Skyscraper

Welcome to my first movie blog of 2019! I want to kick this year off with a film sharing a passing resemblance to the last film I covered here, Die Hard. Today I am covering what critics say is ‘Die Hard in a building,’ but what I proclaim is one of my favorite pictures of 2018, yes I am talking about Skyscraper trailer).

Will Sawyer (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is on a routine FBI hostage rescue mission where everything goes wrong and he emerges from the catastrophe without a leg. Flash forward several years and Will is living a second life as an amputee and proud husband to his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and father of two kids Georgia (McKenna Roberts) & Henry (Noah Cottrell). He is now a safety inspector in Hong Kong where his former FBI-colleague Ben (Pablo Schreiber) hooks him up as the inspector for the soon-to-open world’s tallest building, ‘The Pearl.’ Not all is rosy as it appears when terrorists compromise the structure and take over its security systems and waste no time in setting The Pearl ablaze. The authorities think Sawyer is the perpetrator, but when Will realizes his family is trapped in the burning Pearl, he becomes a man-on-a-mission who will do anything and overcome all odds in countless ‘you gotta be kidding me’ moments to rescue his family.

I understand the obvious comparisons to Die Hard, but I do not think Skyscraper is a direct copycat of it that I have heard from numerous people. Die Hard put a huge focus on the terrorists led by Hans Gruber and his motley crew of goons were as pivotal to the film as John McClane was. In Skyscraper they do not make the villains standout in any meaningful way as they quickly takeover the Pearl and come off as little more than stereotypical bad guys minus the charming monologues that made Hans Gruber pop and all the little idiosyncrasies that made each and every one of Gruber’s thugs standout as more than bland pawns. There is a little narrative quickly thrown in late why head villain Botha (Roland Moller) is after the owner of the Pearl, Zhao (Chin Han) and a couple of quick cuts to Botha’s head operative Xia (Hannah Quinlivan) making waste out of the Pearl’s security guards, but by and large the terrorists come out of Skyscraper as underdeveloped window dressing until the final scenes where they clash with Will and Zhao.

How Skyscraper overcomes this weakness of a lack of attention to the antagonists is making The Pearl a larger-than-life character itself. Where Die Hard had McClane squaring off in multiple firefights and duels outmanned, outgunned and seeing McClane suffer and take a beating throughout, Skyscraper starts Will off without a freaking leg and entering a burning super-structure that is ubiquitously falling apart. Watching Sawyer overcome each hurdle the Pearl throws at him as he makes his way up the mammoth building had me immersed throughout. Part of the fun that had me reeled in was each ‘yeah right’ moment where Will made a heroic leap, climb or dive in order to traverse to the next part of the Pearl.

The filmmakers go out of their way to show the cutting edge tech in The Pearl with the primary example being its showpiece room, ‘The Sphere’ which is comprised of over 100 HD glass panels for some spiffy special effects. Naturally The Sphere comes into play later when the climactic final showdown transpires there and the gunfight plays out like it is happening in the middle of a carnival fun house with those wacky mirrors. It is a thrilling final duel, and that is because Sawyer only sparingly encounters thugs throughout the movie. I want to also give props to Skyscraper for not having Neve Campbell not portray the stereotypical damsel-in-distress and instead has her character have several scenes where she proves fully capable of navigating her family through the weakening Pearl, helping clear Will’s name to the authorities and holding her own against Xia.

I do not want this to seem like I am making a case for if Skyscraper is better than Die Hard but instead how Skyscraper does more than enough to distinguish itself as another unapologetic Die Hard-clone. The preceding paragraphs I just presented to you on how Skyscraper is different than Die Hard I had originally jotted down in my notes as I watched the film, and then I nearly chucked them across the room when the director, Rawson Thurber stated in the bonus feature interviews that Die Hard was indeed a huge influence. Thurber also went to state in the interviews how other films like Cliffhanger and Inferno were big inspirations in the ways he wanted to make something more than ‘Die Hard in a building.’

The BluRay has 40 minutes of extra features in addition to a feature-length commentary with Rawson Thurber. About half of the 40 minutes of extras are the deleted and extended scenes which are the highlights of the bonuses. There are some interesting scenes here, and even a silly gag the director had Rock give Bruce Willis a shoutout, seriously! There are six shorter extra features highlighting most of the cast and their characters in semi-interesting pieces, but of those six I would say check out Inspiration on how Rock wanted to give a respectful portrayal of amputees and Pineapple Pitch which showed how Rock agreed to sign on to Skyscraper.

The commentary track is one of the better solo tracks I have listened to with many interesting on the set anecdotes and memories with the standout stories being how Raiders of the Lost Ark changed Thurber’s life and lead to him wanting Skyscraper to be the film he wanted to make since he was eight and how he was Face-timing with his wife through labor while simultaneously directing….holy hell. My launch week BluRay I picked up from Target came with a bonus disc with another 20 minutes of extras mostly showing how the team came up with the showpiece set designs and stunt scenes.

No matter how close Skyscraper is or is not to Die Hard, I will not deny that I still had a great time with the film from beginning to end and came out of it psyched. When doing my final rankings for 2018 films of the year (which should be going up not too long after this entry) I was surprised at how high Skyscraper ranked. I will attribute that to seeing it at the right time in the right setting as a summer blockbuster at the theater with a tub of popcorn! Best way to enjoy Skyscraper now is to have a beer or two going in and enjoy the rider Thurber, Rock and company strap you in for!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past