The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenplay: David Scarpa (based on the 1951 screenplay by Edmund H. North)
Stars: Keanu Reeves (Klaatu), Jennifer Connelly (Helen Benson), Kathy Bates (Regina Jackson), Jaden Smith (Jacob Benson), John Cleese (Professor Barnhardt), Jon Hamm (Michael Granier), Kyle Chandler (John Driscoll), Robert Knepper (Colonel), James Hong (Mr. Wu), John Rothman (Dr. Myron), Sunita Prasad (Rouhani), Juan Riedinger (William Kwan)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2008
Country: U.S.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood StillScott Derrickson’s remake of the quintessential science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still may be a big-budget affair with a heavy dose of digital special effects and a much larger scope than Robert Wise could afford back in 1951 when sci-fi was still the province of pulp magazines, but it is also a surprisingly sturdy vehicle for its ecological didacticism, which replaces the original’s stern warnings about the threat of nuclear power. Although David Scarpa’s retooled screenplay deviates significantly from the original film, it maintains the basic foundation of humanistic science fiction, in which encounters with other worlds are intended for our benefit, not our destruction.

The original film was, for its time, a ground-breaking mixture of the fantastical and the realistic, although said realism was conveyed primarily by documentary-like imagery and the inclusion of real-life radio and television personalities relaying the news of a flying saucer landing in the middle of Washington, D.C. Director Scott Derrickson, who gave the horror genre a philosophical spin a few years ago with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), tries to do something similar here, but in a 21st-century visual language, which means gloomy, grayish-blue cinematography; a plethora of digital effects (some better than others); and plenty of attention paid to the bureaucratic mechanisms that would be thrown into action in such a situation. Hence, the film begins not with a flying saucer arriving unannounced, but rather in the midst of chaos as the U.S. government and military quickly round up all the best scientists to help them deal with an object that has been spotted coming around Jupiter and heading straight toward Earth.

Among these scientists is Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), an astrobiologist at Princeton who has recently been widowed (her military engineer husband was killed in Iraq) and is now taking care of her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith). Along with the others she is taken to New York’s Central Park, where an enormous glowing orb lands with much sound and fury, eventually producing an ethereal looking humanoid that is promptly shot by a trigger-happy soldier, thus calling into action the film’s bigger and badder version of the infamous robot Gort, who is now as tall as a building and moves with the fluidity of the T-1000 in Terminator 2 (he still maintains his Cyclops-like visage). When the alien is taken to the hospital, it is discovered that his outer skin is just a protective biological suit and underneath he appears to be fully human, eventually growing into a man who calls himself Klaatu (Keanu Reeves).

From there, the story follows the same general path of the original, with Klaatu escaping military custody and going on a brief sojourn among the human race, with his feelings about people eventually being swayed by his interactions with Helen and Jacob, who illustrate firsthand that humans can be loving, giving creatures who don’t spend all their time destroying the environment. The environmental twist in this update works quite well, although it saps most of the meaning out of our immediately violent response to Klaatu’s arrival and the inability of our world leaders to be in the same room long enough for Klaatu to deliver his message.

Similarly, the performance by Keanu Reeves as the extraterrestrial visitor makes a certain amount of sense; Reeves has always had a monotonous, slightly alien quality to him, and he plays Klaatu as an otherworldly being who isn’t quite comfortable in his human guise, which is quite different from Michael Rennie’s portrayal of an articulate, refined ambassador. Of course, this time around Klaatu is less an ambassador than a prophet of doom, which helps justify the unleashing of FX-laden destruction. (Back in the 1950s the mere threat of destruction was enough to satisfy movie audiences, but today’s viewers demand more the real deal even if the final message is salvation through change.)

The most interesting and, in some ways, alarming twist on the original is the portrayal of Jacob, who in Wise’s film was the prototypical Beaver-esque ’50s adolescent--all smiles, innocence, and wide-eyed curiosity. As played by Jaden Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness), Jacob is now a very modern kid, already made cynical by a cultural diet of violent video games and constant news about war and terrorism. Rather than wanting to “meet the spaceman,” he now wants to destroy him, something he feels righteously sure his father would have done. This violent mindset doesn’t last, especially once he’s left alone with Klaatu, thus the alien visitor isn’t moved so much by the inherent goodness of humanity as embodied in an unspoiled child, but rather by the capacity for a child, and hence all of us, to change for the better.

Copyright ©2008 James Kendrick

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All images copyright © 20th Century Fox

Overall Rating: (3)




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