Day the Earth Stood Still (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition): Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler, Robert Knepper, James Hong, John Rothman, Sunita Prasad, Juan Riedinger, David Tattersall, Scott Derrickson, Erwin Stoff, Gregory Goodman, Marvin Towns Jr., Paul Harris Boardman, David Scarpa, Edmund H. North: Movies & TV
Day the Earth Stood Still (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition): Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler, Robert Knepper, James Hong, John Rothman, Sunita Prasad, Juan Riedinger, David Tattersall, Scott Derrickson, Erwin Stoff, Gregory Goodman, Marvin Towns Jr., Paul Harris Boardman, David Scarpa, Edmund H. North: Movies & TV
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Impressive special effects are the key selling point for this big-budget remake of Robert Wise’s classic 1951 science fiction parable about an alien visitor who delivers a chilling ultimatum to the leaders of the world. Keanu Reeves, who seemed ideal at first blush but ultimately turns into another case of miscasting, steps in for Michael Rennie as intergalactic watchdog Klaatu, who with his robot Gort (now super-sized), promises global destruction unless the powers that be unless drastic measures are undertaken regarding the Earth’s environmental issues (or so one assumes). Jennifer Connelly is largely wasted in the Patricia Neal role of scientist/single mom assigned to study Klaatu, who offers a somewhat chilly father figure to her son (a grating Jaden Smith). Connelly isn’t the only fine actor in the cast left standing idle while director Scott Derrickson’s effects team constructs eye-popping scenes of wholesale mayhem; Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, John Cleese and Rob Knepper are all adrift in the aimless script by David Scarpa, which never even fully explains why Klaatu is so bent on blowing us to smithereens. That lack of focus, as well as the B-movie quality of the dialogue (say what you will about the effects in the Wise version, but the film was polished from top to bottom), all help to cement what science fiction fans have been muttering about the film since its inception; the original film needed no high-tech updating –Paul Gaita
Stills from The Day the Earth Stood Still (Click for larger image)
FX Do Not A Picture Make,
By Martin Asiner “Adjunct College Instructor” (Jersey City, NJ) -
This review is from: The Day the Earth Stood Still [Theatrical Release] (Theatrical Release)
There is a reason why the original DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) is a classic and the remake (2008) is not. The FX of 1951 were minimal, but the emphasis on plot, acting, allegory, and scripting combined (as they so rarely do) to produce a film that is watchable even after many viewings. Where Keanu Reeves sleepwalks through his role as Klaatu, Michael Rennie invests his with a riveting performance as a pseudo-human who slowly and naturally learns what it means to be human. Hugh Marlowe in the original is totally believable as the weasly love interest for Patricia Neal. Marlowe’s sliminess paired off well with Rennie’s saintliness. In the remake, there is no one, except perhaps in a collective sense, who can distract the audience long enough to see Reeves as anything more than a mobile pained automaton who is only slightly more interesting than Gort.
Rennie causes the earth to stand still in a manner that emhasizes his godlike powers. His assumed name of Carpenter further allies himself as one who must suffer, die, and be reborn himself so as to save humanity from itself. Reeves arrives on earth determined to exterminate human life as a prerequisite for maintaining it in its supposed pristine state. His argument that John Cleese artfully exposes that Klaatu’s own race avoided self-immolation only after arriving at a precipitous tipping point is exposed as a sophomoric inability to connect one moral thread of one race to a similar thread of another.
In the original, director Robert Wise uses deliberately blurred camera angles to present Rennie as one whose true nature can be only slowly revealed. Recall Rennie’s introduction when he arrives at the boarding house to seek a room. Compare that masterly hiding of face and form with Scott Derrickson’s inability or unwillingness to show Reeves’ face as no more than a perpetual scowl. Kathy Bates as the Secretary of State manages to invest her role with the film’s only note of authenticity as she correctly notes the inevitable results that occur when a technologically advanced culture collides with a significantly less advanced one.
Unless the audience manages to care about the lead (it does with Rennie but not with Reeves), then the director has no place to go but with FX. And for the umpteenth time, the revised version of TDTESS proves that the lack of acting and scripting cannot elevate a film to the point that FX can salvage.
The Two Hours My Brain Stood Still,
By S. Stevenson -
This review is from: The Day the Earth Stood Still [Theatrical Release] (Theatrical Release)
Okay. I really like sci-fi movies. Even some stupid ones that are just about the action and a shoot-em-up storyline. I also like some of the thinking-person sci-fi bits too though. Technically, I am the target audience for the Keanu Reeves / Jennifer Connelly film THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. I really wanted to like it too. I tried hard, but as the plot progressed, I found myself throwing my hands in the air and shouting, “Are you kidding me?” at the movie screen. I’ve always read about people who said that they got up and walked out during a movie, but I never actually knew what that felt like until I watched this film. But, knowing that I paid a hard-earned ten bucks to see it, I stayed through to the end, gritting my teeth and just telling myself that maybe — maybe — it would redeem itself. But no. It never did.
**SPOILER ALERT**
I will admit I knew next to nothing about the movie. All I did know was that the earth was being threatened, and that this was a remake of a 1950’s sci-fi classic. But what I never expected was the way the director used this story as pure propaganda. The whole message of the movie centered around aliens coming to earth to try and save those life-forms (aka animals) who had not damaged the earth. The aliens decide that humans need to be wiped off the face of the planet — allowing evolution to start its process all over again — because humans have senselessly been destroying the planet.
The government is portrayed as trigger-happy idiots who just want to blow things up — no matter the cost. Kathy Bates is literally a dressed up “hand of military vengeance.” Even when she tries to argue with the unseen president, who is obviously supposed to be George W. Bush, the president tells her to have the military blow everything up — the alien, his space craft, even the ark meant to save humanity.
Then there is the insanely annoying little step-son of Dr. Benson (Connelly). The film makers tried to make his emotional battle over the loss of his father really tug at the audience, but all it did was drive me crazy. Mainly because the boy pretty much hated his step-mom — but not in a “tortured by the loss of my father” way — just an annoying “I don’t want to listen to you” way. One minute the kid was crying his eyes out over his dead father (killed in the Iraqi war — propaganda anyone?) to happily slashing baddies on World of Warcraft.
And that’s the other thing. This is one of the heaviest product placement movies I have seen in forever. I couldn’t even begin to count the amount of logos that were shown for a few seconds just to show the logo. It’s one thing if the characters are using the items or products within the context of their world, but this film showed just senseless amounts of products — everything from Apple to Honda to McDonald’s to Coke and the list goes on and on.
I felt like throwing up at the end of the movie after Dr. Benson tells Klaatu (Reeves) that he has to stop the destruction of the earth the aliens have planned. She tells him repeatedly, “We can change. We can change!” Never does she say what this change would look like or how it would work or what it even is. He blindly trusts her and stops the destruction of the people. And then — the horrible montage begins where the aliens shut down all electricity and literally people are shown slightly smiling as they open the blinds to their windows to let the sunlight come in. The worst doesn’t happen however until a shot is shown of an oil drill stopping and standing desolate in a wasteland. “For real?” was all I could mutter by that time.
** End Spoiler Alert**
I really like both Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly as actors. They usually do a somewhat decent job in the roles given to them. But what made them want to jump in on this flop baffles me. I really actually feel bad for both of them for getting dealt such horrible roles in such an awful movie.
The only thing I will say that was slightly all right was the cinematography was decent. Not amazing, but decent. There were some interesting shots and sets, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
I really don’t mind it when a movie wants to get a message across. I really don’t. I don’t mind dramatic situations with family issues. I love sci-fi movies. But when the propaganda is so horrible that it’s beating you across the head every five seconds with how just obvious it is — I can’t stand that. I’d rather let the art do it’s thing and show it to me much more subtlely — the best messages always seem to go down that way when it comes to art. But this? This was outright shove-it-down-my-throat–let’s-nuke-some-people-and-save-the-earth-even-though-after-the-aliens-are-through-with-us-the-everything-will-be-dead nonsense.
In the end, all I can say is, “Curse the day I ever thought I would enjoy something so brainless as this.”
12th commandment: Thou shalt not remake…,
By Timothy P. Scanlon (Hyattsville, MDUSA) -
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)
This review is from: The Day the Earth Stood Still [Theatrical Release] (Theatrical Release)
I’d awaited this film as the original, made while I was in my mother’s womb, is an absolute classic. I don’t know if the wait was worth it.
First, the original was based on a short story entitled, “Farewell to the Master.” Some real film buffs assert that the film wasn’t of the same message as the story. That’s okay. The original was a commentary of the state of human affairs: clean up your act, or we’ll blow you away.
At the beginning of this, the new one, I saw that the screenplay was allegedly written by Edmund H. North. I thought he’d written the original. When I returned home, I looked it up and, sure enough, that’s true. But Edmund has been dead since 1990. That’s an intriguing act, Edmund!
Now, let’s look at the similarities: a spacecraft arrives, a humanoid creature climbs off, and some military personnel shoot him. Then a robot climbs off and would start shooting–he did in the original–until the humaniod says something incomprehensible and the robot stops. Actually, I kind of liked the incomprehensibility in the remake. It was difficult to understand, but that’s okay. I knew the story so knew what was going to happen.
There was a tense beginning of the remake which was clever: the powers that be saw an asteroid heading for Manhattan at an incredible speed. They were preparing not for an invasion but for the destruction of a major metropolitan area, and perhaps of life as we know it. That originality and tension made it worth seeing.
One point I dare not forget: in the original, the robot’s name was Gort. In this GORT was the acronym we earthlings had given to the robot which–like in Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendevous with Rama”–was part organic and part mechanical. (I mention that only because the idea, while clever, wasn’t original.) I don’t remember what GORT stands for except that I think the “G” is for “genetically.” Oh, and GORT isn’t 8 feet tall like in the original. He’s more like 40 feet–or more. He’s really big!
Anyway, after his capture, the earthlings determine that the extraterrestrial is found to have been transported in placental tissue. So he was “born” to be human. That was clever! But when we learn that he speaks English (and Mandarin!), we find that his species’ original form would “only frighten you.” From that line, I hoped for some later picture or description of what they looked like. But that was not to occur.
Kathy Bates played the Secretary of Defense. She’s militant, expecting only the worst. But Klaatu, the extraterrestrial’s name we found in the meantime, uses is extra-technical means to escape.
Oh, and there’s the sentiment in the story. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connolly) takes the place of Patricia Neal’s Benson in the original. A novelty though: her son is black, the son of her husband who was killed in Iraq a year or so ago. Interracial! Well, okay. You wouldn’t have seen that in 1951. But her stepson–played, I understand, by Will Smith’s son–thinks that dad would have killed this alien. Why doesn’t “Helen” do that? She’s weak, huh?
Lots happens in the meantime with special effects. I’m a little reluctant to see today’s sci-fi films–especially the remakes–because their emphasis is on the special effects. Yeah, there was a lot of that, but it wasn’t campy, and that’s good…
Robert Knepper reappeared several times in the film as the zealous colonel who wanted to get the robot. And, like in the original, he was constantly foiled. Secretary Jackson (Bates) learned from experience, that every time they tried something, the response was more violent. But the president didn’t learn that. Knepper tried to use drones to destroy the robot, but–not unexpected–they’re used against our forces.
Later they capture, GORT, and he’s transported to an underground facility. I don’t want to give anything away but the commander of the troops examining GORT thinks, wisely, that GORT knows more than we think he does. And, sure enough, he does!
In the original, there was a scene in Arlington National Cemetery. There was a similar scene in a similar military cemetery in the remake, which had some creative sentiments that I appreciate.
To avoid giving anything else away, I’ll now examine the parts with which I had problems:
Yeah, like the original, the story had a message. But it wasn’t clear what that message was. At least in the original, it was clear: again, clean up your act or WE will do you in! In other words, Klaatu said we’re still keeping our eyes on you. We’re still “supervising.” In the remake, it seems to me that Klaatu was killed by the tools his species had used to destroy us. What, did he convey his message to the sphere in which he came to earth?
And that led to another problem: What happened to GORT? Did he become those tools, which I don’t want to describe here as I’ll be giving away too much? Is he left behind to supervise?
I’m frankly a little skeptical of the human species ability to recover on our own. Left to our own, we will destroy the earth. To have left us to your own means, like Klaatu did in the remake, would be like letting kids on their own after dramatic misbehavior: they’ll do the same. So I preferred the finale of the original.
There were some logical, historic, and geographic faults of the script too, but I’ll let you look them up.
In short, I was tempted to give this only two stars, but decided there was enough originality to make it worth of three. But overall it was a remake done with special effects in mind. There were some clever originalities in the script which make it worth of three stars. But it’ll never compare with the original.
Search Day the Earth Stood Still (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition): Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler, Robert Knepper, James Hong, John Rothman, Sunita Prasad, Juan Riedinger, David Tattersall, Scott Derrickson, Erwin Stoff, Gregory Goodman, Marvin Towns Jr., Paul Harris Boardman, David Scarpa, Edmund H. North: Movies & TV from AmAzon
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