Skyline, Story Telling and How It's Put

Been watching movies. Just saw Skyline and I didn't not like it. As far as alien invasion films go it's nice to see the aliens win sometimes because, honestly, a star faring species would in all likelihood own man kind pretty hard. There were a couple of things that stood out though as I started fast forwarding to the end to see where it was all going.

The story telling struck me as pretty flat. When the guy from Scrubs died I didn't really feel one way or the other about it. I know I was supposed to feel "aw no, the main character's best friend just got eaten and now he's all alone in the world with his pregnant girl friend who seems to get randomly upset about things people are supposed to be upset about when they're pregnant." However, all I could really think about was how he probably could have made it to safety had his friend not body checked him with a bro hug in a weird attempt to pull him to safety that would, had they been playing basketball, have been an offensive foul. Rescue fail. If someone is running from a giant brain eating semi-sentient mech warrior thingy you probably shouldn't run directly into their only path of egress, whatever your intention.

Ultimately, what it came down to, I decided, was that no one in the film had any real motive to do anything they did beyond the fact that they were supposed to. Which sounds like a reasonable reason to do anything at all, but in terms of telling a story it is the worst thing in the world. You could almost see the writer pulling the strings of the puppets and animating the actions and progressions by sheer harm of will. Not unacceptable, but noticeable. I think that is one of the chief challenges of story telling and writing. Making the strings invisible. Growing motives. Building back story and momentum so that actions are not knee jerk responses to chisels and hammers on a blank canvas.

It was an interesting film. The other thing that stood out pretty starkly by the film's close was that the aliens could have been replaced by just about anything. It could have been a movie about tornadoes. Or a tsunami. Or any natural disaster. Or any sort of invasion. Absent the plot device of them needing brains for whatever reason and you basically have an empty template of two dimensional good looking twenty and thirty somethings trying to survive a blank social upheaval. What sets something like Colossus: The Forbin Project or District 9 apart from Skyline is the construction and development of the nemesis and the invader as a character unto itself. If the voiced actors in Skyline are by and large two dimensional, the invaders are one dimensional and that sort of held it back, though the action was interesting. The film could probably have greatly benefited from thirty more minutes of plot development and enrichment of the hero's foil. If the deaths of the characters are to hold weight as lynch pins in the plot, their lives have to hold weight too and if their lives do not then the executioners must.

Which is what I strive to learn how to do. Craft that balance. And I do not believe I succeed often enough. And so I keep working at it, because it is important to me and the stories I want to tell. Too much of the action and dialog in the film was foreseeable from miles away and though interesting and visually entertaining, it was not much more than that. The other thing that sort of stung me a little bit was some of the final scenes. Why do the brains glow at all? Is that really the best way to extract brains from things? Why not harvest animals instead or in addition? Given the difficulty of the operation, why not find somewhere else less developed? If stars can be crossed, why inferior human stock at all? What about when the brain supply runs out, as it seems the brains burn out so quickly with the difficulty and energy required to procure them in the first place? And I think what really annoyed me was that with all of their technology and apparent ability to regenerate themselves, why were they not just synthesizing brain matter in massive orbital laboratories or something? In the end I was sort of hoping for a larger theme to solidify, but it never did and to end the review I think that is what sent me looking for why I felt a little off after watching it in the first place. Plus, I'm pretty sure if, say Donald Trump, wanted to harvest human brains, he could probably find a better way to do it then creating a giant pile and brute force searching each for brain matter. Just gotta put your mind to it.

Story telling isn't easy. It was an okay movie, but I wouldn't watch it twice. So that's part of why I work on writing so much. I want people to want to read my stories twice.

While I was wrapping this up I noticed the tag still on the blinds I put up recently. The warning tag about the cords. "young children can STRANGLE in cord and bead chain loops," it reads. And I thought, yeah they can, but if you wanted it to really hit home it should probably say "young children can be STRANGLED with." But then I thought about it some more. That's probably not what you should say. People are strange. People like suggestions. People sometimes take suggestions they shouldn't. People sometimes file law suits they shouldn't. How weird would it be to have someone murder their children because a dangling tag on a cord gave them the idea. How much stranger would it be to have the family members of the accused sue the company for giving the perpetrator the idea. I'm sure stranger and more ridiculous things have happened. Like movies where everyone does what they do because if they didn't there wouldn't be anything to show and tell. Silly times. A fine diversion.



///Five Deez - "Sexual for Elizabeth" sometimes the best stories are told in sounds that don't make words. It's all in how it's put.