Skyline (2010) and Stephen Hawking

A new sci-fi movie is about to make contact and it draws heavily on material recently discussed in a Discovery Channel documentary by one of the world’s leading physicists’, Stephen Hawking. Skyline, from the Brothers Strause, the effects team behind Avatar, follows a group of friends who are woken up in the dead of night by an eerier light beaming through the window. Like moths to a flame, the light source is drawing people outside before they suddenly vanish into the air.

In the documentary, Stephen Hawking’s Universe, which was aired earlier this year, the physicist warned about the possibilities of alien civilisations, something which Skyline has picked up on and uses in its trailer:

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The numbers speak for themselves. There are 100 billion galaxies in the universe, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. Out of all of those, what makes Earth so special that it would be the only one able to sustain not just life, but intelligent life? And if there is life out there, why would they want to visit our little blue planet?

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach. If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

For the group of friends in the movie, it also doesn’t turn out too well. They soon discover an extraterrestrial force is swallowing the entire human population off the face of the earth as the world they once knew comes to an end.