The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)
This is a terrible, terrible movie. I walked out of it before it could inflict its ending on me.
If you haven’t seen the original, I suggest you check it out. You can watch it right now with Netflix’s on demand thing. Released in 1951, it’s one of only a handful of movies that came out before the movie 2001 that took Science Fiction seriously. Even though it was in many ways a B-movie, it acted as though it was an A-movie.
It’s a lot of fun though obviously part of an earlier tradition of filmmaking. Consider this movie came out only 6 years after the end of World War II. Directed by the great Robert Wise, the producer deliberately set out to use Science Fiction to make a political statement. Before he knew what the story was, he knew he wanted to use SF to challenge how people thought.
Based on the reaction, especially from young people who saw the movie, it succeeded. A lot of people grew up believing that we were in danger of destroying ourselves and our planet through nuclear weapons. The story should be known to you. Aliens visit the Earth in peace, but with a message. “Mend your violent ways and join us in peace, or we will destroy you for the good of all species everywhere.”
Ok so there may be some contradiction in that statement, and there is a somewhat comic element in a spaceman emerging from a ship, announcing in perfect English “we come in peace!” and then being shot by a soldier, but the alien in the original film behaves…basically like we would, if only we were a lot more evolved. In many ways I find that more realistic than if he were a perfectly peaceful entity. The movie was praised when it came out for its frank, documentary-style of filmmaking showing the arrival of an alien being as the moviemakers thought it might happen and in a manner the audience found believable.
The remake, which as I have mentioned is deeply, deeply awful, is not believable. I’m barely able to believe a movie as bad as this was made, forget believing in the events it depicts.
No one, including the alien, behaves in an explicable manner. Mobs behave in whatever manner the authors felt would be most dramatic, depending on us to attribute their behavior to “mob mentality” and accept it, even when it makes no sense. Military people, having seen first hand God-like destruction, do the most absurdly stupid things. You know that scene where the villain runs out of bullets and so decides to throw his gun at the guy? I can understand that, a stupid act of desperation in the heat of battle. But a bunch of generals miles away from the scene of the crime gleefully cheering as their drones attack the already proven to be indestructible alien robot and then acting ASTONISHED when the robot deftly turns their attacks against them is only understandable if you have a G.I. Joe view of the U.S. Military, and you think the US Military is C.O.B.R.A..
Arguably the greatest offense committed by this film is to expect us to care about Jacob, the character played by Jaden Smith. Jacob is the step-son of Jennifer Connely’s character and is so alternatively annoying and evil, I would have thought it more believable if aliens sent Keanu Reeves to Earth just to kill that kid and then leave, than to come and save the Earth from the humans.
The entire movie hangs its success and its message on the relationship between Jennifer Connley who is unsurpassingly beautiful and a much better actress than this movie deserves, and this stupid kid. I do not care about their relationship, I do not believe their relationship and expecting me to believe an alien intent on destroying the Earth would stop because he’s seen a mother hug her son is so offensive to me I want to find the producers and punch them both in the nutsack.
When I say Jennifer Connely is a better actress than this movie deserves, that’s not saying much. Keanu Reeves is a better actor than this movie deserves. Michael Rennie, in the original, had a harder job. He had to show intelligence and compassion and a soul, and at the same time show hints of an alien intelligence and point of view. Reeves has no such task before him. All he has to do is play one note, over and over again. You want to see a great performance of an alien disguised as a human? Go see Starman. Great movie. Great performance by Jeff Bridges.
Keanu, cast I believe because his name is the closest in Hollywood to Klaatu, the alien arrives with a message different from the original. He comes to tell us that the Earth is more important that we are and that if we don’t mend our ways he’s doing to destroy us all. But he only gets as far as “I would like to talk to your world leaders” before deciding “screw it, I’m just going to kill everyone.” What? Later he implies that there was never any offer, we were always doomed, and good riddance.
I am not one of those people who think that old movies shouldn’t be remade. I think a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still is a great idea. I think the idea of casting Klaatu as an alien come to save the Earth from us is a pretty good idea, but wow what bad execution.
In the original, the government people aren’t idiots or assholes, they’re bureaucrats. The first guy the alien meets is a reasonable dude. He says “Hm, well getting all the world leaders together is probably unrealistic, since they don’t like each other.” In the remake, the representative from the US Government just says “No, you can’t talk to anyone” and tries to sedate the alien so they can interrogate him later.
The Alien, in the original, decides that he has better things to do than talk to bureaucrats, and so he just fucks off. No one threatens him. I find that more interesting now, after 40 years of movies that assume our government would just try and exterminate any aliens that show up, even when they look like Michael Rennie and say “I come in peace!”
So, strangely, watching the original now seems so refreshing because it seems more realistic. Human beings acting like human beings. Outwardly reasonable, but unable to see past their own prejudices and bias and red tape. That’s an effective way to change people’s thinking, show us ourselves in a manner we recognize, and toss in someone who takes nothing we do for granted to show us how our points of view are not privileged.
Instead, this movie shows humans beings to be unrepentantly reprehensible unless they’re a scientist. When the cloud of nanites swarmed across the city destroying everything, I was glad! I was on the side of the murderous aliens and that was when I realized I’d be better off outside the theater than inside it.
There’s a great, modern, movie that achieves everything the remake wanted, and more, brilliantly. Children of Men. It’s plausible and subversive and deeply affected me. It’s lesson; that human beings already act like the world is ending, was not lost on me. This movie makes the same point, very very badly.
There are a lot of great scenes in the original. Two doctors talking about how much longer life expectancy is for the alien, while one doctor offers another a cigarette. A lot of great dialog and ideas, though some of it is heavy handed by our modern standards. I can think of no redeeming quality in the remake. I often feel bad when I point out that an otherwise brilliant film, like The Dark Knight is not flawless. I have no such bad feelings when I say this movie is nothing but flaws.
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