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Sky High (2005 film)

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Wikipedia article




{{Infobox film

| name = Sky High

| image = Sky_High_movie_poster.jpg

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Mike Mitchell

| producer = Andrew Gunn

| writer =

| starring =

| music = Michael Giacchino

| cinematography = Shelly Johnson

| editing = Peter Amundson

| studio =

| distributor = Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

| released =

| runtime = 100 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $35 million

| gross = $86.4 million

}}

'Sky High' is a 2005 American superhero comedy film directed by Mike Mitchell and written by Paul Hernandez and 'Kim Possible' creators Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle. The film stars Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kelly Preston and Kurt Russell. It also features Bruce Campbell, Cloris Leachman, Jim Rash, Steven Strait, Lynda Carter, Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald. It tells the story of Will Stronghold, the son of two superheroes who is enrolled in an airborne high school for teenage superheroes where his powers kick in; he must deal with a growing distance from his old friends, a threat from a mysterious supervillain and get the girl of his dreams.

The film was theatrically released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution on July 29, 2005, and grossed $86.4 million worldwide against a production budget of $35 million. While it did receive generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, in the years since its release, its reputation has improved considerably, to the point of being regarded by some as a cult film.

Plot



Will Stronghold is about to attend Sky High, a high school for superheroes. He is the son of Steve "The Commander" and Josie "Jetstream" Stronghold, two of the world's strongest and most famous superheroes, but he has no superpowers of his own. Upon arriving at Sky High, the students are put into two groups: those with stronger powers are assigned to "Hero" courses, while those with weaker powers are "Sidekicks", who are treated as social outcasts. Will and his longtime best friend Layla Williams, who can control plants, are placed with the sidekicks. The school nurse tells Will that though his powers will likely come, there is a rare possibility for the child of two superheroes to never gain powers; the bus driver Ron Wilson is one such example. Upon returning home, Steve takes Will to the Secret Sanctum, a hidden chamber filled with mementos of his and Josie's greatest battles. Not wanting to ruin his dad's dream of the three of them becoming the world's greatest superhero family, Will decides not to reveal the truth. Unbeknownst to them, Steve and Josie's latest souvenir, an eye from a giant robot, is still functional and is being used by a villain to spy on them.

Will and Layla begin taking the Sidekick curriculum, where they quickly befriend the other sidekicks. One evening, Will confesses to his father that he has no powers. Steve is initially in denial, but Josie eventually convinces him that they will be fine no matter what. One day at lunch, Will accidentally runs afoul of the pyrokinetic Warren Peace, whose supervillain father was locked away by Steve. Warren attacks Will, but when Warren threatens his friends, Will awakens his father's power of super strength.

As a result of his new power, Will is moved to the Hero curriculum and is partnered with technopath Gwen in science class. The two of them grow closer, leading to Will hanging out with Gwen's hero friends and spending less time with the sidekicks. To make up for this, Will asks Layla to meet up with him for dinner. However, he forgets about this engagement when Gwen unexpectedly drops in at his house, where she invites Steve and Josie to be guests of honor at the homecoming dance to receive the "Hero of the Year" Award. Will walks Gwen home, where she gets him to ask her to homecoming. Warren finds Layla stood up, and she confesses to him that she has loved Will for a long time. Warren encourages her to ask him to homecoming, but upon learning the next day that Will is going with Gwen, Layla says she is going with Warren as an attempt to make him jealous. Warren agrees to be in on the plan, and a rift forms between Will and Layla.

Gwen then tricks Will into hosting a party at his house. When Gwen asks if there is somewhere they can be alone, Will takes her to the Secret Sanctum, where they kiss. During the kiss, one of Steve and Josie's mementos known as Royal Pain's Pacifier is stolen. Layla enters the party to find Will and is confronted by Gwen, who lies by saying that Will wants nothing to do with her. After Layla angrily bids farewell to him and Gwen reveals what she said, Will breaks up with Gwen as Steve and Josie arrive to end the party. Will refuses to go to homecoming, but while looking through one of his parents' old yearbooks, he comes across a girl named Sue Tenny, who is shown holding the Pacifier. Seeing a resemblance between her and Gwen and realizing that the Pacifier is gone, Will deduces that Gwen is Royal Pain's daughter and heads to Sky High to stop her. During the award presentation for Steve and Josie, Gwen reveals her mantle as Royal Pain and uses the Pacifier to turn everyone into babies. Layla, Warren, and the sidekicks escape, and they reunite with Will. Will apologizes for his behavior and shares a kiss with Layla. As Will goes to face Gwen, her henchmen battle the others. The sidekicks defeat the henchmen, and Layla learns that Gwen sabotaged the school's anti-gravity generator, which will cause it to fall to the Earth.

Gwen is confronted by Will and reveals that she is Sue Tenny, having been turned into a baby when the Pacifier backfired during her first battle with Steve and Josie. Having been originally cast aside as a sidekick, she intends to raise the de-aged superheroes as villains to get revenge. She and Will fight, and she eventually throws him off the school, but he survives after awakening his mother's power of flight. Meanwhile, Gwen's henchman and surrogate father Stitches is stopped by Ron Wilson. Will defeats Gwen, but the school then starts falling. Will tries to slow the school's descent as sidekick Magenta uses her guinea pig shapeshifting powers to access the generator, managing to restore the anti-gravity. The Pacifier is reconfigured to restore everyone, and Steve and Josie present the "Hero of the Year" Award to the sidekicks, whom they recognize as full-fledged heroes. The homecoming dance then resumes as a celebration, and Will and Layla share a kiss in midair. Will then narrates what happened to the villains and explains that Ron Wilson got his own superpowers after falling into a vat of toxic waste. He closes the film by saying "So in the end, my girlfriend became my arch-enemy, my arch-enemy became my best friend, and my best friend became my girlfriend. But hey, that's high school.".

Cast



* Michael Angarano as William "Will" Theodore Stronghold, a freshman at Sky High, whose parents are the two most famous superheroes Commander and Jetstream as well as Maxville's top real estate agents in their secret identities. His super strength, inherited from his father, and his ability to fly, inherited from his mother, start as inactive and gradually manifest over the film.

* Danielle Panabaker as Layla Williams, Will's childhood best friend and later girlfriend, who is a pacifist and is able to animate and control plant life. Her mother's abilities are said to allow her to talk to animals and her father is a normal human.

* Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwendolyn "Gwen" Grayson / Royal Pain (suit actress) / Susan "Sue" Tenny, a senior at Sky High whom Will, along with everyone else, falls in love with. Her power is technopathy. Winstead said of her role, "I bounced around. I was either the hero of the sidekicks or the sidekick to the heroes.""[http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire//index.php?category=0&id=31721 Sky Kids Have Hero Issues] ," 'SciFi.com' (22-JULY-05). When she attended Sky High the first time, no one understood her class of powers and she was slated as a sidekick and a weirdo, eventually turning into a supervillain. An accident with the "Pacifier" de-aged her during a battle with The Commander.

** Patrick Warburton provides the voice of Gwen in her Royal Pain suit. Winstead also serves as the suit actress of Gwen in her Royal Pain suit.

* Steven Strait as Warren Peace, the son of an unnamed superheroine and a supervillain known as Baron Battle who is in jail with four life sentences. He is pyrokinetic. Warren is a high school outcast who tries to lead a decent life, but is often misunderstood due to being a son of a felonious father. His name is a pun of the novel, 'War and Peace'.

* Dee Jay Daniels as Ethan Bank, a sidekick and one of Will's friends who can melt into a fluid (which earned him the nickname "Popsicle").

* Kelly Vitz as Magenta "Maj" Lewis, one of Will's friends who shapeshifts into a guinea pig with purple highlights and streaks in her fur.

* Nicholas Braun as Zachary "Zach" Braun / Zack Attack, Will's childhood friend who has the latent ability to glow in the dark.

* Malika Haqq and Khadijah Haqq as Penny Lent, Gwen's best friend who duplicates herself and is naturally athletic.

* Jake Sandvig as Lash, a skinny bully at Sky High who has elasticity.

* Will Harris as Speed, an overweight bully at Sky High who can run at an extremely high speed.

* Lynda Carter as Principal Powers, the principal of Sky High who has the power to change into a luminous energy form resembling a comet and back at will. Her catchphrase is "Comets away".

* Bruce Campbell as Tommy Boomowski / Coach Boomer / Sonic Boom, the gym teacher at Sky High who has his ability to release sonic waves from his vocal cords which can be listed as sonic screaming. His real name is listed as Tommy Boomowski in the Commander's Sky High Yearbook. Coach Boomer's job is to sort the superheroes from the sidekicks and oversee the civilian rescue exercise.

* Kevin Heffernan as Ron Wilson, Sky High's good-hearted bus driver. He is the son of two superheroes, but does not have any powers. He feels a great sense of pride in driving the "superheroes of tomorrow" to school. It is revealed at the end of the film that he fell into a vat of toxic waste, gaining superpowers of his own.

* Kurt Russell as Steve Stronghold / The Commander, Will's father who is one of the world's strongest superheroes, displaying superhuman strength and invulnerability, and is a successful businessman in his secret identity. In a deleted scene, it is revealed that Steve was an investigative reporter who seeks to change his career before becoming a real estate agent.

* Kelly Preston as Josie DeMarco-Stronghold / Jetstream, Will's mother and a successful real estate agent. As Jetstream, she uses the power of supersonic flight; she is also touted as being an expert in hand-to-hand combat.

* Cloris Leachman as Nurse Spex, a kind and eccentric elderly lady that serves as Sky High's single known school nurse, with the ability of x-ray vision. She is the one who tells Will that not everybody gets powers even if they are the child of two superheroes.

* Jim Rash as Mr. Grayson / Stitches, Royal Pain's bumbling cackling sidekick. He raised her as his daughter after she was turned into a baby by the "Pacifier".

* Dave Foley as Jonathan Boy / All-American Boy, The Commander's old sidekick who works as Hero Support teacher at Sky High.

* Kevin McDonald as Professor Medulla, The Mad Science teacher with a hyper-advanced (and oversized) brain, which grants him advanced intelligence, creativity and a multitude of genius-level skills.

* Tom Kenny and Jill Talley as Mr. and Mrs. Chester Timmerman, a couple who witnesses Will prevent Sky High from falling on their new home.

* Loren Berman as Larry, a nerdy boy who can turn into a rock monster.

* Dustin Ingram as Carbon Copy Kid, a boy that can make himself look like anyone.

* Nicole Malgarini as Freeze Girl, a girl with cryokinetic powers.

Kim Rhodes was also set to appear as Professor Jeannie Elast / Elastic Girl, a girl who has the talent to twist her body into anything she wants, but her scenes were cut from the final film.

Production



Exterior shots of the Sky High school were filmed at the Oviatt Library at California State University in Northridge in late 2004.

In between working on the first and second seasons of the animated series 'Kim Possible', creators Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle had begun writing a script for a live-action adaptation, which ultimately never came to fruition due to unknown reasons. Impressed with their work, the filmmakers asked them to look into re-writing the script for 'Sky High', which had been previously shelved. McCorkle believes they were recruited for 'Sky High' because "they liked the idea of a superhero high school. I think, reading how we wrote teens in 'Kim Possible', they felt like, 'This feels good and contemporary, and maybe you can apply that to this project for us.' Similar to 'Kim Possibl'e, Schooley and McCorkle wrote 'Sky High' to be equally appealing to both children and adults. According to scifi.com, Disney was attracted by the "original concept" of "children of superheroes going to high school", originally conceived by screenwriter Paul Hernandez in the 1990s.

After recruiting comedy writers (creators of 'Kim Possible') for polishing Hernandez's script (they only wrote the beginning and ending sequences) Disney hired several comedians such as Kevin McDonald, Dave Foley, and Kevin Heffernan for supporting roles. For the main roles, the casting was a mix of established and new teenager actors: while Michael Angarano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were already successful, Danielle Panabaker was little-known and Steven Strait (a former model) was hired after his first audition ever.

Director Mike Mitchell said that Sky High functions on two premises: "the adults are all insane" and "the girls are smarter than the boys":'Sky High' DVD extras Therefore, all the adults portrayed in the film tend to be caricatured, while the teenage girls are written as more assertive and powerful than the boys. The film also employed extensive usage of Dutch angles. For the treatment of the teenage actors, Mitchell also stated that the actors all had their own trailers and were generally kept separated, because "we did not want them to date after the second week and break up after the fourth", which would have made filming difficult.

Mitchell, a science fiction fan, admitted that this project "was a dream", because it brought him together with four of his favorite SF cult heroes: namely Wonder Woman (popularized in the eponymous 1970s television series by actress Lynda Carter), Snake Plissken (portrayed by Kurt Russell), Ash Williams (from 'Evil Dead', played by Bruce Campbell) and Cloris Leachman, who earned fame as Frau Blcher in 'Young Frankenstein'; and worked with Lynda Carter before in the pilot movie episode for the 'Wonder Woman' TV series playing Hippolyta opposite Lynda Carter who played Wonder Woman herself.

Music



The soundtrack album for the film was released by Hollywood Records on July 26, 2005, and is composed of covers of songs from the 1980s (with the exception of "Just What I Needed", which was from 1978). While none of the film's score, composed by Michael Giacchino, was included on the album, a limited edition of his score was released by Intrada Records in 2017.

; Track listing

# "I Melt with You"  Bowling for Soup (Originally by: Modern English) - 4:03

# "Through Being Cool"  They Might Be Giants (Originally by: Devo) - 3:17

# "Save It for Later"  Flashlight Brown (Originally by: The Beat) - 2:49

# "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"  Christian Burns (Originally by: Tears for Fears) - 4:28

# "One Thing Leads to Another"  Steven Strait (Originally by: The Fixx) - 3:10

# "Lies"  The Click Five (Originally by: Thompson Twins) - 2:58

# "Voices Carry"  Vitamin C (Originally by: 'Til Tuesday) - 4:16

# "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want"  Elefant (Originally by: The Smiths) - 2:53

# "True"  Cary Brothers (Originally by: Spandau Ballet) - 5:11

# "Just What I Needed"  Caleigh Peters (Originally by: The Cars) - 3:38

# "Can't Stop the World"  Ginger Sling (Originally by: The Go-Go's) - 3:25

# "And She Was"  Keaton Simons (Originally by: Talking Heads) - 3:49

# "Twist and Crawl"  Skindred (Originally by: The Beat) - 2:31

Reception

AllMusic rated the album 2.5/5, saying that it "stumbles more than it succeeds" and is "painfully conventional."

Release



Home media

The film was released in separate widescreen and full screen format editions on DVD on November 29, 2005. It was also released on VHS but only through Disney Movie Club, making it the final live-action Disney film to be released on VHS. It was also released on high definition Blu-ray for an original widescreen presentation on November 21, 2006.

Reception



Box office

On an estimated budget of US$35 million, the film grossed just under $64 million in the US, and another $22 million internationally, bringing the total to $86 million.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus states: "This highly derivative superhero coming-of-age flick is moderately entertaining, family-friendly fluff." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 62 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A on a scale of A+ to F.

Joe Leydon of Variety magazine praised the film calling it: "Smartly written and sprightly played, 'Sky High' satisfies with a clever commingling of spoofy superheroics, school-daze hijinks" and "this lively live-action Disney release stands on its own merits as a tongue-in-cheek fantasy with cross-generational appeal."

Neil Smith at BBC.com wrote: "While originality is hardly the film's strongest suit, its agreeable mix of knowing spoof and kid-pleasing fantasy makes it considerably more engaging than some of the 'straight' superhero blockbusters we've suffered recently."

See also



* 'Hero High'

* 'PS238'

* 'Zoom'

* 'My Hero Academia'

* 'The Magic Roundabout'

* 'Up, Up and Away'

References




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