Sky High (2005 film)/YMMV

• The Ace: The Commander/Steve Stronghold, much to the annoyance of his son.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: When the Commander gives the kids and Ron Wilson the hero award and actually refers to them as heroes. Made even more awesome with the "Well Done, Son" Guy moment right afterward with Mr. Boy: "Oh, and Jonathan - whatever you're teaching these kids, keep teaching them... it."
• Designated Protagonist Syndrome: Will. He's a rather flat character who doesn't have to work at anything. This really stands out when he's around a heroic Poison Ivy and a Prince Zuko expy.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: A portion of the fandom think Layla and Warren looked better together.
  • Or Will and Warren...
• Follow the Leader: Zoom was rushed into theaters shortly after SH came out, and the epic failure of the ripoff is probably why more films of this subgenre are not being made.
  • Ironically, Sky High is sort-of a ripoff of the old DCOM Up Up and Away itself.
• Narm: The "Pacifier" thing that temporarily regresses anyone into a baby.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Boomer relegating those not fortunate enough to win the Superpower Lottery could be seen as simply a Necessary Evil and why he's given that job. Someones got to be the jerk that tells Zack his power sucks. This is a school designed to create Superheroes that have to go toe-to-toe with Supervillains and city wide threats. Are they really supposed to rank the people who can punch through walls, Fly and go at Super Speed with the girl who can turn into a guinea pig? They'll only end up curbstomped by the first superpowered villain they fight. Hell most of the sidekicks would get their asses kicked by a Badass Normal. They do their part in the climax but that's only because they've got a Flying Brick, a Pyromancer and a Poison Ivy expy on their side.
  • This might also explain why the villains they are fighting are most likely also graduates. The system is a ready-made Start of Darkness for all but the chosen few.
• Magnificent Bastard: Royal Pain/Gwen Grayson.
• Retroactive Recognition: Holy cow, is that Ramona Flowers?
• Shocking Swerve: A curious example. Gwen's sudden complete personality transplant from cool-if-somewhat-possessive girlfriend to Alpha Bitch had no buildup whatsoever, however, when considered with the film as a whole, a lot of seemingly arbitrary scenes that appeared to have no point suddenly make a lot more sense (the malfunctioning light fixture at the dance, for instance, and also Speed randomly walking in on Will and Gwen as they're about to have a moment). Amusingly enough, a number of reviewers claimed to have called this twist from the beginning, using the logic that senior girls never date freshman boys.
• Unfortunate Implications: None of the female freshman we see are sorted into 'Hero' class. Admittedly Layla was only excluded because she refused to display her abilities out of principle.
  • Also, if you don't have powers, you are automatically designated as a sidekick. Essentially it means in order to be accepted in your own community, you need powers.
  • The solution to the Have You Tried Not Being a Sidekick? problem is for Will to get powers. Don't read too closely into the potential analogies.
  • Most of these are the point of the movie, people. The whole theme is that the system sucks and is in need of change. So the system being riddled with unfortunate implications isn't a bug, it's a feature.
• What an Idiot!: Who was the fool that thought an individual with the ability to to bend technology and machinery to their will wasn't anything less than a powerful superhero in the making? Short sighted doesn't really cover it.
• When He Smiles - behold Kubrick!Warren - and, for contrast, behold grinning!Warren. Oh my, I'm all swoony!
• X Meets Y: X-Men (specifically the Grant Morrison era, where a lot of mutant powers were... less than useful) meets Harry Potter.

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