LuckyWillThe Day The Earth Stood Still...Literally
December 31st 2008 00:44
In a time when Hollywood remakes are all the craze, it seemed inevitable that a digitally revamped contemporary edition of this 1951 classic sci-fi thriller would make its way to our screens. ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ is not a bad film; the effects are ok; Keanu Reeve’s performance as Klaatu is solid; and the story is interesting enough but there are just too many errors weighing it down to give it a chance of outshining its predecessor.
If you’ve ever had the neighbours knock on your door, complaining that your music’s too loud or your hedges need trimming, then you’ll get the basic gist of this film. ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ is about an alien, Klaatu, who comes to Earth representing an advanced race of beings from a nearby galaxy. Their message for us is simple; stop ruining the planet or else. Of course, being the caring species that we are, he is given the warmest of welcomes; first we shoot him, then ignore his demands and finally lock him away in a detention facility. Naturally our hospitality places somewhat of a strain on humanity’s intergalactic relations resulting in Klaatu dooming the species to total annihilation. Its then all up to astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her step son Jacob (Jaden Smith) to melt his cold alien heart with the warmth of their human emotion and bring peace to the planet once more.
Director Scott Derrickson has delivered a good looking product with special effects typical of our day and age; big budget spectacles. But while a lot of time and money has obviously gone into polishing the many scenes that are there, you can’t help but feel like there could have been so much more. For example, Gort, Klaatu’s giant robotic travelling companion is a character that is vastly underused. We first meet him bursting from their large glowing spaceship when his master is unexpectedly shot and dishes out merciless carnage toward anything that expresses violent intent toward either of them. An eye for an eye kind of attitude. Unfortunately for us, Gort is soon captured by the military and transported hundreds of metres underground for studies where he simply sits quietly for most of the film. It’s not until nearer the end that he evaporates into a destructive cloud of indestructible insects to rise up and escape his prison, consuming everything in his path as the swarm rampages across the globe. But while the insects are still great to watch, there is just something about a 40ft killer robot that I would have loved to see given more screen time. It was good but it could have been so much better.
During the rest of the film, when Gort isn’t around, Klaatu fills in time by recovering from his bullet wound in an American detention facility. With Benson’s help he gets back on his feet and requests an audience with the world’s leaders to discuss his concerns for the planet. However, his captor, the Secretary of Defence (Kathy Bates) is strangely defiant (strange because she is talking to a powerful alien who thinks we all need to die, perhaps something the rest of the world might want a say in). She instead decides it would be better to detain and interrogate the visitor and, given his experiences thus far, you almost sympathise with Klaatu when he opts to wipe out humanity rather than deal with us any further.
He soon escapes with the help of Benson and meets her step son Jacob at which time the trio begins incessantly debating the obvious plot points of the film like why we should or shouldn’t die. It’s painfully obvious where the film is heading even if you haven’t seen the original and if you still aren’t sure, the characters will bring it up over and over again just to be sure. John Cleese pops his head in for a poignant cameo as the voice of reason allowing for some more logical debate of the subject but even his commendable performance fails to have any real bearing on the plot.
With half of America disintegrated and Klaatu struggling to save the other half, the film ends very abruptly considering how long the rest of it seemed to go for and the world is left looking like someone hired Snake Plissken to redecorate (see the ending of ‘Escape From LA’). John Cleese had explained, during his short time on screen, that every civilisation eventually reaches a crisis point at which time it evolves. These would have been wise words had they predicted humanities defining moment of change but truth be told they didn’t. There is no evolution, no lessons learnt, nor do we even solve the problem ourselves. The ending just happens and that’s it.
There is one final glaring fault that I should address before wrapping this up. In one of the film’s earlier scenes, when Klaatu arrives on Earth, he emerges from a large glowing sphere in a brilliant spectacle extending a near transparent arm to greet his new friends. Now if Star Trek and Close Encounters are anything to go by, OUR first encounter with alien life should be one of shock and awe. In ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ however, Klaatu is greeted with carefully aimed tanks and guns and is even shot in the chest by a jittery soldier.
Now in fairness this is a legacy of the original 1951 version in which Klaatu is shot while handing over a scientific device as a peace offering. In that film the soldier simply mistakes the device for a weapon and a sign of hostility. However when the scene was re-shot for ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (2008) one vital prop was obviously forgotten; the device. The jittery soldier still shoots Klaatu as he is leaving the ship but there seems no reason for it anymore. The alien has just arrived on the Earth, is clearly unarmed, showing no signs of aggression and obviously far more advanced than anything ever seen on this planet; so you are left almost screaming the question ‘WHY WOULD YOU SHOOT HIM?!?!?
In fact much of the hostility toward the sphere or Gort is without justification or any semblance of realism to the scenario. If we were ever visited by aliens, would we really just try to destroy them? We couldn’t be that stupid, could we? All said and done, the film is passable. The characters all do their job, the effects look great even if they are at times underused and some of the scenes, including a clever polygraph test, are inspired. But the realism is almost non existent and the ending is disappointing so I left the cinema thinking ‘well what was the point?’ It promised much more than it delivered.
2.5 homicidal cycloptic robots/5
Will
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