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SKYLINE or oh God, earth loses to the aliens

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It’s not often I am moved to write a film review, but I had a chance to see a lot of films over Christmas what with all the flight time I racked up…

I saw lots of films I enjoyed (principally, it has to be admitted, cartoons as I was sitting next to my toddler and couldn’t watch things with too high a rating).
“Scott Pilgrim vs the World” was sublime, laugh out loud funny and so clever.
“The Social Network” is worth the Oscar nominations.
“Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang” was make-you-cry feelgood at the end.
I want a “Despicable Me” minion.
My reaction to “Avatar” was “meh!” but I expect it is suboptimal on an aeroplane seat-sized screen rather than a giant 3D screen…

But the film I want to review is “Skyline“.
This $10m  alien invasion film (i.e. made for peanuts and with no big star – often the sort of film-making I like…) is the one that has affected me most, and mainly because I hated it.

I don’t mean I disliked it, or found it boring.  I actually hated it.

This is a bleak, doom-laden and ultimately depressing film.  It is impossible to write about it without spoilers, so consider yourselves warned…

We start in an apartment where a group of hungover friends are waking up.  One girl gets up and is sick – it is later established that she is pregnant.  Everyone is transfixed by a blue light – it’s so pretty, no one can resist looking.  But then it starts to suck them in…
And then we’re off into full-on alien invasion mode.
These alien things suck in everyone and come in varying sizes meaning they can get into houses or crush entire apartment blocks.
It has been pointed out in other reviews that the black character dies first – yes, and the character cheats on his girlfriend too as if that somehow makes it ok that he died, in comparison with the hero/ heroine couple who are going to have a baby.
The US airforce sends in a nuclear bomb – boom!
But the aliens are not destroyed and the havesting continues. Our heroes continue, despite radiation poisoning, to try to figure out a way to survive, but ultimately are taken by the alien harvesters.
But that’s not the end.
Ultimately everyone in the world is taken, alive, on board the alien ship, where their heads are ripped off and their still living brains used, Doctor Who Cyberman-style, to power new alien beings.
I’ll leave a mystery over the exact fate of the newly pregnant heroine and the hero, but suffice to say the only way of making a sequel is if the heroine survived nine months of pregnancy in alien hell and the foetus grows up to invent time travel and stop it happening.

And that, if you like, is my problem.  To me, there was no proper ending, just unending horror.
Some reviewers have praised this as “realistic”, or “refreshingly free from cheesy Hollywood feelgood”.

To me, it was evidence to me of how important it is to me to know that there after apocalypse there is redemption.
The longing for a happy ending is hard-wired into our society.  We want to know that wrongs will be righted, the evil to be punished and the good to be rewarded (even if we disagree on when, how and what exactly we mean by those concepts).
In the Strause brothers’ vision of the apocalypse there is no judgement, no fairness, no ultimate purpose to life.
Humankind has no value other than as fuel, and lives on only as the brainpower of another species.  And it is better – as demonstrated by the fat, bossy man (fat? Yep, in filmworld if he’s not funny, he’s going to die), to kill yourself than to be taken.  What kind of a world view is it where suicide is the best option?

Ultimately, in that vision of the world, there is no God.
Well, unless it is a vision of what happens during the book of Revelation, before all the 7-horned cows and whore of Babylon stuff.
But I don’t think He’s there in this story.  I don’t think he was even an afterthought.  This is an apocalypse with a nihilistic world view and a simple message.  We all die.  Earth loses to the aliens.

To people who think that religion is a crutch for those who need a fluffy bunny version of the world, I suggest you’ve not read Revelations – all those years of dreadful things happening that are mentioned there, and they don’t spell out clearly that believers will be spared from all the horrors.
(Well, pretribulationist Christians think it does, with the rapture lifting them up to meet Christ before it all kicks off, but that’s not the most commonly held position – and an atheist website offering to look after the pets of Christians taken away in the rapture neatly satirises this…).

The world of St John the Divine’s book of Revelation is not a cosy place.
Some have suggested that it has more than a touch of the magic mushroom about it.
Frankly, even if it’s an allegorical description, the sort of world described is all the worst of the world around us until the new heaven and the new earth.

But – and draw a deep breath – given I believe that Jesus is coming back, then I would still rather that the vision there is as it will be than subscribe to the world view that is so neatly encapsulated by “Skyline”.

But it’s not 0 stars for “Skyline”, it’s 1 star, and that’s because it made me think.

Yes, it’s worth seeing

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Let’s get that out the way, up front.   It is very funny indeed.

We’ve just come back from Mark Watson’s pre-Edinburgh warm up show.
I’m not going to give away the material really, because that’s his. 
Even if I did though, it’s a preview show so it’ll probably have changed a bit by the time he gets to Edinburgh. 
It is still a bit of a work in progress.
( But we’ll hold him to the three quid thing!)

So, what’s it like? 

Well, when we arrived I still had sunglasses on, and that was a bad move as they’re prescription ones. 
I made my way to a seat and was ferreting in my bag for my normal glasses when my husband says “the warm-up guy is already on stage!”
Once bespectacled, I pointed out that this was actually the headline act himself (but without his glasses which make him more recognisable).

Very excitingly for a social media geek like me, he was commenting on well, stuff, on a big screen behind him.  
Hooray I though, a Twitter wall!   What’s the hashtag to join in?
But actually it looked like a normal Word document on screen. 
Never mind. 
I suspect it’ll be a Twitter wall by the time the show hits Edinburgh.
On the plus side, he was actually on Twitter and was answering Tweets from the audience.
On the minus side, it seemed I was the only person in the audience actually on Twitter. 
It made me wonder – is Twitter a 30-something thing?
He got a bit of material out of the first one (have you ever been to Ashford before?) but my combined spelling-and-predictive text problem on the second one I sent caused a bit of confusion…
Maybe it reminded him, maybe it was me feeling a bit sensitive about it, but he did actually have some predictive text jokes in his routine even though he called it out of date. 
But then, who uses predictive text these days except me?  Clearly I need a much hipper phone…

My husband and I (I say as if I’m the Queen) had both had tough working days, so absolutely the best compliment I can give was that I forgot all about my rubbish day and just laughed for a hour. And my husband stayed awake.  For the dad of a toddler who works long hours, that’s high praise indeed. (My toddler doesn’t work long hours, obviously, he just stays awake all evening).

Bad language?  Not much more than I’d routinely use (sorry Mum!), but I’m not sure whether it was a bit toned down for li’le Sha’e…
Having established that the audience age range was 11-67, Watson asked 11 year old Shane if he had ever heard much bad language.  
This was met by the best audience response of the night: “he’s from Ashford!”

Later on you could see why Watson had been a bit worried.  One whole sketch is built around the C-word and its application on Watson in the comments on a YouTube clip Mark Watson.  I hate that word – but it was a funny sketch.  And if he is a c***, does that make his show a vagina monologue?  (Sorry again Mum!)

But poor Ashford’s Future… you can make us twice as big and much flashier as a town, but essentially we all start from the perspective that Ashford’s a bit shit.  It’d be great if we could all feel a bit better about ourselves.
Still, at least we’re not Maidstone…

And that’s pretty much the show’s theme – what can we do to make a difference in the world and feel a bit better about it all? 
While you might expect a bit of the Watson environmentalism here, the focus is (currently) on one of the biggest changes anyone can have in their lives – impending fatherhood. 
Just for a moment though, with all the talk of death, I wondered if he’d found religion.

I mentioned the show is a work in progress and what it lacks at present is a clear ending – yes, the Mark Steel-style approach of taking something local-but-a-bit-away and getting a slightly snobbish laugh about it (yep, it was Maidstone) worked, but that story was an afterthought.   The actual last scheduled story was a bit weak.  a shame as the rest really brings home the bacon…
(I wonder if there’s a different special word each show?)

Final thoughts – we arrived 5 minutes after doors opened and were practically the last people in. 
Ashford has a comedy club but it is only held once a month at the Ashford International hotel.  And this show (held, weirdly, at the local private school) was absolutely packed out.
Mark Watson finished by trying to remember where his tour was going to visit, but there was nowhere in Kent. 
There never is once comedians get properly successful – Tunbridge Wells at a push if you are lucky, otherwise it is the 60 mile trek to London. 
But it’s obvious from tonight – this town is starved of the chance to have a good laugh!    
So Ashford’s Future is consulting on what we need in the revamped town and what we need is a decent theatre that can be a comedy venue, get the touring plays, Peppa Pig Live, lectures, proper gigs with bands we’ve heard of – that kind of thing. 
But if we were focused on comedy and music, then that differentiates an Ashford venue from the Marlowe in Canterbury.   
There’s no real comedy festival in Kent (not sure there’s been once since The Mighty Boosh played the Hop Farm near Paddock Wood in 2008?) but given the Continental climate, and huge distance from Edinburgh, that’s got to be worth considering… 
Come on, we need our bread and circuses.

New Who…

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…woohoo!

 (amazing regeneration wallpaper from www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho)

Yes, pleased to report that I enjoyed the Eleventh doctor’s first outing “the Eleventh hour” (available on BBC iPlayer here).

Thanks to my son’s perhaps unsuitable addition to sci-fi TV programmes (the Sarah Jane Adventures, MI High etc.) I’ve had the opportunity recently to rewatch the Christopher Eccleston era Doctor Who episodes in the last couple of weeks (the less scary ones at least).  I remember now how I feared that the actor that played the singing policeman from Blackpool and the young Casanova couldn’t surely be a better Doctor than the one-that-looks-a-bit-like-my-husband?  But after the slightly disappointing “Christmas Invasion” (worst line?  “This new hand?  It’s a fightin’ hand!” in a cod Wild West accent), David Tennant became the best Doctor Who that I can remember, and I remember back to Tom Baker… well, the repeats at least.

I was one of the five people that watched and enjoyed Party Animals (the series which made Matt Smith’s name :) ), so I was actually quite pleased when he was cast, and didn’t respond “Doctor Who?” (hohoho).  Though I have to admit I was bothered about being older than the Doctor for the first time.  The friendship with the companions is important and I was a bit afraid that a younger Doctor meant more romance stuff and less exciting adventures.  The wedding dress (which I guessed was coming) at the end of the episode suggests that Stephen Moffat might have thought about this too… 

I was genuinely enthusiastic about Stephen Moffat taking over at Doctor Who and I’m glad to say, so far it’s lived up to my expectations. 

There are reviews galore online and I’d rather you watched it and formed your own views. But some highspeed random thoughts:
- new titles – great graphics, not so sure about the theme remix;
- liked the kid with the talking bedroom wall, hated the praying to Santa business (yes, we know the writers are atheists, but this felt petty);
- liked the not-quite-done-yet Doctor and the revamped tardis;
- liked the “corner of your eye” business and the camera technique of  “what did I see?”;
- liked the references to earlier themes and incarnations: the William Hartnell library card, the stealing clothes from the hospital (Paul McGann does that!), the inability to know when exactly he’s returning to (like the Girl in the Fireplace);
- loved the “village” atmosphere of Leadworth where everyone knows Amy…

The monsters were scary enough to mean that my son certainly won’t be seeing it for a few years (prisoner zero and the prison guard ships i can’t remember the name of), and the Doctor as the protector of earth theme was pleasingly in place. 
The dialogue is quick-fire and less “Coupling” than the Blink episode from series 3 (where both heroine Sally Sparrow and even Martha Jones sounded suspiciously like Sally Harper at times), and the oneliners are thick and fast. 

Essentially, >>jealous<< that I’m not writing it.  Though that means I get to watch it and get the enjoyment from that. Can you see the grin from here?

(And – given the random groups of people that read my blog – having read two thirds of the Ben Cook/ Russell T Davis email correspondence that forms “Doctor Who: the Writer’s Tale” and seeing the struggle going into Torchwood: Children of Earth, if series 4 gets the go ahead, email me via the contact sheet if you need a new writer…)

Very much looking forward to next week!