Battle for Skyark

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!

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.

It's my first review on IMDb and it will serve a sole purpose: I hope that reading this will make at least one person step away from this flick and save his soul (or at least his time).

Bad movies are my guilty pleasure, B movie as well and i'll watch birdemic or zombeaver any day. But this film is nonsensical, mediocre, boring and cringe-worthy every second.

On the plus side, the story might remotely make some sense, and I've seen worst FX for that kind of budget.

But for the rest: I hate every single character, the direction is abysmal, the score is too heavy (ear that piano chump! Now be sad we command you!). No one seem to have the slightest bit of common sense Most reaction are either cliché or completely idiotic.

The cast tries way too hard being cool and they all fail miserably.

The pacing is out of this world and will bore you to death.

I have had no fun whatsoever watching this film: It's so boring that (and i'm not kidding here) played farmville during the movie and I couldn't care less.

I wish future me would travel in time and punch me in the face for watching this. So please don't be as foolish as myself and run away from this piece of mental abuse.

The movie is supposed to be futuristic but the way it's made it looks dated and old. The actors are young and inexperienced (I hope so) The story is boring and predictable but is presented in most chaotic manner. The CGI effects are basic and poor quality. If you want to make a low budget movie - I don't think science fiction is a good option.

Now my opinion on the movie - It's kind of movie where you wish there was a negative ranking on IMDb. Where you can give a movie -2 or -3 because there is hardly anything good in the movie and it's full of mistakes, awful acting and cheap CGI. It can become the 'Room' one day and people might start watching it as it's so bad. The minimum length of review on IMDb is 10 lines otherwise just the word 'awful' will do sufficient job in describing this movie. As previous reviews mention - if you are having difficulties sleeping - this is a good movie to put on. You can get around your friends and family and have a laugh watching this as well. Enough said.

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.