As far as cinematic surprises went, last year nothing could beat my first viewing of Beyond Skyline, the directorial debut by Liam O’Donnell. It’s a film that managed to exceed almost every expectation as I bore witness to a level of action packed insanity that tasked action everyman Frank Grillo from the Purge franchise and Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian from the Indonesian Raid films as humanity’s last hope against the alien horde from the first film in this series, 2010’s Skyline. Not only does Frank Grillo kill a ton of aliens as you would probably expect with the aid of Iko and Yayan, but he also helps a woman give birth to an alien/human hybrid and takes on a Kaiju-sized Tanker armed with a bazooka. Beyond Skyline is the cinematic equivalent to a sloppy medium-rare cheeseburger with a side of loaded fries, and makes no apologies for it.
The film is hitting Blu-ray, and in anticipation of the film’s release I got to chat with Director/Writer Liam O’Donnell. He shares not only some insight on the making of Beyond, but what he felt some of the shortcomings of the original were. Humble and extremely candid, after reading the interview below you’ll understand the reason Beyond works so well is that he simply set out to make the film he wanted to see as a fan of the genre, and I think that easily translated to screen.
So after the reception to the first film, what made you want to tackle a sequel almost 7 years later?
The real kick in the pants to get moving on it for me was when Skyline finished its Netflix run and started playing on Spike and SYFY. I think I saw that early 2013, and it was fun to see it again on TV, I hadn’t watched it in probably three years at that point. I really loved the aliens, and we had a treatment that was still pretty much the core of what the film ended up becoming with Mark and Trent and then getting onto the ship and then crashing somewhere. So I loved that core idea and I thought this would be the time to really get moving on it.
In 2013 is when I went to the Brothers Strause and horse traded on some projects and said “I wanted to start writing the script for Skyline 2, but do you think I could direct it?” They said, “Yeah, go for it!”
I love that we got some closure to the story from one, and I liked how that played into Beyond.
Thanks! Yeah that was important to me. I felt like in some ways the first one was frustrating because we felt like we found what excited us the most late and we didn’t get to tie it up as much as we wanted to, and I think it became a point of frustration for the audience. Like you said it’s years later, 2013–2014, and there’s still pressure, people are like, “Why are you even bothering, just do a complete new story without it?” I was like I think I could make my cake and eat it too and still kind of tie up some of those lose ends and have it all kind of connect.
There is no sequel without the original, and I felt some sort of responsibility to tie those loose ends up.
You wrote the first film. When you look back looking at the critical response, what did you want to do better and what made you want to jump into the driver’s seat for this entry directing and writing?
When I look back at the first film I think some of the stuff, it was very much based on kind of the environment and the materials we had at our disposal rather. We had this building, the cameras, so we kind of wrote the story for what that environment was, and not necessarily letting our imaginations run amuck.
I think some of the stuff that frustrated me about the first one was, you know kind of first act padding aside. That it definitely gets some momentum and when they get forced back up into the penthouse is when it can really frustrate people and lose audiences. But we have this great last reel, that’s a lot of fun, where it embraces its more gonzo B-movie ambitions. People that think the two movies aren’t similar are kind of missing that.
The first film is sort of a B-movie hiding in the clothes of a Cloverfield sort of vibe, but then by the time the lead is turning into an alien superhero and tackling squid aliens and stuff like that, we’re finally having fun. For me I just wanted to have that fun sooner and embrace that insanity way early on.
Why did you go the actioner route this time around, and what influenced the script? The film seems to dance this precarious balance of absurdity and balls out action that amazingly just works. How hard was that for you as a writer?
It was really hard.
The action thing, that’s just the type of movies I love first and foremost. I think again what I will say about the frustration about the first movie, it was like half of it was making this horror setup Cloverfield type, with a bunch of attractive people stuck somewhere; you could redo the first movie as Cabin in the Woods, right? That kind of setup is not really the type of movie I necessarily love. I enjoy horror movies, I enjoy thrillers, and I love them; but they aren’t my genre. So I felt like for me my favorite films are action movies and action movie hybrids, like Predator you know, first and foremost. So for me that sci-fi, action, horror hybrid is what I wanted to go with from the very beginning.
That’s why when I thought when I set this thing up it’s going to feel like a Die Hard movie, and it’s going to take a left turn and you’re going to be in an Aliens movie, and then another left turn and you’re in a Predator movie. Then “Oh my god, you’re in you know Apocalypse Now you know with Aliens!” and then we have our big Kaiju battle and things get crazier. It has a determined design from the beginning. I wanted to do three types of movies, so you’re always kind of moving forward, and it’s always propulsive and really just entertaining.
Looks like you tackled the independent route for financing and releasing this film like the original; when I spoke to Frank for Wheelman he said he had filmed his scenes like two years ago. What was production like on Beyond, and how long was the film in production from start to final release?
The financing started to come together in Cannes 2014. Once we had Frank attached in the fall of 2014 things happened really fast, because he had such a tight window, we had to really ramp up and go into production. So we ended up shooting the climax of the movie, the temple location stuff, before our alien suits were even done, which is why in a lot of the wide shots it’s CG aliens, and then it kind of dictated the style of the fighting too. We would have these wider cool shots and then you would have to go in for coverage-y intense quick cut action stuff when they’re using the silat and fists against the suits.
That happened in the very last weeks of December 2014, and then we had a break. We started in mid-January in Baton, we did a couple of days of green screen in LA with Frank, and then he was off to another movie. I think we did a few days in March in San Pedro I believe, where we shot the subway car in the opening. That subway car is the Seinfield subway car from the TV show. We brought that down into a warehouse in San Pedro that has that kind of natural subway trench built on to one side from the old kind of cars that would come in there, and we built the subway set around that. That’s in San Pedro, and when they get on and off the tracks, that’s Toronto from a shoot in May 2015.
The production was a very sprawling 6 months of stops and starts to work through everyone’s schedules and move from Indonesia to LA to Toronto. From there it was just an insane amount of visual effects, and really working the edit is what took some time as well. We would edit and go on hiatus for visual effects to kind of catch up, so we would know what we are really looking at, ‘cause it was just a really small editorial team and a small VFX team, so it took a lot of time. We finished a version of it in the fall of 2016, so like a year and two months after wrap, and then tested that and what was released was pretty similar. It’s more of a tempo, pacing thing and we kind of just ended it, we didn’t have a setup for a third one.
People really liked the Rose character and wanted to know more about her, so I decided to do a re-shoot for a day. Luckily I was able to get Lindsey Morgan to shoot what are now the bookends to the movie. That was all done at the beginning of the year, and the movie has been done now since July; it was two and half year process. I am really happy with it, I wouldn’t change anything about it.
Well congrats, because a project of that magnitude oddly enough was your directorial debut.
Well thanks, now I am just itching to get back on set after being in post for so long. There are a lot of things about being a first time director that you have to do once to really understand everything about the job. Even when we did the reshoot at the beginning of the year, I was like I know how to do this now and get exactly what I want. I think that takes just time.
I’m a huge fan of both of your leads. What was the casting like, and how did you settle on Frank Grillo and Iko for your action leads?
It was just I wanted to cast people I was a huge fan of.
I was a huge fan of Frank from Warrior and The Grey, and I felt like he was perfect for this character I was cooking up; and I was writing the script in 2013, before The Purge: Anarchy came out. So when Anarchy came out I was like, “Oh no maybe it’s too similar, and maybe I missed my window.” But I wrote it for this guy, and I am going to be able to pitch him in the most authentic way. So I would really love to send it to him and luckily my casting director read it and said “it read just like Frank Grillo,” and I was like, yeah because I wrote it for him. So we went to him first with our offer and letter and he responded, and we Skyped and quickly got a short-hand, and we worked on notes especially about the first act. When he signed on that was actually a real big coup for a first timer, especially off the big success of Purge: Anarchy. He’s a talent magnet in a lot of ways, and I think he really legitimized the project. That’s how we got folks like Bojana and Callan, who are really good actors and in a lot of bigger movies and shows.
With Iko and Yayan, I had written the script for Laos to be South East Asia to land into a country that had some type of acrimonious history with the US and to play upon that and have it be the type of people who might be more prepared for an aerial invasion. So we were off on our first location-scouting trip right after Frank signed on, and we’re in Singapore meeting with Mike Wiluan of Infinite Studios, and one of his producers, John Radel, was like, “Who are you thinking about for Sua and the chief, because what about Iko and Yayan?” I was like yeah, of course! But that’s not going to happen. He was like, “Not only do we know them, but they just had this project fall apart and they’re available.” So we immediately booked flights to Jakarta to meet with their rep at the time.
They loved the project and we did a scout with them a week later up in to the rice paddies and talked about the first fight and they just take their shoes off and start fighting in the rice paddies at the top of this waterfall. Then they are asking me what do I think? And I am like how did I get here? You start out making this Die Hard meets Aliens movie and now all of a sudden I am filming a martial arts movie with the guys from The Raid! So I just kept leaning into that, and that’s the first part of the movie we shot. We started on the second half, and we had the most amount of time and the most amount of resources over there, and I think you can tell. I just kept pushing them to add more fights whenever I could, and more cool bits.
I don’t think we would get a flamethrower if we filmed this anywhere else; I just want to see Yayan use a flame thrower on an alien!
I love Grillo and Iko, and both since filming have gone on to be action icons in their own rights.
Absolutely on both accounts. Someone just asked me if the shot at the end was a nod to The Avengers and it was, because these guys are these cool iconic heroes to me. So I treated them that way. I saw the first Raid in the theater and I was completely blown away by it, and the second one is like the Godfather 2 of martial arts films, it’s amazing. Frank is quickly becoming the go-to American action hero. I do love that he is American and that is one of the things that drew me towards him, and I don’t know if that is a dumb thing. During the time with Batman being Welsh, with everyone overseas being action stars, it’s good to see this like homegrown, very relatable, this sort of guy everyone grew up with, this sort of grizzled, gritty, authentic guy.
A watershed moment for you had to be when you released the trailer; that had to have been a great moment for you, as well as the recent reviews from both critics and genre fans, now that the film is out?
I had a teaser trailer almost for two years that I was so tempted to leak, just because you’re in this doldrums of this post-production hell and I would love to see people’s feedback on this. So when that finally did come out, it was fun and a lot of people being like “How does this look like it doesn’t suck?” (LAUGHS) I still think up until we premiered at Sitges in October, and we had this festival run, it was still good, but you can never really tell at festivals, because everyone’s super positive. Which is what’s so great about it, you love that it’s genre fans there. Having come from the first Skyline that was this wide release, and it’s not as engaging a theatrical experience as going to a festival, with people that like that sort of thing and know what they are getting into.
But having said that, it wasn’t until the Den of Geek review hit that it hit me. Like I thought the praise was going to be very faint, like it’s better than the first but that’s not saying much. That is kind of what I thought the general consensus was going to be. So when those more enthusiastic reviews started coming out I was kind of shocked. It’s been a roller coaster to say the least; these last three months have been heartwarming and just an emotional experience to finally have people on your side and not showing up on everybody’s worst of year list. We showed up on a few “Cool Movies You Might Have Missed” lists, and not getting that overwhelming negativity from the first movie, I don’t know if I could have lived through that again.
Are there plans for another film?
Well we wrote a treatment in May and we brought that to Cannes, and there’s interest. I’m writing the script right now, and it’s pretty much taking off from the end setup from part two and filling in some mysteries and kind of again really embracing the B-movie genre roots and sort of going hog-wild. That seems to be the ticket; if you look at each movie, where does it sort of embrace what it is? The first film it takes till the third act, this one it happens in the second act, and this one will start from frame one.
(Laughs) That’s a pretty high bar.
One thing that’s important to me is the genie was necessarily never put back in the bottle, in like it’s not one of those endings where everyone is put back in their bodies or something like that and the world is all good. The world we set up, even though we say it’s going to be a happy ending, it’s very very weird, and 90% of the humans are going to be in these pilot alien bodies and that is something I am looking to explore.