Revisiting Sky High
As has come up before on this blog, I spend a great deal of time working with kids.
I’ve been babysitting for the past fourteen years, when I was technically still a child and really should not have been allowed to watch even younger children, and have worked as a camp counselor for approximately ten years, first at day camp and then at sleepaway camp for eight summers. The day camp I worked for was entirely for children with special needs and the last four years I worked at a sleepaway camp I was specifically involved in a vocational program for young adults with disabilities.
I am still in touch with many of my former campers and participants in the vocational program I staffed, and over the weekend I had a Disney+ Sky High Group Watch party with one of them. She is obsessed with superheroes, and this is one of her favorite movies to discuss with me.
I, on the other hand, am not obsessed with superheroes and I actually consider it to be one of my biggest mainstream cultural knowledge gaps. The only movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe I’ve seen is Black Panther and that was just because (a) it felt culturally significant and (b) it was on Netflix. I’ve also seen at least a couple of the X-Men movies for some reason, which are not MCU, maybe?
Okay I just googled it and they are. Ugh, there are just so many superheroes. Also from my googling it seems like the X-Men movies I’ve seen are all from the Beginnings trilogy, whatever that means, and if I remember correctly I saw X-Men: First Class at a high school slumber party (obviously I did not pick the film) and I saw X-Men: Apocalypse with my dad in Israel cause I was bored (obviously I didn’t pick the film that time either).
In hindsight, I may have been willing to watch these films in particular cause I’ve had a crush in James McAvoy since I was ten and he stole the show as Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I will not be taking questions at this time, but for more information, please watch this SNL sketch. Honestly, his whole episode was excellent, definitely one of the best of season 44.
Anyway, so I’m not a superhero movie person, but I don’t want to come off as condescending or anything like that. Trust me, I am a full-blown massive dork about Harry Potter, Disney, and musical theatre, I don’t think I’m better than anyone because my nerdy-ness expresses itself differently. I understand the appeal of superhero franchises, they just aren’t for me and, to be perfectly honest, I just don’t have the time!
So aside from the three aforementioned exceptions to my MCU knowledge gap, when I talk about superhero movies there are really only two options: The Incredibles and Sky High.
Released by Disney in 2005, Sky High is a family-friendly superhero comedy film about Will Stronghold, the son of two world-famous superheroes, whose powers haven’t kicked in yet when he starts high school at the titular Sky High. At school, all students are divided up based on their power into heroes or sidekicks, and these categories define their academic and personal journeys at school and beyond. Will is assigned sidekick, along with a slew of other characters whose powers might not be what you expect from a traditional superhero. Over the course of the movie, Will develops his powers and becomes a hero, causing him to ditch his sidekick friends, but ultimately uncovers an evil plot by one of the other students and is only able to save the day with the help of the sidekicks, his true friends.
I had very fond memories of this film, which I’m fairly certain I saw in theaters when it came out, but my primary memory of it was that Zach, one of the sidekicks whose superpower is glowing in the dark, played by Nicholaus Braun (now an Emmy-nominated actor for his role as Cousin Greg in Succession!) really looks like one of my best friends from high school and we used to lovingly tease him about it. Watching the movie now, as an adult (ostensibly) and shortly after watching a horrible “family-friendly” movie (see my post on The Cat in the Hat), I was pleasantly surprised to see that this film really holds up. The story is fun and exciting, and the sidekicks are all quirky and delightful, from glow-in-the-dark Zach to Ethan, who melts, and Magenta, who can shape-shift, but only into a guinea pig. Additionally, Will’s best friend Layla, who has the power to manipulate plants, chooses to be a sidekick in protest of the two-track system, saying simply, “it seems fascist” and she “doesn’t like labels.” She also doesn’t eat meat because her mom can talk to animals and, “turns out, they don’t like being eaten!” I remember Layla being one of my favorite characters, but didn’t realize until now that maybe her character’s messaging influenced me more than I realized.
In addition to the fun and silly characters that kids of all ages will enjoy, I genuinely give this movie the “family-friendly” stamp of approval and think grown-ups and kids-at-heart will enjoy it as well. There are performances by bonafide stars, such as Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston as Will’s superhero parents and Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter, as the principal of Sky High. Additionally, if you’re the type of person that enjoys digging a little deeper, or you prefer to show the kids in your life stories that, if they were one day to dig a little deeper, they would find admirable messaging, Sky High delivers.
At the end of the day, this is a movie about how everyone’s unique skills should be valued, even if on the surface they’re not glamorous or traditionally valued. The reason the sidekicks are able to save the day at the end of the film is because they’re confident in their own unique abilities, even if they’ve been made of fun of or even humiliated for them in the past, and, arguably more importantly, because they understand that value of working together as a team. And those are values I think are worthy of being imparted on anyone in this capitalistic hell scape we find ourselves in!
Side note- don’t you love it when a massive corporation like Disney produces content that is actually against their own values? I’m looking at you Newsies. I could honestly write a paper on anti-capitalist propaganda produced by Disney. Maybe another day.
If you haven’t already been convinced to give Sky High a watch or a rewatch, maybe I can entice you with the iconic final line of the movie. As Will recaps in voiceover what happens to all the characters after the events of the film, he says, “So in the end, my girlfriend became my arch-enemy, my arch-enemy became by best friend, and my best friend became my girlfriend. But hey- that’s high school.”
Don’t you want to see how that happens?