then you’d more than likely agree that it is indeed four and a half times better than its predecessor. If you haven’t witnessed the glory of Grillo and Uwais taking on aliens in hand-to-hand combat, then maybe you should join the Netflix subscribers who’ve propelled it back onto the platform’s most-watched list.
Per FlixPatrol, Beyond Skyline has made a triumphant return to the platform’s most-watched rankings, and if you like your sci-fi smothered in ridiculousness and no shortage of roundhouse kicks, then this might just be the one for you.
Published: Oct 8, 2022 11:23 am