Battle for Skyark

this film feels like an adaptation of a semi-good young adult novel, a bad adaptation but an adaptation non the less, or a plot bunny for a fan-fiction. the past is fast, backstory:non, and quit frankly the writer would have been better off trying to write a novel rather than a script. I will admit the concept of the story is intriguing and kind of cliff-hanger like but still next time dude, try writing a book.

over all if your looking for inspiration or something so mind numbing dull to sober up with. I'd watch this, however if a book was written and more depth given, I'd read it.

I give it a 4 out of 10 for that alone.

bleh! Stay away!

I hope these kids are given a proper chance at acting with better writing and directing.

• CG was pretty decent in some parts (there was not much CG though), however some CG effects were also a little off.

• Bad writing! The story is fairly rubbish and the dialog while 'ok' in a couple of small parts, was mostly just bad filler.

• Poor characters who flip-flop attitude and decisions between scenes.

• Bad directing. :\

• Bad locations and sets!

• World felt empty despite the dialog trying to imply differently.

• Prosthetics were not too bad.

How do films like this get made? I'm sure that I'll never know. But somebody spent a fair amount of cash producing this nonsense.

The good: It's short? The bad: Everything else. There is no discernible plot of any kind. The characters actions make absolutely no sense. There's no exposition, no climax, no goal to achieve, and it ends as a cliffhanger. The acting is unforgivable. No part of the story makes the slightest attempt to follow a thread of logic. Kids are beating up/killing adults at every preposterous turn. The fortified camp of survivors on the planet's surface is essentially a ring of shopping carts pushed together with some cardboard for extra reinforcement. The dialogue is embarrassing for any genre regardless of expected audience. The special effects don't even make sense (is the "skyark" a few hundred feet above the ground hovering or in orbit? You'll never know; you'll never care). As a distraction for sitting through this dreck, I tried to think of a worse film that I've ever watched; all I could come up with was "Ski Patrol" ... maybe, but Ski Patrol at least had a dog that could fart on command which exceeds any of the talents in Battle for SkyArk.

The verdict: This is not worth your time, money, or effort to make sense of. It's simply one of the worst movies that has ever been made. It has absolutely no redeeming virtues. Nothing that could have been done to this film could possibly have made it worse - it is the low marker for judging movies. Imagine the worst anime that you've ever sat through being turned into a live-action film by a group of 5 junior high school students with a handicam... that is better than this by a factor of 100. Run away!

Battle for SkyArk: a movie with no battle for the aforementioned Ark. All we get are a handful of kid bums with laughable weaponry, pitted against unconvincing "monsters" who could die... of laughter when they see the so-called weapons. The whole movie drags through, the one massive monster is yet another take on the guy-turned-giant-monster- with-mask-and giant-weapon we've seen hundreds of times, from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome to the Resident Evil and Silent Hill movies/games franchise. No development at all, just kids scurrying through what seems to be a huge junkyard. I had few hopes, considering the score given by other viewers, but I didn't think it'd be such a sad sight. The kids do what they can, I won't throw them the stones, they're all very young actors. Whoever made the movie though, should consider a change of career and run said junkyard instead. At least, they'd get an honest pay for piles of rubbish.

This movie has a great many ideas that could have been put together effectively, had the director and writers had the right goal in mind. The goal that they chose was to make a film of self-discovery, early teenage romance, and a coming-of-age story set in the midst of apocalyptic desolation. All that would have been fine except that too many necessary parts of the puzzle were not available.

As always, I am here to brazenly presume that I could do better! If you're interested, I have some "fixes" I would have applied had I been involved.

1. The biggest missing piece, of course, is the acting. Coming-of-age stories are typically dramatic in the extreme, and very demanding of the actors involved. Early love, infatuation, disappointment and broken hearts, betrayal, jealousy, depression, passion, the death of loved ones.. It should have been evident from the start that all of the young people involved in this film don't have the acting chops yet to pull this off. I would instead suggest that the film be focused much more on action. Less time playing sad music and watching downcast eyes. I got REALLY tired of watching the hero periodically give up and slump to the ground in defeat, especially since he didn't seem to be trying very hard. Don't ask him to portray such feelings, instead keep him in the fray. Bring on the monsters!

2. Budget concerns. Obviously this is not a high budget feature. That's OK, they did great with what they had. I think it could have come off a little bit better if they'd put more emphasis on dirt. Quite frankly, all of the important parts of the movie were much too clean to be convincing. The actors looked freshly washed. Some of them even have hair that can't exactly keep it's look if you live in a garbage dump. I would suggest filming after they'd actually lived in the dust and sand for a few days without a shower.

3. Direction and Pacing. The story kept slowing down, the motives of the characters appeared to change constantly. Just have a goal and stick with it. The entire story appears to happen within a day! That's not enough time for the characters to grow and reach the sort of conclusions they reached. I felt as though this should have been at least a few weeks worth. Some re-writing is absolutely essential here. Character growth takes time. If you really want your story's timeline to happen quickly, leave out the drama and take my earlier suggestion to bring on the action.

4. Violence. This is conceptually a very violent movie! This movie has monsters, sword fighting, killing, it's all here. And yet blood was mysteriously absent. The fighting stunts are weak and difficult to follow, and completely nonsensical. Blood is a must, and death scenes should be on camera, not suddenly off camera and assumed.

5. Common sense. This is tough and maybe even unfair, but too many things happen that simply don't exemplify the sort of things rational people would do. The writer should have sat back, had some random people read the script and ask what impressions came to mind. People would immediately give some corrections. It can be hard for a writer to pull his head out of his work and look at it objectively, so outside input is critical.

6. Casting. There was really not much need to have so many actors in this film. Or rather, there was no need to have so many extras. Too many of the kids said and did nothing, all the way until they were removed from the story. Why not just trim the cast down to the more important characters?

I'm not certain who the audience for this movie was supposed to be. Is it a family film? It has some pretty violent undertones for a family film. It's clearly a sci-fi monster film. It has all the elements of something I wouldn't want my children to watch, and yet it pulls it's punches, coming off as surgically clean. It's like a horror film with no horror.