How do the Skyline movies rank, from worst to best? As success stories go, the Skyline franchise is both a fluke and an innovator. The series began with 2010's Skyline, helmed by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem directors Greg and Colin Strause, and while the movie found box office success and featured an excellent cliffhanger ending, it didn't make an impact on the level that would suggest that a sprawling saga of humans versus aliens had just begun.
That changed seven years later with 2017's Beyond Skyline, which kept the epic, global invasion background from its predecessor and cross-bred the film with the ferocity of The Raid series — one of the best martial arts movie franchises in recent years — even bringing a few of its cast members into fold. The third chapter, Skylines, ups the ante from the first two, going from the survival story of the first two films to one of humans venturing to the world of their invaders, mixing in plenty of the second film's martial arts action and finally putting the spotlight on the series' through-line Rose.
It may have taken the Skyline franchise a decade to get to where it is now, but the popularity it now enjoys just shows that a franchise revival is never truly off the table. By bringing together such distinct elements as aliens and martial arts, the Skyline series also stands alone as unique among both genres. Here is the ranking of the Skyline series.
3. Skyline
The first chapter in the series didn’t make huge impression at the time, but Skyline has aged surprisingly well and is much more consequential to the franchise than the popularity of its successors might indicate. Skyline follows an engaged couple who are on a relaxing weekend with some friends in Los Angeles when alien ships unexpectedly descend from the sky. Skyline is at once a large-scale disaster movie and a minimalist tale of survival. The main human characters largely try to ride out the storm in a penthouse apartment complex, encountering attacks from gigantic extraterrestrial monsters during escape attempts, as colossal ships hovering in the sky beam dozens of humans up at once. Though not a found footage movie, Skyline brings with it a Cloverfield-like feel, and for a rather minor $10 to $20 million budget, it still manages to be a fairly griping alien invasion story (one thing the Skyline series does incredibly well is get the most bang for its buck from the resources it has to work with).
With that said, Skyline’s characters aren’t particularly engaging, and the movie doesn’t really go full tilt into the chaos the characters view from afar until the last twenty minutes. At the same time, the finale really delivers, showing the alien’s plot to harvest human brains into the drone bodies of their soldiers in true nightmarish glory. Had Skyline been a one-and-done, it would have ended on a truly daring cliffhanger, with Eric Balfour’s Jarrod retaining control over his mind in his new alien body and coming to protect Scottie Thompson’s Elaine and their daughter inside of her. As it is now, the ending of Skyline planted the seed for what was to come in a very clever way. While still the weakest of the three, Skyline is a fairly enjoyable alien invasion flick, more so now because of how its two predecessors carried the baton from where it left things.
2. Skylines
Taking place 15 years after the attack from the sky seen in its two predecessors, the third movie in the franchise, Skylines, changes the formula up once again with an Aliens-esque mission to the invaders home world. Though mankind has long since adapted to the damage wrought by the invasion, that peace is threatened by the emergence of a deadly virus that could turn the planet’s large alien population against humans once more. Lindsey Morgen’s Rose Corley is recruited to lead a paramilitary team to the planet Cobalt-1, with just a 12-hour window to stop the virus before it’s too late. Obviously, a 2020 movie with a virus as its MacGuffin will probably inspire some nervous laughter among viewers, but that's balanced out by the fact that Skylines provides loads of action-packed fun that brings the series full circle with Rose. From being the baby in the first film to her minor but crucial role in the second, it feels in hindsight like the series has been grooming Rose to one day become its Ripley. With Morgen’s charismatic performance as a seasoned warrior, Rose is by far the best lead character of the whole franchise, showing how worth it the wait was.
Liam O’Donnell, co-writer of the first Skyline and writer and director of Beyond Skyline, keeps things fresh from the two previous movies with the movie’s race-against-the-clock plot and journey to Cobalt-1. When other big budget blockbusters regularly get blank checks thrown at them, it’s remarkable how polished the sets and visual effects of Skylines are despite its humble budget — the action scenes are as flashy and brutal as ever. Skylines also dials up the martial arts side of Beyond Skyline, with Rose never hesitating to go head-to-head with an alien three times her size, and Daniel Bernhardt and Cha-Lee yoon adding some kung fu flair to the film, too. Of course, the Skyline franchise has always prided itself on bringing back aspects from its past in strategic ways, and suffice it to say, one fight scene in particular ties back to Beyond Skyline in a very unexpected and immensely satisfying way. The trailer positions Skylines as the final chapter in the trilogy, but there might be one more chapter on the cards if the ending is any indication. In either case, Skylines brings all the martial arts-filled sci-fi craziness that make the series an anomaly in the best way.
1. Beyond Skyline
Set in the midst of the invasion seen in its predecessor, Beyond Skyline is the Fast Five of the Skyline franchise, taking the strongest components of what came before it and setting the blueprint for what the series now embodies. As LAPD detective Mark Corley, played by Frank Grillo, tries to reign in his rebellious son Trent, played by Jonny Weston, mankind’s fight for survival begins as the invasion from another world arrives. Incoming writer-director Liam O’Donnell doesn’t hold anything back, presenting an even more otherworldly look into the ship of the aliens as Trent is turned into one, and the alien soldiers powered by human brains are impressively imposing enemies. Shifting the setting to Laos, Beyond Skyline was also a genuine trendsetter by bringing martial arts into an extraterrestrial attack.
None other than Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian of The Raid movies drop in, and the action scenes are a swift and savage mix of blades and kicks. By the final temple showdown, Beyond Skyline is like no other alien movie, towering alien ships and creatures doing battle against each other as a band of human warriors make a last stand against ten-foot-tall opponents literally from another world. Beyond Skyline and Skylines are roughly on the same tier of quality, but the former gets a slight edge for the sheer novelty of bringing the action of Indonesian martial arts flicks into a worldwide assault from invading aliens. Beyond Skyline took everything its predecessor had set the table with, and transformed into a fantastic sci-fi-martial arts franchise, earning it the crown of the best chapter of the Skyline series.