On Friday night, my dad, girlfriend and I went to an IMAX theatre expecting to be blown away by the remake of the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. We were all excited, particularly my father (an avid SciFi guru who thoroughly loved the original). The previews for the movie made it look awe-inspiring and interesting, as though this would blow away the great Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds, which was quite excellent (as far as I’m concerned, despite Tom Cruise as the protagonist). The tickets were purchased, we found ourselves good seats (and just in the nick of time, too), and sat down to be amazed.
Unfortunately, we were left asking ourselves why we paid for IMAX tickets when we could have spent 1/8 of the money to rent it on DVD. We’ll come back to this.
First, the good things I did enjoy (the list is short). (Spoiler Alert) My favorite scene is where Keanu Reeves corrects a math problem with the professor. It is iconic and memorable and specific. Unfortunately for this new film, the scene was in the original. The acting, however, was overall much better than the original, as are the special effects. (Although as Jim West rightly points out, if you saw the previews, you saw the best of the CGI)
Now the bad (decidedly longer). What is uncertain from the perspective of those of us who have seen the original is what exactly the director/writers of this film were thinking. More than once I wanted to grab the writers by the collar and shake them violently asking, loudly, “Just what in the hell were you thinking?”
But more on this in a minute. For those who don’t know, the original film was made in 1951 during the cold war, where nuclear missiles were aimed at every major superpower. It was a troubling, fearful time where it was felt that the end might come any minute. World War 2 had ended a few years previous, man had seen attrocities done in the name of prejudice and hate. The Day the Earth Stood Still was a movie with a message for this age. It had an impact on so many people. The socio-cultural environment for it was crucial to its rhetoric. In today’s world, there are new fears and new attrocities, new messages and new rhetoric would could have been brushed on by the writers. So much of the human condition, our socio-cultural environment, our digital age, could have been discussed in a way that would have reached us as the original had reached those over five decades ago. But that was not the case here. The human condition, we are shown, is not nearly as compassionate as the alien condition. This is so strange. The movie did not focus on our human ability to change – all of the change, it seems, takes place with the aliens who visit earth. Gort changes into a self-reproducing hive of nanobugs; Klaatu originally is “reborn” from alien to human into *three* distinct genetic codes; the sphere’s alter in shape and size and power; Klaatu changes his mind about destroying the human race (for what seems like ridiculously superficial reasons); but where is the human change? Where is the human ability to become good “at the brink of destruction?” It is not truly shown in the movie in any way that could be noticeable.
For the most part, the movie wasted its two-hour time slot. So much was spent on non-plot-related things (as if one could say there was a decent plot, that is) that there was no time for character development or connections with the cast. These digressions from the plot led to way too many internal contradictions. For example…at the beginning of the film, an orb ascends to earth in India (why?) and draws the DNA from a nearby mountain climber (deus ex machina, much?) who just conveniently happens to be right there and also happens to be American. The sphere’s primary purpose is to extract DNA to use sometime later. The mountain climber touches the sphere, which turns into a bright, glowing incandescent ball and burns the man’s hand (not exactly the most useful way to take a DNA sample…) This is all taking place in 1929, supposedly. Later in the film, Keanu Reeve’s character (so “reborn” into humanity from his alien self using the DNA extracted in 1929) meets with an agent who was sent there 70 years previous from his time (2008) meaning that the guy was sent here in 1938. This begs the question, why was the sample taken in 1929? The guy does not look like Keanu Reeves and he does not appear to have any likeness to him (he is Asiatic in appearance, unlike Keanu’s character who is clearly European). What was the purpose of the scene? It was completely irrelevant and leaves observant viewers scratching their heads. Situations like this are rampant throughout the movie. (See issues with the ending for more details) For a race of evolved aliens who canmaster space travel, they pull a “God” manuever here and send an emissary to a desolate part of the world, where the majority of the people at this time were illiterate, to extract a DNA sample they would use later to developanother emissary who was meant to speak to all world leaders. (Sort of like how God apparently sent his son Jesus to a dessolate and backwards area of Galilee to speak to a group of people who were oppressed and illiterate at this time…etc…) It’s just too incredibly odd from a writers standpoint to make any logical sense.
Another problem is Keanu’s characters’ (Klaatu) indecisiveness. Going back to my favorite scene, Klaatu can easily fix a mathematical miscalculation but he doesn’t know for sure if he can stop what he started (and then ends up stopping what he started). It’s so incredibly ridiculous and it does not inspire thrills or suspense (which is what the angle would be for writing in an indecisive alien being); rather, it led to annoyance which does little more than distract the viewer. Elsewhere, Klaatu seems to use overkill powers. In one scene, a Cop draws a gun and holds it at him. Klaatu kills him first, then revives him. Why? In other scenes he can produce a noise in peoples minds that make them crumble to the ground without killing them. In this instance, he abuses his power and makes him come off more or less like an ass.
The military, it seems, has paid quite a large sum of money to the producers/etc… to turn this fantastic 1950’s movie into a military recruiting film. So much time was wasted from telling the story on scenes where vast amounts of military personnel were shooting stuff. From Predator UAV’s to Abram’s tanks and even a few Raptors made an appearance at the end. A lot of time was spent on interrogation scenes and attempting to subdue Gort (Made into an acronym “G.O.R.T” in this movie, which stands for Genetically Organized Robotic Technology). About 25-30 minutes of the movie had to be made up of soldiers firing some sort of weapon, taking away from the story and making the film a pain to watch.
Finally, the end of the film was a let down. In the original film inspired, showed a change in mankind, and Klaatu left the earth with a message…change or we’ll be back. He literally stopped the earth for thirty minutes to prove he wasn’t playing around. This film had none of the qualities of the original. It utterly lacked in human change (in fact, the scene which could have been the “change” needed to satisfy the original plot was completely wasted – the Secretary had the ability to disagree with the president and offer Klaatu and the others a chance and in the end she followed orders, launching a destructive air strike that killed one of the better characters in the film – a scientist no less). By the end, you still felt no connection with the protagonist female and her step son who–on all accounts–is the biggest pain in the ass (which speaks to his acting abilities). There was no warning to mankind, not “change or else”…the sphere left and mankind was let be…only mild damage was done to NYC, including the destruction of Giants stadium (I’m an Eagles fan anyway).
This film was not only a waste of money, it was a huge disappointment. It could have ben so much better, but it really was horrid. Of course, others may disagree, but this is my opinion of it. And clearly others felt the same, as we left the IMAX theatre, everyone was in silent shock at how just incredibly inescapeably disgusting of a film remake it really was.
Posted by Tom Verenna 
