The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

A few weeks ago I watched the original, and today I threw on the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I was more than curious to see what they took of the story and how they would adapt it. The strength of the original came simply from its concept and message. I was curious how it would all look with much more current special effects and how certain scenes would now look in the modern age. I was well aware going in that the movie was critically ripped apart and it's rated quite poorly, so I was going in with lowered expectations. Hit the jump to see if I was able to lower them enough.


The story of the remake is essentially the same as the original. An alien arrives on Earth to give an important message to the leaders of the world. He's denied by the US government and so he escapes into the world. This time around though, he isn't escaping simply to learn about us, he's just carrying out his mission.

In the original film, the mission simply was to give the message, which, by the end, he does. In the remake the mission is to save the Earth. Humanity is destroying the planet, and since planets that are capable of supporting complex life are so rare, the rest of the galactic community cannot sit by while we ruin it. The idea is that if we don't change our ways, they'll simply remove us and let the planet live on to start over. Whereas the original film was a message about war and living peacefully, the remake instead focuses much more on the environment.

The light gathering at the bottom is the equivalent of the door opening up on the ship

The movie started out amazingly! The "ship" Klaatu arrives in is fantastic to behold the first time, and plenty of time is given to you to feast upon it with your eyes. Even though the story takes a turn later on, the start of the movie is a near exact beat for beat recreation with stunning effects that still look totally amazing. When Klaatu emerges and looks so strange, but holds out his hand in peace to our female lead, a soldier take a shot in fear and takes him down. The ship immediately glows red instead of green and the mighty Gort emerges. This time around though, he's absolutely GIGANTIC and the sight is something that simply sweeps your imagination away. Klaatu weakly holds up his strange alien hand and you can just barely make out those classic words "Klaatu barada nikto" from the original and Gort comes to a halt and his glowing eye shuts, exactly like in the 1951 classic. I came into the film with lowered expectations, but this scene blew me away and I was now totally along for the ride!

Gort lives!

The following scenes show how Klaatu escapes the government facility which was left as a mystery in the original, and it's really quite cool to see the extent of his powers in this rendition. Basically, whenever the movie recreates scenes that were also in the original, it's great. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, the plot takes a slightly different direction and it's here where it starts to fall apart.

There are a few interesting tid bits sprinkled in, like the idea that the aliens have been on Earth, and more than just Klaatu, for many decades prior. Also the explanation for why Klaatu looks human I thought was very good, which was just sort of taken for granted in the original due obviously to constraints of the times. The movie falls apart though when they try to do anything dramatic like make us care about the characters. While the original Klaatu is charming, Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu extremely foreign, distant, and well, alien. Also, the way they handle Gort for the remainder of the film was a huge let down and seemed a little disrespectful to the classic. I basically got the impression that they were saying he wasn't cool or awesome enough as he was, and so they change him part way through the movie, and the character of Gort is essentially lost at that point. It's a shame, because he did so much more in the original film compared to this one.

Instead of ending on a profound speech about needing to change your ways and improve yourself, or die, the message is weakly diluted across the whole film and is never gave me the sense of impact like it did in the first movie. I'm not sure that a speech would have really worked this time around though, because Keanu Reeves just doesn't have the presence that Michael Rennie had in the original. In the 1951 film, Klaatu is noble, kind and understanding. Unfortunately he's nothing like that in this remake, which is a real detriment to the overall feel of the movie.

While The Day The Earth Stood Still started out incredibly strong, especially after having recently seen the original, it takes the concept and flips it and turns it over so much that by the end it's not even recognizable as the same thing anymore. It basically seems to sacrifice story and character for the sake of special effects and being "cool", except that it was already cool to start with and they just messed with something that wasn't broken. I'm so torn in my opinion of this. The start was so great, but then the rest was so crap. If you watch this, maybe just watch until the point that he escapes the government facility and goes to McDonald's to meet his buddy, then just stop it there. If you're interested in this, go watch the original instead.