There are plenty of ways to bring similar themes into play today: Klaatu as Bush figure, perhaps, invading because of our weapons of mass destruction? Instead, it's never clear quite what the alien's problem is. Directed by Robert Wise, the original Day was both a condemnation of Cold War military paranoia and an allegorical Christ tale, with Klaatu dying for our sins before being resurrected and ascending into the heavens, warning that he'll be back with the apocalypse if humanity doesn't shape up. No, the problem here is a lack of the big ideas that have kept the 1951 film in the public consciousness (it's actually quite boring in parts that don't deal directly with the message). He does utter the classic "Klaatu Barada Nikto" line, but to a different end. at least until he suddenly turns into a cloud of tiny robot insects that arbitrarily eat whatever the plot calls for. Retaining his iconically simple shape, with the addition of only a great deal more height and the roving red eye of a Cylon Centurion, Gort is still awesome. The problem with this new The Day the Earth Stood Still isn't so much in the execution of director Scott Derrickson ( The Exorcism of Emily Rose), who pulls off quite a few compelling sequences and, best of all, doesn't screw around too much with Klaatu's giant robot Gort. Was he really unaware of such a thing before? If so, he's way too dumb to be passing cosmic judgment. Later, Klaatu starts to have doubts about his snap decision after he sees people crying.
Then again, after seven decades, Wu's favorite food is McDonald's, so perhaps senility has begun to set in.
That Klaatu arrives at this conclusion following a conversation with another alien named Wu (James Hong), who has been on Earth for 70 years, is puzzling, especially since Wu loves Earth and wants to stay here, yet still thinks humans should be destroyed. But she may not be correct: Unlike Michael Rennie's mostly benevolent Klaatu in the original, version 2.0 is pissed at humanity for trashing the planet and comes prepared to wipe us all out. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), who had been reaching out to him when the bullet hit, has faith that making friends with the alien might be in the best interests of humanity, and she helps him escape. Klaatu wants to address the United Nations, but no one will let him.
#THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL THEMES MOVIE#
And yes, casting Keanu Reeves as an alien visitor unfamiliar with a human body and confused by human emotions is akin to casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as a killer cyborg - a near-perfect use of a limited-range actor who packs weirdly powerful charisma when used in just the right fashion.Īs in the first movie (though not Harry Bates' pulp short story "Farewell to the Master," from which this remake takes practically nothing), Klaatu's arrival on Earth is so frightening that a government sniper takes a preemptive shot at him, after which he's taken to a secure location. This time, he is supposedly an alien being called Klaatu that has spawned itself from the arctic explorer's DNA, while traveling across space inside one of the aforementioned giant globes, wearing an organic spacesuit made of placental tissue (you read that right) which allows him to literally be "born again" in Earth's atmosphere. Keanu returns in our near future - one in which Kathy Bates has become our Secretary of Defense, though Putin is still in charge of Russia. A few moments later, he's lying on the ground, the ball has disappeared, there's a scar on his hand, and a prelude that is both unnecessary and unconvincing is mercifully over. It's discovered in 1928 by an unnamed arctic explorer (Keanu Reeves, bearded) on a soundstage lightly covered with fake snow, and since Keanu isn't the sharpest tool in the tent, he pulls out a pickax and promptly tries to smash the thing. The first one that arrives is even less scary than that, because it's a good deal smaller than a human being and encased in ice. Because nothing's more threatening than a big, swirling, green-and-blue ball, right? Right?
#THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL THEMES UPDATE#
So what's an update of the iconic 1951 sci-fi flick, The Day the Earth Stood Still, to do? In an extremely bold move, the filmmakers have gone with giant. Especially after Ed Wood and Mars Attacks, it's hard to take a threat from a giant Frisbee all that seriously. Flying saucers just aren't that scary anymore.
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