The Day the Earth Stood Still” provides the perfect contrast between Old and New Hollywood.
The 1951 original featured archaic effects and a storyline which played into our culture’s fear of atomic power.
The remake, starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, offers stellar effects and a message that’s vital more to Hollywood elites than Jim and Jane Sixpack.
Guess which one we’ll still be watching 50 years from now?
The spaceship in “Earth” lands not in Washington, D.C. this time but near The Big Apple. Connelly plays a scientist summoned by the government to help understand who, or what, might be inside.
Before she can so much as offer up a hypothesis, a creature emerges from the craft and is quickly shot by one of the soldiers encircling the landing site.
The alien survives and ends up looking a lot like Neo, or rather Reeves, once his outer shell is removed. His name is Klaatu, and he’s come to Earth to warn us … or worse, but that’s all that needs to be said about the film’s setup.
Klaatu may look like an ordinary human, but he can solve knotty math problems in second and coax vending machines to spit out food without inserting so much as a single coin.
Before Klaatu can complete his mission he spends some quality time with Connelly’s character and her stepson, blandly played by Jaden Smith (Will and Jada’s adorable son).
“Earth” isn’t easily dismissed as a wan remake. Reeves’ blank stare often works against him, but here it adds the right amount of mystery. Kathy Bates’ turn as the Secretary of Defense consists mostly of spouting military jibber jabber, but she grows enough during the film to begin offering valid solutions to the problems at hand.
And while Klaatu and his robot pal GORT come bearing a message Al Gore could support, the information comes in digestible doses, not delivered in hectoring speeches by the main characters.
But Connelly is an aloof presence here, desperately trying to bond with her stepson and save humanity and doing a poor job with the former. And the story’s added complexities crumble under the most cursory post-film dissection.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” tries to update, and improve upon, a sci-fi classic. But what it succeeds at is showing why the original gained its status in the first place.
(Photo: Klaatu’s (Keanu Reeves) mission on Earth is tied to the spheres that have also arrived on the planet. Photo credit: WETA)
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Klaatu may look like an ordinary human, but he can solve knotty math problems in second and coax vending machines to spit out food without inserting so much as a single coin.
Just like Uncle Martin in My Favorite Martian!
Only this Klaatu doesn’t bring the funny … nor does the movie. Lighten up, folks, It’s sci-fi!
Ugh. This one made my stomach hurt. I was much more brutal than you!!!
I actually like Johnny Utah in this role, er, I mean Keanu. I think his inability to act is rather endearing and I agree it worked well in this movie.
Kathy Bates, however, not so good. I usually like her (“Fried Green Tomatoes” is an all-time favorite), but she was terrible in this role. I just kept thinking Jaba the Hut. I know, I know, I’m being cruel, but she was just a mushy, somewhat revolting character.
I like sci-fi, but this movie fell well short of even my mediocre hopes for this remake.
I wonder how much McDonalds paid for the big promo in the middle?