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The Day the Earth Stood Still
That dang Smith kid's gonna get the world incinerated
2008
Review: December 19, 2008
Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith
Won't hurt.
THE SETUP:
Aliens are a little peeved about the way we've been treating the planet, and want to help us on our way.
DISCUSSION:
So it's Friday, I had a piss-poor week at work, and I'm dying to see this, so I bolt out a bit early to make the 6:15 show—thus lowering my risk of running into acquaintances who might see me alone at the movies on a Friday night and brand me a loser. I also picked up a box of Dots for a curiously low 75 cents at a bodega on the way, and discovered to my surprise that they were ALL strawberry [my least favorite] with one lime, AND they were all petrified and hard as Jujubes. Luckily this was all negated by the fact that I enjoyed the fuck out of this movie, despite it, you know, kind of sucking.
The original, blah, blah, classic, blah blah. I'm actually not too big a fan of the original, although I can definitely understand how influential it was and acknowledge that it achieved a good eerie atmosphere. This one begins in 1928, with a bearded Keanu Reeves as an explorer in the arctic. A six-foot glowy ball lands, Keanu touches it, there's a flash, and when he wakes he has a blister on his hand. This is to show where Klaatu, the alien that'll come later, got his human guise, but the whole scene adds nothing and could have been entirely exised.
In the present day, Jennifer Connelly as Helen is spirited away with a big group of other scientists to consult on this object that is headed on a collision course with Earth. Only it slows and lands in Central Park. It's a giant glowy ball, like the one we saw earlier. The scientists and Army are all arrayed around it, a creature comes out of it, and who should be right up front to meet it, but Helen! She's reaching out the hand of interstellar friendship when some army guy shoots the alien, causing giant robot Gort to come and dish out some smackdown. Gort was one of the most enduring things from the first film, and his first act was to vaporize all the weapons of the Earthlings. This Gort looks like a giant ebony man with a single glowing red eye, and I thought he was AMAZING! He doesn't vaporize the weapons, though, he's just about to crush Helen like a grape when the alien calls him off. Then he just stands there and looks menacing. They rush the alien to the hospital, where it is soon born into Keanu Reeves as Klaatu—without the beard this time. I guess the aliens get G.Q. By now Kathy Bates as Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson shows up, sure that Klaatu is an enemy, since he disabled our missiles to get to the Earth unharmed. Klaatu wants to go to the U.N. and talks to all the world leaders, but Regina is like "That's not possible, but you can talk to me." She's like the Earth's customer service representative.
Soon Klaatu escapes, and ends up in Newark, New Jersey, which obviously makes him sick. They call Helen and she shows up with her stepson, Jaden Smith—yes, Will Smith's spawn—as Jacob, the world's biggest, most obnoxious brat. Helen takes Klaatu on the DL from the government, and starts chauffeuring him around New Jersey, while her grating stepson makes rude comments and asks annoying questions. Klaatu wants to go to McDonalds for some product placement [we get a huge loving logo shot] and to meet an alien who has been living among us for a while, and has come to love these funny human folk, despite their self-destructive ways. "The tragedy is, they know what's going to happen to them," he says. "They sense it—but they do nothing about it." He refuses to leave the planet, choosing instead to perish with the humans. Meanwhile, smaller orbs have landed around the world, and almost all countries are devolving into chaos and riots, as society chooses to react out of fear for the orb and aliens.
Klaatu then has to go find an orb in a pond, and activate it and the other orbs to start taking wildlife samples from around the world. The orbs then take off. Meanwhile, Klaatu finally explains to Helen what the deal is: Humans are ruining the Earth, so the aliens are going to wipe them out in order to save the planet. Helen tells him humans can change, and she takes him to see super-smart professor John Cleese, who plays him some Bach and New Order records, they bond over advanced mathematics, and enjoy some General Foods International Coffees. Cleese tells Klaatu that mankind always reforms itself when its pushed to the precipice of destruction, then—turns out that little brat Jacob has called the FBI on Klaatu!
SPOILERS > > >
The spooks take Helen away, and, in one of the neater scenes, Klaatu coolly crashes the other two helicopters. He then uses his laser eyes to cook Jaden's brain inside his skull, until it comes oozing out his ears. No he doesn't, silly—it's time for some alien-father-figure-to-lonesome-boy BONDING! While they're doing that, Gort has first downed some military drones—in a scene that seems to exist only to get a few more explosions and special effects in here—then has been crated up [not likely] and carted off to an undisclosed location, several miles below the surface of the earth. They try to drill him, but all they get are these little bugs that multiply rapidly. Oh, and soon they're destroying everything and escaping into the air! And shooting at them only makes MORE of them!
So Jacob leads Klaatu to his Dad's grave and demands that the alien bring him back to life, but it can't be done! Then Jennifer shows up and she and Jacob have a stirring emotional moment as he comes to terms with his father's death, and this just moves Klaatu so much that he decides these human are worth saving, after all! Only—it may be too late!
You see, those bug things are heading up the New Jersey turnpike, eating up trucks and road signs in their path. They also eat Giants' Stadium! Thing is, the bugs are coming up to New York from the South, and Giants' Stadium is on the other side of New York, to the East… this is a bit like having a menace coming over the Atlantic to destroy New York, but hitting Hawaii first. I don't know—I guess they really think NO ONE is going to notice this? I'm also curious—are we so out of landmarks to destroy that we're onto Giants' Stadium? Regardless, I thought I should warn you that the special effects you see in the trailer are pretty much ALL the mass destruction special effects in the film. Yeah—big gyp. Anyway, Klaatu, Helen, and the obnoxious monster arrive back at the orb [following the hilarious street shots they're trying to convince us are New York], just as these jets try to blow up the orb one more time. Klaatu is still on his kick to save humans even though, hi, they JUST tried once more to blow up your ship and haven't heard so much as a whisper of anything resembling diplomacy. But Jacob's got some bugs eating through his body [great, best to let him die then], so Klaatu saves him by taking the bugs into himself, then goes out to sacrifice himself to save humanity. Helen is fine, too, by the way, even though we clearly saw that she had bugs in her as well, and Klaatu did NOT operate on her. But no matter. Then we've all learned our lesson and the movie ends. < < < SPOILERS END
Two things are apparent. One is that this movie has its targets set straight at the Bush administration, and a lot of the dialogue makes that absolutely clear. When taking Helen from her home, the agents tell her the truth is a matter of National Security, and she retorts "National security! That just means whatever you want it to mean!" Regina is obviously a Bush employee with her dismissal that although Klaatu wants to talk to all nations, all he REALLY needs to talk to is the United States, and the U.S. will indeed decide how to handle this global situation. This is not to mention the many instances we see of only pursuing military options and dismissing attempts at diplomacy. Soon there is talk of reaching the "tipping point." The other quite noticeable element is all the product placement. Not so much products, but actual logos—the aforementioned McDonald's one, several grills of cars with prominent logos, and one incredibly egregious one looking straight down at a Windows logo just before the scientists use a super-advanced computer system. And then there's what feels like the ultimate product placement—Will Smith's kid. His character was incredibly irritating and unlovable, a feeling increased exponentially by the feeling of having this celebrity spawn placement shoved constantly in your face. It was impossible for me to get past the fact of who he was and accept him as his own, singularly obnoxious character.
Anyway, the sad thing about this movie is that it comes very close to working. VERY close. Like, some re-shoots, right at the end, and they could have had it. The first 2/3rds are fine—I was enjoying the slow, deliberate pace of the pace of the film and its somber tone. Keanu is perfect for this role and Connelly is always welcome. Gort is HOT. And they were very successful in creating an atmosphere of awe and excitement that there is NOTHING we can do to stop these beings. And then they go and screw it up with an ending that lets all their hard-earned momentum fizzle out. First of all, someone needs to tell this goddamned irritating kid to just shut up and go away—but no, he comes even closer to the center of the film as it comes toward its conclusion. Secondly, the film isn't able to put together a cohesive argument for anything, least of all the reasons why humans should be spared. Klaatu is moved by 30 seconds of Helen bonding with her kid, but everything else he's experienced on Earth has been non-stop attempts to kill him and destroy his craft, patronizing, mistrust, deception, and views of societies crumbling, looting and killing each other out of fear of the unknown. And he's supposed to save this because he's moved by some obnoxious kid's daddy issues? Not convincing, to say the least, and also just not emotionally moving in the many ways in which it could have been. It's very unlikely this movie is going to make anyone in the audience think about much of anything, let alone our stewardship of the environment. Furthermore, they just mess up a lot of the rhythms of the climax in ways that just screw up what they were going for. The climax goes too fast, the destruction has no awe to it [not to mention that we're barely seeing it since they're scrimping on special effects], and the whole import of what just happened is lost. The film ends with the global electromagnetic pulse that kills off all electricity, and we finally have The Day The Earth Stood Still. But here it's just rushed through and attains none of the power or awe it should have—and COULD have.
THIS is the result of our declining educational system, of people saying “WHY do I need to read at all? What good is that going to do me in real life?” because obviously the people who created this have no idea how to tell a story, what’s missing from a story, and how to fix a story that’s going wrong. And the younger people seeing this will think that THIS is what passes for a story, and the whole cycle just digs in deeper. Just another reminder that even if we were to miraculously fix the environment, there are a number of intractable problems lined up right behind. This film is just the most recent symptom.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you need to kill time or want to compare with the original. Other than that, forget it.
