The film was theatrically released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution on July 29, 2005, and grossed $86.4 million worldwide against a production budget of $35 million.[3] The film received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences during its original theatrical run and has since been recognized as a cult film.
Plot
Will Stronghold lives with his superhero parents, Steve Stronghold / The Commander and Josie DeMarco-Stronghold / Jetstream, in Maxville. Will is anxious about attending his parents' alma mater, Sky High, a school located on a secret floating campus, because he secretly has not developed any superpowers yet.
On their first day, he, his best friend Layla Williams, and the other freshmen are harassed by seniors Speed, Lash, and Penny Lent and meet Gwen Grayson, a popular senior and technopath who Will falls for. Additionally, Will is assigned to the "Hero Support" curriculum and becomes a sidekick due to his lack of powers, though Layla joins him in protest of the school's two-track education system.
Unaware of what happened to his son, Steve shows Will his hidden trophy room, the Secret Sanctum. He expresses particular fondness for the "Pacifier", a weapon he took from his presumed dead arch-nemesis Royal Pain 16 years earlier, failing to notice a hidden camera in a separate trophy.
Though he befriends his fellow sidekicks, Will comes into conflict with pyrokinetic student Warren Peace, whose supervillain father was imprisoned by Steve. In the ensuing fight, Will develops his father's super-strength. Upon being transferred to the Hero curriculum, Will spends more time with Gwen and her friends, ignoring Layla and the sidekicks. Layla later confides to Warren that she has a crush on Will while Gwen comes over to Will's house to invite his parents as honored guests to the Homecoming dance and they spend the evening together.
On the day before the dance, Gwen tricks Will into throwing a party at his house and has Speed secretly steal the Pacifier. Layla tries to investigate the party but falls for Gwen's lies that Will knows about her feelings for him and is too polite to reject her. As Layla leaves in tears, Will breaks up with Gwen and refuses to attend the dance. Will goes through his father's yearbook and sees a student resembling Gwen named Sue Tenny, who disappeared before his parents' graduation. Realizing that the Pacifier was stolen, Will assumes Tenny became Royal Pain and Gwen is her daughter, and heads to Sky High to stop her with help from Ron Wilson, Bus Driver.
At the dance, Gwen reveals herself as Royal Pain. With Speed, Lash, and Penny's aid, Gwen uses the Pacifier to turn the students, staff, and Will's parents into babies, intending to kidnap and raise them all as future supervillains. After reconciling with Layla, Will teams up with her, Warren, Ron, and the other sidekicks to rescue the captives and defeat Gwen's allies. Gwen reveals that herself, not her mother, is Sue Tenny; she was a victim of the Pacifier decades ago and has since literally relived her current life span. Gwen then fights Will and throws him off the school, causing him to develop Josie's flight power. Though Gwen sabotages the school's anti-gravity drive, the sidekicks successfully restart it and Will uses both of his powers to return the school to the sky.
With Sky High saved, Gwen and her allies are given detention while her captives are saved and restored to their proper ages. Professor Medulla resumes the homecoming dance. Warren holds hands with a student with ice powers, Zach and Magenta dance together, and Will and Layla kiss while flying outside. In a comic book-style epilogue, the villains are shown to be imprisoned together, to Gwen's chagrin. Also, Ron falls into a vat of toxic waste, becoming a superhero working for the mayor to defend the city from giant robots.
Cast
Michael Angarano as William "Will" Theodore Stronghold – A freshman at Sky High and the son of famous superheroes and Maxville real estate agents, the Commander and Jetstream, who inherited his father's super-strength and his mother's ability to fly, though they are initially dormant and gradually manifest over the course of the film.
Kurt Russell as Steve Stronghold / The Commander – Will's father who is reputed as one of the world's strongest superheroes, possessing superhuman strength and invulnerability, and a successful businessman in his secret identity.
Kelly Preston as Josie DeMarco-Stronghold / Jetstream – Will's mother and a successful real estate agent who can fly at supersonic speeds and is an expert hand-to-hand combatant.
Danielle Panabaker as Layla Williams – Will's botanokinetic, pacifistic, childhood best friend, next-door neighbor, and later girlfriend.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwendolyn "Gwen" Grayson / Royal Pain / Susan "Sue" Tenny – A technopathic senior at Sky High whom Will 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] Years prior, when she attended Sky High as Tenny, no one understood her powers and she was assigned to the sidekick curriculum, which eventually put her on the path to becoming a supervillain and the Commander's arch-nemesis until an accident with her "Pacifier" de-aged her during one of their battles.
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 fluid.
Kelly Vitz as Magenta "Maj" Lewis – A sidekick and one of Will's 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 can glow in the dark.
Malika Haqq and Khadijah Haqq as Penny Lent – A senior at Sky High and Gwen's athletic best friend who can duplicate herself.
Jake Sandvig as Lash – A skinny bully and senior at Sky High who has complete body elasticity.
Will Harris as Speed – An overweight bully and senior at Sky High who can move at superhuman speeds.
Lynda Carter as Principal Powers – The principal of Sky High who can transform into a comet-like form.
Bruce Campbell as Tommy Boomowski / Coach Boomer / Sonic Boom – Sky High's gym teacher who can release sonic waves from his vocal cords.
Kevin Heffernan as Ron Wilson, Bus Driver– Sky High's kind-hearted bus driver and the son of two superheroes.
Cloris Leachman as Nurse Spex – Sky High's elderly and eccentric yet kind school nurse who possesses 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 a Hero Support teacher at Sky High.
Kevin McDonald as Professor Medulla – Sky High's Mad Science teacher who possesses an oversized brain, which grants advanced intelligence, creativity, and a multitude of genius-level skills.
Loren Berman as "Big" Larry – A socially awkward student who can turn into a giant, muscular humanoid monster with rock-like skin at will.
Dustin Ingram as Carbon Copy Kid – A student with shapeshifting powers.
Nicole Malgarini as Freeze Girl – A student with cryokinetic powers.
Additionally, Tom Kenny and Jill Talley make cameo appearances as Mr. and Mrs. Chester Timmerman, a couple who witness Will prevent Sky High from destroying their new home.
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]
The soundtrack album for the film was released by Hollywood Records on July 26, 2005, and is composed of covers of new wave songs mostly from the 1980s ("Just What I Needed" is 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]
"Twist and Crawl"– Skindred (originally by the Beat) - 2:31
Reception
AllMusic rated the album 2.5/5, saying that it "stumbles more than it succeeds" and is "painfully conventional."[10]
Reception
Box office
On an estimated budget of US$35 million,[2] the film grossed just under $64 million in the US, and another $22 million internationally, bringing the total to $86 million.[3]
Critical response
Sky High received positive reviews upon release.[12][13] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74% based on reviews from 129 critics, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The site's critical consensus states: "This highly derivative superhero coming-of-age flick is moderately entertaining, family-friendly fluff."[14] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 62 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A− on a scale of A+ to F.[16]
Joe Leydon of Variety magazine praised the film calling it: "Smartly written and sprightly played, Sky High satisfies with a clever commingling of spoofy superheroics, school-daze hijinks" and "this lively live-action Disney release stands on its own merits as a tongue-in-cheek fantasy with cross-generational appeal."[17] Neil Smith at BBC.com wrote: "While originality is hardly the film's strongest suit, its agreeable mix of knowing spoof and kid-pleasing fantasy makes it considerably more engaging than some of the 'straight' superhero blockbusters we've suffered recently."[18]
Since its initial release, Sky High has been received more favorably in retrospective reviews and has developed a cult following, particularly due to its lighthearted homage to superhero tropes.[19] Mark Harrison, writing for Den of Geek, summarized, "With a cast made up of bright young things and cult favourites and a script that goes post-modern without ever getting arch or snarky, Sky High is a real gem from Disney’s live action catalog. It borrows from JK Rowling, John Hughes, Joss Whedon, and any number of comic books and yet still stands on its own. Next to the current superhero boom, it was so ahead of its time that a decade later, it seems sharper and funnier than ever".[19]
Home media
The film was released on DVD on November 29, 2005 and Blu-ray on November 21, 2006. It is also included on Disney's streaming service, Disney+.
Cancelled sequel and TV series
In November 2016, Disney announced a sequel to Sky High in the early development stages.[20] In January 2019, Sky High director 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 for,[21] but there have been no new developments for it as of 2025.
In March 2024, Mitchell still expressed interest in a sequel but felt that since Disney bought Marvel, they see them as their superhero output. He has stated that he would like to do a Sky High inspired project set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.[22]
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