Sky High (2005 film)

Will Stronghold, son of superheroes the Commander and Jetstream, begins ninth grade at their alma mater, Sky High, a high school for superpowered teenagers on a floating platform, despite lacking superpowers himself, which he keeps hidden from his parents. On their first day, Will, his best friend Layla, and the other freshmen are harassed by upperclassmen Speed, Lash, and Penny. Furthermore, Will and Layla are assigned to the "Hero Support" curriculum and become sidekicks due to his lack of powers and her refusing to divulge her botanokinesis in protest of the school's two-track education system.

Unaware of what happened to Will, the Commander shows him his trophy room, the Secret Sanctum. In particular, he expresses fondness for the "Pacifier", a weapon he took from his presumed dead arch-nemesis Royal Pain years prior. As Will settles in at school and befriends his fellow sidekicks, he comes into conflict with pyrokinetic student Warren Peace, whose supervillain father was imprisoned by the Commander. In the ensuing fight, Will develops his father's super-strength, impressing Gwen Grayson, a popular technopath. Upon being transferred to the hero track, Will begins spending more time with Gwen and her clique. As a result, Layla reveals to Warren her longstanding crush on Will. On the day before the Homecoming dance, Gwen tricks Will into throwing a party at his house, where she seduces him into showing her the Secret Sanctum so Speed can secretly steal the Pacifier. When Layla tries to investigate the party, she falls for Gwen's lies. Will subsequently breaks up with Gwen and refuses to attend the dance despite his parents being invited as honored guests. While looking through his father's yearbook, he sees a student who resembles Gwen, assumes she is Royal Pain's daughter, and rushes to the dance to stop her with bus driver Ron Wilson's help.

At the dance, Gwen reveals herself as Royal Pain, having been turned into a baby by the Pacifier during her last confrontation with the Commander and spent the last sixteen years plotting revenge on Sky High for making her a sidekick due to her powers being unknown when she last attended. With Speed, Lash, and Penny's help, she turns most of the dance's attendees into babies with the intention of raising them as supervillains. Meanwhile, Will arrives and apologizes to Layla before joining forces with her, Ron, Warren, and the other sidekicks to rescue the captives and defeat Gwen's allies, during which Will develops his mother's flight power. Though Gwen sabotages the school's anti-gravity drive, the sidekicks successfully restart it so Will can bring the school back to its proper place in the sky.

In the aftermath, Gwen's captives are restored to their proper ages while she and her accomplices are arrested. Additionally, Will and Layla have entered a relationship and Ron gained superpowers after falling into a vat of toxic waste.

• Michael Angarano as William "Will" Theodore Stronghold, a freshman at Sky High, whose parents are two 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Danielle Panabaker as Layla Williams, Will's childhood best friend and later girlfriend, who is a pacifist and can animate and control plant life.
• Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwendolyn "Gwen" Grayson / Royal Pain / Susan "Sue" Tenny, a technopathic senior at Sky High whom Will, along with everyone else, falls in love with. 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.
• Steven Strait as Warren Peace, the pyrokinetic son of supervillain Baron Battle, who is in jail with four life sentences, and an unnamed superhero mother.
• Dee Jay Daniels as Ethan Bank / Popsicle, a sidekick and one of Will's friends, who can melt into a fluid.
• Kelly Vitz as Magenta "Maj" Lewis, one of Will's sidekick friends, who can shapeshift into a guinea pig with purple highlights and streaks in her fur similar to those in her human hair.
• Nicholas Braun as Zachary "Zach" Braun / Zack Attack, a sidekick and Will's childhood friend, who has the ability to glow in the dark.
• Malika Haqq and Khadijah Haqq as Penny Lent, Gwen's athletic best friend, who can duplicate herself.
• 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 move at superhuman speeds.
• Lynda Carter as Principal Powers, the principal of Sky High.
• Bruce Campbell as Tommy Boomowski / Coach Boomer / Sonic Boom, the gym teacher at Sky High who has can release sonic waves from his vocal cords.
• Kevin Heffernan as Ron Wilson, Sky High's good-hearted bus driver. He is the son of two superheroes, but does not have any powers.
• Cloris Leachman as Nurse Spex, Sky High's elderly, eccentric but kind school nurse, who has the ability of x-ray vision.
• Jim Rash as Mr. Grayson / Stitches, Royal Pain's cackling sidekick, who raised her as his daughter after she was turned into a baby by the Pacifier.
• Dave Foley as Mr. Jonathan Boy / All-American Boy, the Commander's former sidekick who works as Hero Support teacher at Sky High.
• Kevin McDonald as Professor Medulla, the Mad Science teacher with an oversized brain, which grants him advanced intelligence, creativity, and a multitude of genius-level skills.
• 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 "Big" Larry, a socially awkward student who can turn into a giant, muscular rock monster at will.
• Dustin Ingram as Carbon Copy Kid, a student that can shapeshift to look like anyone.
• Nicole Malgarini as Freeze Girl, a student 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.[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 Schooley and McCorkle to update 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 teenage actors: while Michael Angarano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were already successful, Danielle Panabaker was little-known and former model Steven Strait 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] 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 Dutch angles. For the treatment of the teenage actors, Mitchell also stated that the actors all had their own trailers 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: Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter), Snake Plissken actor Kurt Russell, Ash Williams actor Bruce Campbell, and Cloris Leachman, who earned fame as Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein.[8]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[10]

The soundtrack album for the film 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 the film's score, composed by Michael Giacchino, was included on the album, a limited edition of his score was released 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

In November 2016, Disney announced a sequel to Sky High was in early development stages.[19] In January 2019, Mike Mitchell revealed earlier plans to make a franchise, but due to the film's box-office performance, nothing came to be. The sequel would have been titled Save U (Save University) and featured the characters from Sky High graduating from high school and attending college. There were also plans to make a TV series, which the main actors save for Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston had signed on to reprise their roles,[20] but there have been no new developments for it since then.

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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