“Lost” actor Neil Hopkins set for “Skyline”
Physicist Stephen Hawking warned in a Discovery Channel documentary that humanity’s first contact with aliens might not be a pleasant experience.
“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,” Hawking said.
The film “Skyline,” directed by brothers Colin and Greg Strause, takes that premise and moves forward from it, says Neil Hopkins, who plays the would-be womanizer Ray. He and his friend Terry (Donald Faison) work in the field of digital effects.
“He’s constantly trying to pick up on women in ways that are not necessarily proper,” Hopkins said in a telephone interview. “He’s based, supposedly, on somebody they (the Strause brothers) work with, though they wouldn’t tell me who he was.”
Hopkins said the appeal of the unknown draws people to films such as “Skyline,” which features an alien invasion of Earth.
“The less you know about something but the wider the possibility that it could possibly exist, the more the human imagination gets freed up and kind of goes wild,” he said. “Our imaginations have gone into outer space, all the way back to H.G. Wells.”
Hopkins said that unknown element and the infinite possibilities of space have led to humankind’s constant fascination. And he thinks often the fiction we create reflects our concerns as a society at that point.
