{"id":1840,"date":"2009-07-02T23:31:36","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T03:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=1840"},"modified":"2022-10-22T12:36:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T16:36:11","slug":"day-the-earth-stood-still-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/day-the-earth-stood-still-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Keanu Reeves Comes to Save the World, in The Day the Earth Stood Still"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If the least one expects of the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em> is that it merely fulfill the promise of its title, then please move right along, for the earth stands still for only a few brief moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is, however, a far bigger production than the 1951 original<\/a> directed by Robert Wise, even accounting for the inflation of filmmaking technology and audience expectation for spectacle. As if to overcompensate for the original’s now admittedly amusing implausibilities and the silly giant robot and flying saucer, it tries too hard to impress with too many unconnected ideas and excessive hustle and bustle. It’s even rather inappropriately macho, with more unconvincing digital helicopters and military hardware than a typical Michael Bay movie. At least it’s much, much better than the disastrous Invasion<\/a><\/em> (the third<\/em> official remake of The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does get off to a good start with a prologue in which a lone mountain climber (Keanu Reeves) discovers a glowing orb in 1928 India. The sequence is mysterious and interesting, but ultimately unimportant to the plot. We later learn that the orb was an alien probe that copied the climber’s DNA, from which to grow a surrogate body for the alien Klaatu (Reeves again) decades later. Even the most basic plausibility is violated as humans dissect his alien body without biosuits or any kind of quarantine at all. One wonders if earlier drafts of the screenplay involved Klaatu’s captors initially misidentifying him as a missing person from 1928. A missed opportunity would be a scene in which the aged original adventurer comes face-to-face with an alien mimicking his youthful self. But as it stands, this whole subplot acts as a distraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original movie simply presented the alien as humanoid (if a little unusually tall and angular) and that was enough. The notion of a alien being reborn in a new body is interesting but an unnecessary complication, one that only raises questions unrelated to the central themes. Klaatu is lucky his template was the handsome Reeves, who can wear anything — at one point, Klaatu steals a schlumpy guy’s suit and it fits as if it were tailored just for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supposedly this body is human, but he exerts superpowers including the transmutation of electricity into some kind of sketchily-described life force. In this respect, the original is better; Klaatu outwardly looks like us, period, end of story. Isn’t that enough? Another extraneous idea, superfluous to the core story: Klaatu’s giant omnipotent robot companion Gort is now comprised of a swarm of nanobots. Why have both a giant robot and<\/em> itsy-bitsy nanobots? Pick one idea and stick with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Keanu
Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; first we must fulfill another genre cliche. The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em> lines up after the likes of The Happening<\/a><\/em>, The Day After Tomorrow<\/em>, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence<\/em>, Deep Impact<\/em>, Watchmen<\/a><\/em>, and Cloverfield<\/a><\/em> (the list goes on, and on…) to take another stab at decimating poor New York City. When humanity detects an unidentified object set to strike Manhattan, Dr. Michael Grainer (Mad Men<\/em>‘s Jon Hamm) assembles a crack team of diverse experts including astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) to fly around in black helicopters and gawp helplessly at all the special effects. Luckily, for the moment at least, the object turns about to be a spacecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1951, alien emissary Klaatu (Michael Rennie) went to Washington like Mr. Smith. In 2008, this Klaatu figures the place to make a grand entrance is Manhattan’s Central Park (never mind that the United Nations headquarters is on the East Side). Fans of computer-generated destruction of the sort in which Roland Emmerich traffics will be pleased to see Central Park forcibly landscaped before the movie is over. During the final climax in the Park, I’m pretty sure the principals hide under the exact same footbridge as the survivors at the end of Cloverfield<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the original, it’s credited as being based on the 1940 short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates. Its cinematic touchstones include The Brother From Another Planet<\/em> and The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em>. But it shares a critically flawed plot element with the more recent Watchmen<\/em>. In the latter, mortal heroine Silk Spectre must convince Dr. Manhattan, an ambivalent nonhuman that couldn’t care less, to save the world. Klaatu arrives on Earth to receive the report of an earlier agent, who confirms humans are self destructive by nature. That’s enough for Klaatu to begin to purge the planet, but the agent goes on and tries to impress upon him human’s complexity. Klaatu is unswayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helen and her son Jacob (Jaden Smith, son of Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith) try to do the same and succeed just as Silk Spectre did, but in both cases the audience can’t quite understand how their arguments go through to superior beings one step away from godhood. Because she’s pretty, and her kid whines so much that Klaatu caved in just to shut him the hell up? Personally, if I was an alien judging humanity, and I met such an insanely annoying kid, I would purge the planet too. The movie would merit at least one more star if the kid hadn’t been in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jennifer
Jennifer Connelly in The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Connelly is sadly wasted, again. As in Ang Lee’s otherwise underrated Hulk<\/em>, she’s relegated to second-billing below the computer effects. The great Kathy Bates fares even worse in a role anyone could have played. As for the legendary John Cleese’s cameo as a mad scientist, I assume the idea was to cast a slightly kooky personality with a British accent to project intelligence to dumb American audiences. But the formerly manic Cleese has mellowed out so much in his later years that they could have just cast any old Brit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em> was quite obviously a Cold War parable, if a little muddled in its particulars. This version skirts the politics of war, choosing instead to recast the basic premise as an eco-parable. Much like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening<\/em>, New York’s Central Park is ground zero for an ecological catastrophe. Part of Klaatu’s mission is to save samples of the Earth’s biosphere, which the Secretary of Defense (Bates) explicitly equates to the Biblical tale of Noah’s Ark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikipedia notes the film was a largely green production<\/a>, in which the crew recycled or donated props and costumes, and utilized an intranet to reduce paper waste. But within the story itself, for an alien concerned about cleaning up the Earth, Klaatu is quite content to ride back and forth from Manhattan to New Jersey in a gas-guzzling SUV (the manufacturer of which no doubt provided product placement).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, some questions: exactly how much of the world is decimated in the end? How does Klaatu expect humanity to clean up the planet when he’s already destroyed most of the infrastructure? Imagine all the homelessness, starvation, chaos, rioting, and looting that must be dealt with before any government could even begin to think about ozone holes or carbon collection. Also, Klaatu’s species has the technology to disintegrate all manmade materials on an entire planet, but he totally dismisses out of hand the idea of cleaning up our pollution for us, or at least lending us the technology? The original Klaatu had more faith in humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the least one expects of the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is that it merely fulfill the promise of its title, then please move right along, for the earth stands still for only a few brief moments. It is, however, a far bigger production than the 1951 original directed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[378,595,580,602,597,203,598,599,600,596,601,436,85,594,592],"class_list":["post-1840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-stars","category-movies","tag-alien-invasion","tag-david-scarpa","tag-day-the-earth-stood-still","tag-environment","tag-jaden-smith","tag-jennifer-connelly","tag-john-cleese","tag-jon-hamm","tag-kathy-bates","tag-keanu-reeves","tag-nanotechnology","tag-robots","tag-science-fiction","tag-scott-derrickson","tag-ufo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/day-the-earth-stood-still-2008-3.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-tG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8631,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/famously-chill-dude-keanu-reeves-goes-on-a-killing-spree-in-john-wick-chapter-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1840,"position":0},"title":"Famously chill dude Keanu Reeves goes on a killing spree in John Wick: Chapter 2","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"February 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I want to enjoy action movies like the popular John Wick franchise, but the gun worship spoils everything.","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"John Wick: Chapter 2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/john-wick-chapter-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/john-wick-chapter-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/john-wick-chapter-2.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/john-wick-chapter-2.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/john-wick-chapter-2.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5801,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-matrix-reloaded-is-the-best-matrix-movie\/","url_meta":{"origin":1840,"position":1},"title":"The Matrix Reloaded is the best Matrix movie","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"July 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Conventional wisdom will tell you there is only one good Matrix movie, and it's called The Matrix. 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Sometimes you need a fanboy to point out what's wrong with a movie crafted for fanboys. 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