Day The Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still Some of you know that I have been waiting with bated breath for months now, which is not good for the lungs, but what can you do?
As everyone should know, this is a remake of the MAJOR classic 1951 film of the same name starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe. I consider the original to be one of the five best sci fi movies ever made (as do most critics), and a group of “experts” voted it one of ten sci fi movies that should never be remade. Oops. I admit to a little trepidation on this one, despite my anticipation, because I love the old one so much. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. But I thought hey, how bad can it be? I knew Keanu Reeves was starring in it, which seemed a good thing, as well as Jennifer Connelly (Very easy to look at and more than makes up for Reeves’ famous lack of acting ability), as well as John Cleese reprising Sam Jaffe’s wonderful Professor Barnhardt (who was barely disguised as Albert Einstein). The little boy is, unfortunately, miscast. Jaden Smith plays Bobby (now Jacob) Benson, and he is the wrong kid, partly because the role was rewritten and did not work.
A brief synopsis: An alien spacecraft lands in Central Park. It is a huge sphere, with roiling lights and cloud things inside. The military cordons off the area, someone (thing) comes out and is instantly shot. Go figure. He (it) is taken into custody and patched up. Kathy Bates as a credible Sec Def interviews him in the hospital and asks what he wants. (One of the many jobs a good sec def must be adept at). He wants to address the world leaders at the United Nations. Right away, we see a flaw in the writers plan. No serious alien would have anything to do with the UN. Or Ted Turner, for that matter. Bates tells him no, that he is U.S. property and the other countries of the world will not even know he exists. He is troubled by this and decides to leave. As the representative of a group of intra-galactic cultures, he is all-powerful and pretty much walks out, leaving ruin and mayhem behind him. Now Jennifer Connelly ( a member of a hastily built team of scientists put together to meet the challenge) must go and find him because she feels in her heart he is good. He did, after all, tell the Sec Def that he came to save the earth.
There are chase scenes and thrilling rescues and enough close-calls for an entire season of European soccer. In the end, the big climax . . . . well let’s save that for later.

SPOILER ALERT If you don’t want to know the ending, stop reading and go to “Continue Here.”

It turns out the writer-director could not help adding a touch of PC environmentalism to the plot. Okay, he made it the central aspect of the plot. The alien tells Connelly that he is here to save the earth—by destroying the human race, which is destroying the earth. I have a problem or two with the premise. But only because it’s silly. An alien comes to earth with an announcement. (In the original it is a warning) He is here to tell us we are all about to die. Who would bother to make that announcement? There are not a lot of planets in the universe that have the right ingredients, in the right combinations, to support sentient life, and they can’t afford to lose this one. Us they can lose. First of all, why bother to tell us? Keep in mind, this guy represents a galactic milieu whose technology is so advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic. They have been studying us for generations and have come to the conclusion that we are unsaveable and have to be destroyed.
One: all that time of watching us, and all that wisdom and technology, and all they can think of to do is kill us all? (was that too many alls?) Not help? Not warn us first, like they did in the original?
Two: no sentient species, alien or otherwise, which is advanced enough to belong to a galactic civilization would ever choose an environment over another sentient species. Period. They would A, leave us alone, B, offer some kind of aid to help get us through our crisis, or C, enslave and exploit us, but they would never just kill us all in favor of an empty planet.
So the entire premise, altered from the original, (in which we are warned that our violence cannot be tolerated now that we have discovered spaceflight and nuclear weapons) lost me early on. It’ll play well in blue states though.
Gort is not as cool either. The big robot policeman in the original is a bio-nanotech construct in the new one. It dissolves into Nano-bugs designed to reduce the planet to a lifeless hulk which they can then reseed with samples they’ve collected in those cool spheres. The bugs are released and start the process. But then Klaatu (the alien, remember “Gort, Klaatu, Barada, Nikto”?) sees a nice moment between mother and child and decides we have another side to us, so he stops the bio-cleansing, sacrificing himself in the process. Aliens are always learning important lessons from us poor humans.
But nothing is resolved. Nothing is really learned by any of the characters. And the movie just sort of ends at that point.

Continue here It is a flashy, glossy, Hollywood movie. Don’t get me wrong, Nita and I both liked it. There are some problems, like any movie, but nothing insurmountable. The fact that it left us both wanting more by the end, and was largely unresolved, did not discourage us. The effects were great, there were some very cool ideas, and the characters were believable if sketchy. We give it a qualified recommendation. It’s is a fun movie if you don’t go in expecting more than it has to offer. Keanu Reeves plays a stoic alien very well. No big movement, no expression, just bland curiosity and occasional confusion. It is rated PG-13. There is no profanity, sex, nudity or even gore. And Klaatu revives anyone he kills. In the end, it was disappointing, but I can’t say I was surprised. The original is just too good a movie to remake.