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Okay so here’s a story about how @Rwenchette ‘s fan art led me to change the Skylines script during production and in my opinion save the heart of the movie. https://twitter.com/rwenchette/status/1295709855605338112
The genesis of part 3 was seeing how naturally @linzzmorgan interacted with Jeremy Fitzgerald’s Trent at the end of Beyond Skyline. I wanted to make a movie with a female Han/Luke and her beer crushing bro Chewie. This was the first piece of art concept designer Derek Winslow did
So the first draft I probably went overboard with this as you can tell I tend to do. Big opening action space battle. Trent and Rose reuniting by drinking beers and burping. Lots of humor and heart. Probably too much which put a target on its back in development notes.
So the notes came back with an emphasis on adding more conflict between Rose and Trent. Which made sense. She ran away, so either she abandoned him or he wouldn’t go with her. Mark’s “death” felt like her fault. Plenty to work with.
Rose and Trent’s reunion ended with a fight. He was really cold with her throughout the mission. They had moments of sticking up for each other but it was strained. All leading to the end where Trent clearly spoke for the first time before sacrificing himself to save Rose.
It was a surprising and emotional ending on the page and people responded to it. But I never felt great about it. Sometimes we add conflict out of insecurity. It’s tempting to rely on angst rather than show actual warmth and love. And... what kind of a fucking idiot kills Chewie?
At dinner with @linzzmorgan and her BFF @renelovit who made a thousand invisible contributions to this, mentioned that it felt like everybody hated Rose, who loves her? So I went back to my room and dug up @Rwenchette’s art and decided bonded script or not, I had to make changes.
So while we were shooting I was always tweaking the Rose and Trent scenes. Their reunion got a big over haul. But the key additions came from @linzzmorgan and @renelovit rehearsals, adding great lines like “I brought thumbs” and “why are they always wet?” Which nailed the tone.
We shot the ending coda before we shot the end battle on the spaceship. So in the scripted version -Tren is dead. And I had to shoot it. But I made time to shoot an alt - having our FX team use gaffing tape to attach Trent’s face to Jeremy and make him rudimentary claws.
I worked through the beats of the alt scene with the cast who were like this fucking guy, we have no time on this movie but we’re improving alt scenes? But everyone quickly realized it was the right energy and could feel the spark with Trent coming back to join the group.
So now the ending with them finding out Mark is still alive had a real emotional resonance. Another reason I couldn’t kill Trent in this. His story with Mark would feel incomplete to me. If we ever did a fourth and Mark returned without reuniting with Trent? Makes me too sad.
So now I got an ending. Time to shoot the battle. Which brought me to the other thing I didn’t like about the old draft. Trent sacrificed himself for Rose. But that meant she was passive and would have had to basically freeze again and not do everything she could to save him.
And it’s hard to see these things on the page but visually I felt like we had an interesting setup with Rose blasting her energy into the Core Drive on cobalt to slow it down. This new ending with Rose blasting the warping wall would feel like a visual couplet on a bigger scale.
But this again meant adding shots to the shooting schedule. How were we going to film Rose flying through the air towards the wall? Wire stunts take time we didn’t have on the main unit. So it was suggested we shoot it on green screen on 2nd unit.
But once we’re on set with @linzzmorgan and the moving lights and fans building up to this moment I’m looking around like... this is the emotional climax of the film and I’m on this beautiful stage, I can’t shoot this shot on fucking green screen!
So I asked @AduPlantier21 what if we just had @linzzmorgan on a sled attached to the front of the dolly and pulled back with her in slow motion. Grips had a sled on the truck! So we lined it up with Rose’s stunt double Natalie Walsh seen here:
But now I was springing this shot on to Lindsey that she didn’t think she was going to have to do that day. Using her powers was always an incredibly exhausting and emotionally vulnerable process for her anyway. But now she’s got the whole camera crew in her lap as she does it.
First take looked amazing but she just wasn’t feeling it. So we huddled up and I basically begged her to trust me that it was going to be the best shot in the movie. And she would be so much happier seeing it this way than on a wire with a blurry green screen comp behind her.
She calmly put her head phones in and got herself into her Rose headspace for a beat.... and we went again
And delivered the emotional climax of the film and Rose in her purest form. Couldn’t be more proud of @linzzmorgan’s performance in this movie.
I think a lot of diverse reactions to Skylines come down to whether you can accept Trent, a guy in an alien suit, as a real character or not. That’s why those that love it, really LOVE it. Those that can’t are dismissing it and frankly missing out. But it’s bursting with love.
