Some time ago (Nov 2010) I dragged my friends to what looked to be a fairly decent (based on a somewhat vague trailer) alien invasion movie. That movie was Skyline. To call it shitty and walk away would make the most sense but this is the internet dammit, sense can piss off and die along with decorum, basic logic, and common decency (to name just a few). It was a spectacular cluster fuck of nonsensical plot, so-so acting (I don’t really blame the actors for this one, more the terrible plot and horrific directing {based on the end result}), explosions, and special effects. Doing some cursory research on Wikipedia it’s revealed that the vast majority (possibly up to 90-95%) of the movies budget went to special effects, it shows, it certainly didn't go to script writing. The biggest downfall however, is that they explain exactly nothing about what’s going on. Characters scream and struggle and die off one by one (sometimes faster) and nobody figures out anything. By about a third of the way into the movie (definitely no more than halfway) you know everything you’re ever going to know about what’s going on, which is:
1. Aliens are here.
2. They want our brains.
3. They might be magic. At the very least they've got a pretty hardcore case of Clarke’s third going on.
4. You don’t actually care about any of the characters; in fact you’re looking forward to seeing them die.
Upon exiting the theater, because I had picked this turd of a movie, I proceeded to take a fair amount of crap from my friends and on that night I swore to write a bitchin’ "extended universe" (to steal a term from Star Wars) story for Skyline, set in a logically sound (at least movie logically sound) sci-fi reality, such that not only would all the dumb shit in Skyline make sense but it would retroactively make it a decent, if not actually good, movie.
I actually did work most of it out not long after that night but I never really got around to properly typing it all up. So; Roamin', K, Bird, and whoever else was there with us that night (it was three years ago, I know there were a couple more but I would be mostly just guessing) who still achingly needs to understand what was really going in that movie and to all you, uh, millions? Hundreds of thousands? Tens of thousands? Regular thousands? To all you others online who saw that movie and promptly went “huh?” I present to you
Making Skyline Make Sense
Part 1 - Preface
So why are aliens here harvesting brains? To operate their magical spaceships, bio-mechs, and mechano-squids apparently. But why? Surely there must be an easier way to find a decent CPU than travelling across the vast dark gulf of space and mind raping a planet. And even if there isn't, why do they even need the CPUs for the mechs and the squids and shit in the first place? They successfully rounded up millions if not billions of people using beacons from the safety of their ships. The only thing we saw the squids doing was rounding up a handful of people in a much more ineffective manner than the collector ships. All we saw the mechs doing was be created, so what do they need a few billion high end, home grown, organic supercomputers for?
The answer is pretty obvious when you think about it. War. Not with Earth, Earth is barely a blip on their galactic road map. I know we like to think of ourselves as pretty hot shit but to the aliens fighting a galaxy spanning war we’re just a free lunch, a randomly occurring (or are we?) supply depot that had the aforementioned organic supercomputers just lying around going to waste. So the aliens swooped down, slurped up our brains and reprogrammed the OS to be compatible with War-Bot Mark XXIV-7. The far more interesting story is why the war started in the first place, who/what it’s with, and why going through all the trouble and moral anguish of the aforementioned mind rape and brain theft is worth it compared to just building a half decent AI. Yes I said moral anguish, cause believe it or not, the “evil, mind fucking, brain stealing, aliens” are the good guys, or at least the better than the alternative guys. And that’s where our story starts.
Tomorrow.
Also sorry about the late update (you don't know this but I was shooting for noon-ish) fun fact; a backup on a flashdrive isn't actually a backup if you don't save a primary somewhere, you just have a primary that's on something that's much easier to loose than a laptop. Thankfully I found it and now also have half a short story already done for the next time I screw up.
-Captain Maximus
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