Sci-fi at a standstill

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Review by Nathan Weinbender

They’ve been showing the original version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” on TV a lot recently, most likely to cash in on the release of the new remake.

It’s a great film—the one from 1951, that is—but, if the new film’s producers are responsible for its heavy rotation on television, they should be aware that it was a counter-productive marketing decision. After all, when you see the remake, you’ll only wish you had stayed at home and watched the original.

I certainly felt that way after leaving the theater on Saturday. I decided to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in IMAX because I figured that the special effects would look great on that huge screen. They did, but they didn’t bolster the story or the characters, which would have appeared just as lethargic on a regular-sized screen.

The movie opens and we see Keanu Reeves climbing a mountain in the snow. He reaches the top and approaches a glowing green orb, which he then punctures with his pickaxe. The screen is bathed in a bright, white light, and now Keanu has a weird marking on the back of his hand, or something. Does that mean he's an alien now, or was he an alien before he ascended that mountain? I don’t know.

Cut to New Jersey, where Jennifer Connelly is a biologist at Princeton. One night she’s fixing dinner for her stepson (Jaden Smith) and the next thing you know the Army knocks on her door and she’s whisked away in a van filled with other scientists. It’s a matter of national security: An unidentified object is hurtling toward Manhattan, and they only have an hour before it hits!

It turns out to be another one of those glowing green orbs, and out comes a humanoid that is, much like in the original, shot by the uppity military. The creature quickly evolves into Reeves, whose name is Klaatu and who has come to Earth to save it from ecological distress, even if it means obliterating the human race.

How much harm can that do? After all, we’re only one species in a universe of billions (and a destructive one at that). Klaatu gets the once-over from Secretary of Defense Kathy Bates. “What do you want with our planet?” she asks. I love his response: “Your planet?” Klaatu ends up escaping from his captors with Connelly’s help, and the two of them, along with her stepson, end up in the middle of a forest where Klaatu conjures yet another green orb from a swamp.

Then we see more orbs emerging from the earth—in the Sahara Desert, over the pyramids, from out of the rain forest—and we learn that Klaatu is working like Noah with his ark, capturing two of every species inside these glowing balls.

Eventually, with Earth’s doomsday clock ticking away, we get the obligatory shots of decay and destruction. The special effects are very good, especially in the IMAX format: I especially liked the shot of the semi truck disintegrating into dust, and the sequence detailing the destruction of Giants Stadium.

But, in the end, the story just isn’t as compelling this time around; it doesn’t grab us in the same way the original film did. It also doesn’t have much of a story beyond its basic exposition, and it builds to a torrent of special effects rather than to a sensible conclusion, eventually declaring a simple-minded, heavy-handed “save the Earth” adage.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” has the affectation of a B-movie and the wherewithal of a blockbuster, meaning it’s big, glossy, well-produced and emotionally hollow. Here’s a test: Watch a five minute segment from each version of this movie and you tell me which one will have you shouting “Klaatu barada nikto.”

Grade: C

Directed by Scott Derrickson. Written by David Scarpa. Based on a screenplay by Edmund H. North. Starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler and John Cleese. PG-13; 103m.