Today’s movie tip is the remake of the sci-fi drama, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, with Keanu Reeves. You can buy it on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon or you can use their Video on Demand service to watch it.
When the movie was released it received poor reviews and raked home just $30 millions in its opening weekend. However, since then it has brought in $230 millions.
It won two awards, the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor and Best Film for Mature Audiences from MovieGuide Awards.
However, I think it is perfect, if you would like a laid-back movie experience, this weekend. You can read my review below, to find out if Reeves managed to get the earth to spin.
The Review:
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a remake of the cult movie by the same name, made almost 57 years ago. While the plot remains the same, the periphery, treatment, and the build-up of the character protagonist is different. The plot moralizes over the need of understanding the forces that keep the stability of the earth alive. It serves men which dictates about keeping the earth in order and abstaining from environmental damage.
The story revolves around an alien who comes from a spaceship and lands into the New York City with his colossal robot GORT (named by the American scientist: genetically organized robotic technology).
This had alerted an entire batch of American scientists and, hence the patrol is out when the spaceship finally lands quietly with an alien and GORT onboard. This alien is Reeves, playing Klaatu.
A man who believes the humans have done no good to the only planet that is strong enough to sustain intricate forms of life. He believes that the only way to save the planet from further environmental damage is to extinguish the humans.
Dr Helen Johnson (played by Connelly) begs to differ and explains for Klaatu how humans can still change their vice like grip on the planet and look to redeem the planet environmentally.
Prior to this, in a confusing scenario of Klaatu’s entry, the militia throws a gunshot and wounds Klaatu. This makes GORT gut down everything in sight including all the electric signals and the military.
The military then rush Klaatu to a military facility, where scientist starts to examine whom and what he really is. However, they soon discover that Klaatu is a hard one to break down and soon he shows his true powers and escapes.
Klaatu then teams up with Helen and her son and explain for them that they must change their pattern to prevent to save the earth.
Helen answers in the affirmative and the team heads to the focal point of the city. By this time, in imprisonment, GORT sends out Nanites like insects by dismantling himself. Those insects start to dissolve everything in their way, and Klaatu is not sure that even he can stop them, before they destroy the earth and everything on it.
The director Scott Derrickson has not been too intent with an original screenplay for this movie but has treated it with a unique disdain of an expert.
About Connelly, the girl of “House of Sand and Fog” has matched a master like Kingsley before. She does full justice to the role and its subtle nuances. Her begging, explaining, and suffering after infected by a Nanite all show distinct expressions and they are extraordinary, as close too real as you get; No wonder, she had always been the director’s first choice for the role.
Reeves’s Klaatu turns pleasantly turtle, in terms of character build-up. The Klaatu of 1951 starts as a simple man and ends up preaching humanity with the disdain of a superior race; this was like an entire earth bending down to an alien. This made the speech sound like the long John Galt’s speech in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
The present version of Klaatu does start with some air and shows the diabolic bent of destroying humanity with his power but ends up being a completely human. He further becomes even more human by his sacrifices. This is where Keanu got besotted to the script.
He brooded over the 1951 movie with a lot of awe and wanted to be a part of a movie that gives him creative license of playing a superman.
Keanu signed the film after understanding that the precept of environmental damage was so harmful for the coming generations and the nuclear warfare needed to be mentioned in a fresh light. For Reeves, the movie is a platform to challenge the present world order.
Now the problem part, the director has looked to create the energy for the movie by spelling out a trinity, the spaceship, GORT and Klaatu. His man is a light, which transforms into a fiery force and then takes on a simple appearance. Sadly, this transition is not very streamlined. Klaatu flatters but only to deceive. Just as the remake loses itself, Connelly’s magic manages to get the earth to spin again, to the end.
My Rating of The Day the Earth Stood Still:
Box of Horror 