Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still

This review will either be amazing or terrible because I’m in an awful mood. I felt that in a state of high emotions I’d hopefully be able to write something meaningful and insightful about this decidedly average film.

Remakes are dangerous territory. In fact, I myself can’t think of a single remade film I truly love. The first trailer that came with The Day The Earth Stood Still made me think, in my increasingly bitter and cynical way “meh, another average winter film made for the sole reason to make the studio some pocket money”. This belief was firmly held until a recent article in a generic monthly film magazine about The Day The Earth Stood Still. From that point on, I sat up and started following the story more closely.

What intrigued me most about the plot of the original film (They describe it in the article, I have never seen it) was the ambiguity with which it was made and laid out. The audience was never indulged with such luxuries as discovering the true nature or appearance of alien visitor Klaatu’s kind, or indeed his exact motives. Or indeed, a real solution to the film. A concise version of the original, really, is that Klaatu comes to Earth with a warning, that if the human race continues with its destructive and careless nature, the rest of his kind will come and pretty much kill us all. He then flies off in a spaceship (followed by an 8-foot robot named Gort) and the film ends. Cheery

This new version doesn’t bog itself down in ambiguity or interpretation, though. Parallels drawn between Christ and Klaatu in the original are nullified by a slap-in-the-face side story which features small numbers of every species on earth (excluding us pesky homo sapiens) being rescued in cool-looking CGI domes. The military, trigger happy as always (hey, it’s a Hollywood film) look on as they realise it’s an ark! “Oh!” Cries the gormless demographic, “like what Noah did!”. Come ON, you crazy yank filmmakers, I LIKE subtlety. This film would have earned one more star had it been able to keep a lid on its biblical undertones and allow us to decide for ourselves what the real message was. Bleurgh.

I suppose I’ve ranted enough now, eh? Well, I’ve had enough of writing in prose so here’s a few short sentences on how the film played out for me in my head.

First 30 minutes or so: “Brilliant. Creepy, tense, emotional, this is almost perfect. The new 30ft. Gort design looks terrific.”
After Keanu escapes: “After that bit with the policeman and the two cars I can’t get Signs out of my head. Oh look, John Cleese, an ultimatum and a solution. Right there. I can basically predict what’s going to happen in this final act because he just said, now it’s basically a race against time.
And the rest: “Cool CGI swarm. Wait, what? That was the ending?”

“Meh.”

Rating: ***
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