The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still

For the first 20 – 30 minutes of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, it was an invigorating, exciting film, worthy of the $ 20th Century Fox put into it. It was worthy of my time being cooped up in a house floating through space. That’s another story for another time. My job is to review this movie for other people. That is the job of a Storyblazer, which is what I am. There is nothing much else to do in a house floating through space. Back to the $ issue. Apparently 20th century fox gave the special effects dept. more $ then the script writing dept. After the first 20 – 30 minutes of the film the script writers got board or lazy and decided to not put so much detail into the story. Hopefully this review will not follow the same path after a few paragraphs.

The first time around in the original film, Klatu the messenger from another world, wanted to warn the earth that if they didn’t start being nice to one another, they would wipe them off the face of the earth. This time around the message is, if you don’t start being nice to the planet, will wipe you off the face of the earth. These are very extreme Envirmentalists from another planet. After being denied to speak to the United Nations after asking politely one time, Klatu ( played ever so blahly by sci-fi veteran Keenu Reeves) decides that he is going to destroy the earth.

But after a rousing 2 minute speech by John Cleese in non-Monty Phyan funny speech and after witnessing Jennifer Connely hug her kid near the grave of her dead husband, he decides that he just might let the earth survive. Complex decision making is not a complex process on Klatu’s planet. Their easily peeved off and easily pleased again also.

Apparently he is not the only alien of his kind on the planet. He meets an old buddy of his at MacDonalds. They discuss over product placements, the fate of mankind.

But is it too late? Gort the bodyguard robot (now the size of Godzilla) has split into several thousand metal locusts who devour everything in its path, in its quest to rid the planet of the nasty humans who are killing the polar bears. But the polar bears have been sucked up by the glowing snow globe, so they can survive the onslaught by GORT.

Somehow, Klatu manages to shut down GORT and save the world. As he stops GORT, the Earth stands still. Actually it doesn’t stand still it just stops. The appropriate title of this film should be “The Day the Earth Just Stopped.”

We see about ½ a minute of the world without power and then the movie ends. Just stops with no rousing speech by Klatu. But how rousing a speech could Keanu Reeves give under his acting circumstances?

The big Line uttered by the female protagonist that gains her access to Klatu’s spaceship and stops GORT from vaporizing her is uttered so softly at the beginning of the film, you will miss it when your paying attention to the cool visuals. This is a major problem in the remake, as by leaving this line out, so people could actually hear it, they left out a major plot development that was crucial to the overall structure of the story.

At least in the Remake of ‘Planet of the Apes’, you could hear the classic Charlton Heston lines uttered even if they were somewhat different then in the original.

The remake of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, is not a terrible film overall. Being stuck in a house floating through space, you don’t usually complain about the TV choices except if their really really bad, which this wasn’t. But it really does the first film a grave injustice by jettisoning a storyline you could really cling to and care about. In the future when certain films are forgotten about, the newer fancy shamancy version will be among those, while the original film, with its primitive special effects will be remembered for it’s engaging story, that starts in the beginning and remains there until the end. Somehow that particular film was destroyed when I through it at a alien who had illegally entered the house.

This has been a Blaze Zanikey: The Catholic College Film Student Storyblazer report.

Copyright Storyblazer 2009