Sky High (2005 film)

In a world where the children of superheroes are all enrolled in a covert, ever-flying institution called Sky High, teenager Will Stronghold is hesitant to start ninth grade (his first year) at the school - While his parents Steve and Josie (A.K.A. Commander and Jetstream) are renowned superheroes, Will himself has not developed any super powers and feels the burden to live up to his family's reputation. On his first day at school, while making friendships with other alike students such as Zach, Ethan and Magenta, Will and his long-time friend Layla are bullied by senior students Speed, Lash and Penny, while both are assigned into hero sidekick classes by Coach Boomer after failing to demonstrate potential at his power revelation class.

Despite being welcomed as a superhero and shown the family's "secret sanctum" and the background of how Steve and Josie first met, Will himself takes long to open up to his family, and when he does, the family still decides to support him, despite expressing disappointment. One day in school, Will accidentally gets into a fight with pyrokinetic student Warren Peace, and Will's super strength manifests after Warren threatens his friends. While impressing most students, Will and Warren get into detention, maintaining a grudging peace amongst each other. Will's introduction of his superpowers has him transferred into Hero Class, where he works alongside technopath Gwen Grayson, the school's most popular girl, as well as Speed, Lash and Penny, becoming distanced and alienated from his other colleagues. Gwen visits the Stronghold's house, inviting Will's parents to attend the school's Homecoming Dance party, and eventually invites Will as well, wishing to become his girlfriend, which Will accepts. Noticing the growing rift between herself and Will, Layla attempts going out more with Warren in an attempt to arouse jealousy, revealing to him she has loved Will for a long time.

On the night prior to the party, Gwen has Will throw a party into his house where he takes her into the secret sanctum and kisses her. As Layla comes to the house to investigate the noise and discovers the party, she confronts Gwen, whom lies to her and has Layla break up with Will. Will himself, when he realizes he's merely being used after trying to talk with Layla, breaks up with Gwen and refuses to attend the dance, even though his parents were invited as honored guests, remaining behind at his house. At the sanctum, he looks at his family's school yearbook and notices a girl akin to Gwen, named Sue Tenny, holding a mysterious weapon named the Pacifier, which belonged to the Commander's science-themed nemesis Royal Pain, believed to have been killed years ago. Will then notices that the Pacifier itself is missing. Piecing together that the party was a ruse to acquire the Pacifier, and that Gwen is related to Tenny, Will contacts school bus driver Ron Wilson to take him back to Sky High.

At the party, Gwen reveals herself as Royal Pain to the stunned students and teachers of Sky High, as well as the Commander and Jetstream, and unleashes the Pacifier (a weapon that turns anyone into infants) into the crowd, as Speed, Lash and Penny trap everyone but Layla, Warren, Zach, Ethan and Magenta within the school. Arriving too late, Will makes amends with Layla and the others and the sidekicks effectively engage Speed, Lash and Penny while Will confronts Gwen herself. Gwen reveals to Will she's actually Sue Tenny herself, out for revenge against the school after being shunned and placed as a sidekick in her school years, and became de-aged herself when her first battle with the Commander and Jetstream caused an accident with the Pacifier, making her be raised by her clown sidekick Stitches. Since then, she plotted her return to destroy Sky High and form a supervillain school, raising the converted teachers and students as villains. While Will fights and eventually defeats Royal Pain, his flying powers emerging in the process, she has the school's anti-gravity device sabotaged and the school free falls, being saved in time by both Will's combined powers and aid from the sidekicks.

Sue, Speed, Lash and Penny are detained as the students, teachers and Will's parents are returned to their proper ages, finally recognizing the sidekicks and their deeds. As Will and Layla become a couple, the final narration states that Ron Wilson became a superhero after falling into a vat of toxic waste, Will and Warren became best friends and Sue and her henchmen are now Will's archenemies.

• Michael Angarano as William "Will" Theodore Stronghold, a freshman at Sky High, whose parents are the two most famous superheroes — Commander and Jetstream — as well as Maxville's top real estate agents in their secret identities. His super strength, inherited from his father, and his ability to fly, inherited from his mother, start as inactive and gradually manifest over the film.
• Danielle Panabaker as Layla Williams, Will's childhood best friend and eventual love interest/girlfriend, who is a pacifist vegetarian and is able to animate and control plant life. Her mother's abilities are said to allow her to talk to animals and her father is a normal human.
• Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwendolyn "Gwen" Grayson / Royal Pain (suit actress) / Susan "Sue" Tenny, a senior at Sky High whom Will, along with everyone else, falls in love with. Her power is technopathy. Winstead said of her role, "I bounced around. I was either the hero of the sidekicks or the sidekick to the heroes."[4] When she attended Sky High the first time, no one understood her class of powers and she was slated as a sidekick and a weirdo, eventually turning into a supervillain. An accident with the "Pacifier" de-aged her during a battle with The Commander.
  • Patrick Warburton provides the voice of Gwen in her Royal Pain suit. Winstead also serves as the suit actress of Gwen in her Royal Pain suit.
• Steven Strait as Warren Peace, the son of an unnamed superheroine and a supervillain known as Baron Battle who is in jail with four life sentences. He is pyrokinetic. Warren is a high school outcast who tries to lead a decent life, but is often misunderstood due to being a son of a felonious father. His name is a pun of the novel, War and Peace.
• Dee Jay Daniels as Ethan Bank, a sidekick and one of Will's friends who can melt into a fluid (which earned him the nickname "Popsicle").
• Kelly Vitz as Magenta "Maj" Lewis, one of Will's friends who shapeshifts into a guinea pig with purple highlights and streaks in her fur.
• Nicholas Braun as Zachary "Zach" Braun / Zack Attack, Will's childhood friend who has the latent ability to glow in the dark.
• Malika Haqq and Khadijah Haqq as Penny Lent, Gwen's best friend who duplicates herself and is naturally athletic.
• Jake Sandvig as Lash, a skinny bully at Sky High who has elasticity.
• Will Harris as Speed, an overweight bully at Sky High who can run at an extremely high speed.
• Lynda Carter as Principal Powers, the principal of Sky High who has the power to change into a luminous energy form resembling a comet and back at will. Her catchphrase is "Comets away".
• Bruce Campbell as Tommy Boomowski / Coach Boomer / Sonic Boom, the gym teacher at Sky High who has his ability to release sonic waves from his vocal cords which can be listed as sonic screaming. His real name is listed as Tommy Boomowski in the Commander's Sky High Yearbook. Coach Boomer's job is to sort the superheroes from the sidekicks and oversee the civilian rescue exercise.
• Kevin Heffernan as Ron Wilson, Sky High's good-hearted bus driver. He is the offspring of two super-powered parents, just like Will Stronghold is the offspring of the Commander and Jetstream, but does not have any powers. He feels a great sense of pride in driving the "superheroes of tomorrow" to school. It is revealed at the end of the film that he fell into a vat of toxic waste, gaining superpowers of his own.
• Kurt Russell as Steve Stronghold / The Commander, Will's father who is one of the world's strongest superheroes, displaying superhuman strength and invulnerability, and is a successful businessman in his secret identity. In a deleted scene, it is revealed that Steve was an investigative reporter who seeks to change his career before becoming a real estate agent.
• Kelly Preston as Josie DeMarco-Stronghold / Jetstream, Will's mother and a successful real estate agent. As Jetstream, she uses the power of supersonic flight; she is also touted as being an expert in hand-to-hand combat.
• Cloris Leachman as Nurse Spex, a kind and eccentric elderly lady that serves as Sky High's single known school nurse, with the ability of x-ray vision. She is the one who tells Will that not everybody gets powers even if they are the child of two superheroes.
• Jim Rash as Mr. Grayson / Stitches, Royal Pain's bumbling cackling sidekick. He raised her as his daughter after she was turned into a baby by the "Pacifier".
• Dave Foley as Jonathan Boy / All-American Boy, The Commander's old sidekick who works as Hero Support teacher at Sky High.
• Kevin McDonald as Professor Medulla, The Mad Science teacher with a hyper-advanced (and oversized) brain, which grants him advanced intelligence, creativity and a multitude of genius-level skills.
• Kim Rhodes as Professor Jeannie Elast / Elastic Girl, a girl who has the talent to twist her body into anything she wants. Her character was never shown in the final cut of the film.
• Tom Kenny and Jill Talley as Mr. and Mrs. Chester Timmerman, a couple who witnesses Will prevent Sky High from falling on their new home.
• Loren Berman as Larry, a nerdy boy who can turn into a rock monster.
• Dustin Ingram as Carbon Copy Kid, a boy that can make himself look like anyone.
• Nicole Malgarini as Freeze Girl, a girl with cryokinetic powers.

Oviatt Library at CSU Northridge

Exterior shots of the Sky High school were filmed at the Oviatt Library[5] at California State University in Northridge in late 2004.[6]

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 due to unknown reasons.[7] Impressed with their work, the filmmakers asked them to look into re-writing the script for Sky High, which had been previously shelved.[7] 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.'[7] Similar to Kim Possible, Schooley and McCorkle wrote Sky High to be equally appealing to both children and adults.[7] 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.[8]

After recruiting comedy writers (creators of Kim Possible) for polishing 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.[8] For the main roles, the casting was a mix of established and new teenager actors: while Michael Angarano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were already successful, Danielle Panabaker was little-known and Steven Strait (a former model) was hired after his first audition ever.[8]

Director Mike Mitchell said that Sky High functions on two premises: "the adults are all insane" and "the girls are smarter than the boys":[9] Therefore, all 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 tilted shots. For the treatment of the teenage actors, Mitchell also stated that the actors all had their own trailer 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.[9]

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: namely Wonder Woman (popularized in the eponymous 1970s television series by actress Lynda Carter), Snake Plissken (portrayed by Kurt Russell), Ash Williams (from Evil Dead, played by Bruce Campbell) and Cloris Leachman, who earned fame as Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein; and worked with Lynda Carter before in the pilot movie episode for the Wonder Woman TV series playing Hippolyta opposite Lynda Carter who played Wonder Woman herself.[8]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[10]

The Sky High Original Soundtrack was released by Hollywood Records on July 26, 2005, and is composed of covers of songs from the 1980s (with the exception of "Just What I Needed", which was from 1978). While none of Michael Giacchino's score was included on the song album, a limited edition of his score was issued by Intrada Records in 2017.[11]

Track listing

1. "I Melt with You" – Bowling for Soup (Originally by: Modern English) - 4:03
2. "Through Being Cool" – They Might Be Giants (Originally by: Devo) - 3:17
3. "Save It for Later" – Flashlight Brown (Originally by: The Beat) - 2:49
4. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" – Christian Burns (Originally by: Tears for Fears) - 4:28
5. "One Thing Leads to Another" – Steven Strait (Originally by: The Fixx) - 3:10
6. "Lies" – The Click Five (Originally by: Thompson Twins) - 2:58
7. "Voices Carry" – Vitamin C (Originally by: 'Til Tuesday) - 4:16
8. "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" – Elefant (Originally by: The Smiths) - 2:53
9. "True" – Cary Brothers (Originally by: Spandau Ballet) - 5:11
10. "Just What I Needed" – Caleigh Peters (Originally by: The Cars) - 3:38
11. "Can't Stop the World" – Ginger Sling (Originally by: The Go-Go's) - 3:25
12. "And She Was" – Keaton Simons (Originally by: Talking Heads) - 3:49
13. "Twist and Crawl" – Skindred (Originally by: The Beat) - 2:31

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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Sky High

• Official website
• Sky High at AllMovie
• Sky High at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Sky High at Box Office Mojo
• Sky High at IMDb
• Sky High at the TCM Movie Database