| Sky High | |
| Director: | Mike Mitchell |
| Producer: | Andrew Gunn |
| Cinematography: | Shelly Johnson |
| Editing: | Peter Amundson |
| Distributor: | Buena Vista Pictures Distribution |
| Runtime: | 100 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $35 million[1] |
| 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 Kelly Preston, Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kurt Russell. It follows Will Stronghold (Angarano), 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.[2] The film received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences during its original theatrical run and has since been recognized as a cult film.
Will Stronghold lives with his superhero parents, Steve Stronghold / The Commander and Josie DeMarco-Stronghold / Jetstream, in Maxville. Will is anxious about attending his parents' alma mater, Sky High, a school located on a secret floating campus because he secretly has not developed any superpowers yet.
On their first day, he, his best friend Layla Williams, and the other freshmen are harassed by seniors Speed, Lash, and Penny Lent and meet Gwen Grayson, a popular senior and technopath who Will falls for. Additionally, Will is assigned to the "Hero Support" curriculum and becomes a sidekick due to his lack of powers, though Layla joins him in protest of the school's two-track education system.
Unaware of what happened to his son, Steve shows Will his hidden trophy room, the Secret Sanctum. He expresses particular fondness for the "Pacifier", a weapon he took from his presumed dead arch-nemesis Royal Pain 16 years earlier, failing to notice a hidden camera in a separate trophy.
Though he befriends his fellow sidekicks, Will comes into conflict with pyrokinetic student Warren Peace, whose supervillain father was imprisoned by Steve. In the ensuing fight, Will develops his father's super-strength. Upon being transferred to the Hero curriculum, Will spends more time with Gwen and her friends, ignoring Layla and the sidekicks. Layla later confides to Warren that she has a crush on Will while Gwen comes over to Will's house to invite his parents as honored guests to the Homecoming dance and they spend the evening together.
On the day before the dance, Gwen tricks Will into throwing a party at his house and has Speed secretly steal the Pacifier. Layla tries to investigate the party but falls for Gwen's lies that Will knows about her feelings for him and is too polite to reject her. As Layla leaves in tears, Will breaks up with Gwen and refuses to attend the dance. After discovering the Pacifier was stolen, Will searches his father's yearbook and sees a student resembling Gwen named Sue Tenny, who disappeared before his parents' graduation. Assuming Tenny became Royal Pain and Gwen is her daughter, Will heads to Sky High to stop her with help from bus driver Ron Wilson.
At the dance, Gwen reveals herself as Royal Pain, having been de-aged by the Pacifier during her presumed death. With Speed, Lash, and Penny's aid, she captures and de-ages the students, staff, and Will's parents, intending to raise them as supervillains as revenge for Sky High making her a sidekick when she attended as Tenny due to her powers not being understood at the time. After reconciling with Layla, Will teams up with her, Warren, Ron, and the other sidekicks to rescue the captives and defeat Gwen's allies, during which Will develops Josie's flight power. Though Gwen sabotages the school's anti-gravity drive, the sidekicks successfully restart it and Will returns the school to the sky.
With Sky High saved, Gwen and her allies are given detention while her captives are restored to their proper ages. Ron falls into a vat of toxic waste and becomes a superhero. Will becomes best friends with Warren and enters a relationship with Layla.
Additionally, Tom Kenny and Jill Talley make cameo appearances as Mr. and Mrs. Chester Timmerman, a couple who witness Will prevent Sky High from destroying their new home.
Exterior shots of the Sky High school were filmed at the Oviatt Library[4] at California State University in Northridge in late 2004.[5]
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.[6] 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 Possible, 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.[7]
After recruiting Schooley and McCorkle to update 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 teenage actors: while Michael Angarano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were already successful, Danielle Panabaker was little-known and former model Steven Strait 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":[8] 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: Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter, Snake Plissken actor Kurt Russell, Ash Williams actor Bruce Campbell, and Cloris Leachman, who earned fame as Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein.
| Sky High (Original Soundtrack) | |
| Type: | Soundtrack |
| Artist: | Various Artists |
| Released: | July 26, 2005 |
| Genre: | Soundtrack |
| Length: | 46:28 |
| Label: | Hollywood Records |
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 (except "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.[9]
AllMusic rated the album 2.5/5, saying that it "stumbles more than it succeeds" and is "painfully conventional."
On an estimated budget of US$35 million,[1] the film grossed just under $64 million in the US, and another $22 million internationally, bringing the total to $86 million.
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."[10] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 62 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[11] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A− on a scale of A+ to F.[12]
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."[13] 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."[14]
Since its initial release, Sky High has been received more favorably in retrospective reviews and has developed a cult following, particularly due to its lighthearted homage to superhero tropes.[15] Mark Harrison, writing for Den of Geek, summarized, "With a cast made up of bright young things and cult favourites and a script that goes post-modern without ever getting arch or snarky, Sky High is a real gem from Disney’s live action catalog. It borrows from JK Rowling, John Hughes, Joss Whedon, and any number of comic books and yet still stands on its own. Next to the current superhero boom, it was so ahead of its time that a decade later, it seems sharper and funnier than ever".[15]
The film was released on DVD on November 29, 2005 and also Blu-Ray on November 21, 2006. It is also included on Disney's streaming service, Disney+.
In November 2016, Disney announced a sequel to Sky High in the early development stages.[16] In January 2019, Sky High director Mike Mitchell revealed earlier plans to make a franchise, but due to the film's box-office performance, nothing came to be. The sequel would have been titled Save U (Save University) and featured the characters from Sky High graduating from high school and attending college. There were also plans to make a TV series, which the main actors (save for Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston) had signed on to reprise their roles for,[17] but there have been no new developments for it as of 2024.
In March 2024, Mitchell still expressed interest in a sequel but pointed out that since Disney bought Marvel, they only see them as their superhero output. He has stated that he would like to do a Sky High inspired project set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.[18]