"The Day the Earth Stood Still" film remake not worth watching

Scott Johnson explains why you're better off renting the classic 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still than seeing the new one in theaters.
December 18, 2008


THIS MATERIAL is ripe for a remake in the current political climate and with today's far more advanced special effects. Unfortunately, the people behind the new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still have stripped the film of the political insights that made the original worth seeing in the first place.

A number of fine actors are utterly wasted--Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates and John Cleese, none of whom have anything exciting to do. Keanu Reaves as Klaatu is stony-faced and dull--the faceless, voiceless robot Gort in the original film is far more interesting.

And the new Gort is a computer-animated monstrosity--with no insight into what to do with this character, the film takes the exact same design and simply makes him 10 times the size of the original. Gort then becomes a 1950s robot blown up to ridiculous proportions who exists for no other reason than to appease fans of the original--who will certainly be disappointed.

Instead of demanding an end to nuclear armaments, Reaves's Klaatu has come to eliminate the human race before it has destroyed the Earth. "If the Earth dies, you die," he says, "but if you die, the Earth survives." This creepy line of dialogue is about all we get out of Klaatu's intentions. Rather than play up the real threat of climate change in an exciting way--like The Day After Tomorrow, for example--it's just a minor point to explain why Klaatu is destroying everything.

The devastation that ensues is rendered meaningless. Without an overarching theme that gives some insight into the state of our world--or a reason to care about Klaatu's mission--the new version of the film becomes just another disaster movie, and not a very good one at that. The film doesn't do anything with the threat of environmental devastation--either visually or dramatically--to make it worth watching.

Please read the complete film review at:

http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/18/peaceful-alien-or-communist

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/day_the_earth_stood_still/

I'll wait for the DVD.

Sid

I like to use my intuition when it comes to movies. Most of the reviews I read anywhere don't even focus on elements that I do. Reminds of cable political shows.

I can't think of anything I'd like to watch less than 1950s era sci-fi movies, let alone the remakes.

And the original film has never struck me as particularly fantastic, either.


YMMV

Can you name a better serious sci-fi film of the 1950s? Forbidden Planet really is the only other contender.

I'd have to recommend the original Godzilla film, as opposed to the American re-issue of it.

But The Day the Earth Stood Still invariably gets a rating of four stars, and I just can't see that--sure, it's better than most of its contemporary films, but that just makes it a big fish in a little pond.

They thought it was sacrilegious and even communistic in its
embrace of some of its ideas. They even censored part of the movie
to appeal to religious protestors on the resurrection thing.

The music and even some of the effects were way ahead of its time
for 1951.

Arthur C Clarke's List of the best Science-Fiction films of all time
rated it number 7 on his list.

and I liked it.

One the one good hand, it's got Kyle Chandler; on the other hand, it stars Keanu Reeves.

It could have been Tom Cruise.

We need a movie with both Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves.

"Requiem for Good Taste"?

"Revenge of the Lowest Common Denominator"?

The list could go on and one... :P

A TRUE classic, deserving of its four grunts!:hurts::hurts::hurts::hurts:

It could be called "Step on a Crack" about a man who's incapable of stepping on cracks and the hilarity that ensues. Carey could twist his face into ridiculous expressions and stomp and snort. Reeves could assume a British accent, and Cruise could dress up as a Nazi for no particular reason.

For the price of movies today, I want to make sure I'm going to enjoy it before I plunk any money down.

I probably wouldn't have seen it, as opposed to something else, had I been paying.

Wait for it to show on tv or rent the DVD. Could have been much better.

It's a horrible, pointless film with one redeeming quality. The robot is cool.

last week, on AMC.
Will watch it this weekend.
Thanks for the heads up anyway.

and the Carpenter figure his servant even more than the movie.
They sorta changed those two characters around for the film version.



My neighbor who is not a sci/fi nut like me went and saw it
but said it wasn't as good as the original. Said it was OK though. I was wondering
about the film since they kept the story so tightly a secret.

Shame, the original movie is one of my all time favorite sci/fi flicks.

I'll watch it on rental like I do everything else these days cause
I can't afford to go to the movies.

Maybe Klaatu gets over his head in credit card debt and Gort destroys the banking system. I could really connect with that message.

i was so looking forward to keanau's rendition of:

"klaatu, bar-ada nict- "

There is a movement/leaning to remake these political protest films into more meaningless, soulless, dreck.

I'm waiting for the pro-corporate, monopolies are good for America, remake of Network to be released.

It ended with humans facing a world without technology. Supposedly this was going to save us but help us to "grow up" and not destroy the earth. Of course, the exact opposite would happen: most human would perish either from hunger or in the struggles to secure food; in the short run, efforts to survive would still degrade the environment; in the longer run, civilization would collapse into a barbarism that would not be friendly to the environment, only less capable to destroying it; and the knowledge of the need to grow up along with that needed to expedite it would be lost with the collapse of civilization -- should humans again be able reconstitute a path to science and tech, we would likely once again initiate a process of environmental destruction. In short, the film's resolution of 'we'll take away your toys and you'll have to act good' is simply ridiculous. Moreover, it is hard to see how the barely-averted process of wiping out humanity was going to leave any natural world to save, since it seemed to be wiping out everything in its path.

it also failed to "hit" a major point of the original story.

Still planning on seeing it - I just love mass-destruction. PS, I also root for the people-eating monsters and natural disasters.

:argh:

But this really points up what I've been saying for years about science fiction movies, which is that they're made by people who know how to make movies, but don't know very much about science fiction.

Plus, there are tons of novels and short stories out there that are just crying to be turned in to movies, and it's a shame no one is doing that.

Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, Matrix, Iron Giant, Terminator. I even liked Armageddon, Independence Day, Short Circuit, War Games, and The Last Starfighter

I think some of these people saw science fiction as kids and equated it with horror. The Day the Earth Stood Still is also a scary movie, particularly if you see it when you are only 8 or 10 years old. They sorta did the same thing with the New Twilight Zone TV show they did back in the 1990s. Half of the shows would be horror shows instead of science fiction, but they did make an episode of Zelazny's "The last defender of Camelot" too.

Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, and The Last Starfighter. But the others simply have a veneer of s-f at best. Movies like Armageddon, Independence Day and Matrix rely heavily on special effects and not so much on story. I thought Butterfly Effect was very good, and for my money The Twelve Monkeys is probably the most purely science-fictional movie out there.

I did like a lot of the New Twilight Zone also. Especially the one where Pam Dawber, a secretary, finds herself transported to an alternate universe where being a secretary is amazing, glamorous, and the desired career of models.

it sucks worse then a thousand cheap hookers in las vegas during a republican convention.

All their original ideas seem to suck. Then in order to maintain an audience, they remake films that either a) were good the first time and don't need remaking or b) aren't worth a second version. If that doesn't work, maybe we can make endless movies about cartoons, comic book characters, or TV shows!

There's a reason I haven't been in a movie theater since 1998, and it isn't just the rude attendees and their cell phones.

Except I haven't been in a movie theatre since 1990, for the same reasons.

The last movie I saw in a theatre? "Dick Tracy". That did it for me.

Watch some independent films and you'll see plenty of well-written, creative works.

and few can even get in the door.

The old studio bosses were generally horrid tyrants, but they understood entertainment and recognized talent, so they created the "studio system" which locked talent up. This yielded the golden ages of film. The industry was taken over by business majors after the system was ended and we get the typical, safe, bland, unimaginative garbage and endless retreads we've seen.

and I just saw the last half of the original on cable and thought 'wow, what a thoughtful movie'.

This should have been obvious to anyone who saw the previews.

And so do the people who believe them. While not quite as good the original, it was OK.
Jennifer C wasn't very good.

The critics used to hate Pink Floyd too.

I'd payed all that money for the "popcorn & coke" not to mention "the ticket" and found the movie so boring, vile or idiotic I had to leave...

Thanks for the warning. :hi: