The last line should read: “I agree with Klaatu’s final line…”

As for me, I’m still busted over ‘Zontar, the Thing from Venus’ and ‘The Eye Creatures’. Who could imagine anyone remaking ‘It Conquered the World’ or ‘Invasion of the Saucer Men’? Travesty, sheer travesty!

I agree Klaatu’s final line: “Gort, merringa!” We’re outta here!

Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters is a perfect example. I read an article from one of the two main scriptwriters on this project. He described the industry bizarrity that went into the making of the film. It started with him and a buddy getting okay from the studio based upon their success in another endeavor. After starting the script, they were replaced. Then Body Snatchers 4 came out, telling much of the story they intended to tell. Finally they were put back in charge of the script, and cobbled up their best attempt to condense the essential scenes of the book into a script without looking just like BS4. The movie had a decent cast (Donald Southerland), and ultimately a script from people who had a passion for the book. But the studio butchered it anyway. The female lead was morphed into a set dressing. Why? Because a studio exec said, “That’s how women in these type of movies are supposed to be.” And that exec was female. In the end it wasn’t horrible, but combine the sabotage with the poor marketing and it was in theaters for maybe a week.

Or look at Starship Troopers. Besides the infathomable change of deleting the powered armor, thus rendering the battle methodology bizarre and insensible, the project was directed by Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven is that wonderful director who did Show Girls. He has a pattern of trying to make movies explicitly to challenge Hollywood stereotypes, like being good. That in itself is bad enough, but he is decidedly anti-facist, and determined that Heinlein was obviously a facist and was advocating facism, so he purposely crafted the movie to highlight the facism and then mock it. Thus you get Heinlein’s scenes corrupted to something they were not. You get Doogie Howser as the psychic agent, wearing a black military uniform with jack-boots resembling a cross between a Nazi SS and a Star Wars Imperial Commander. Oh wait, that’s the same thing. You get Sargeant Zim purposely breaking a recruit’s arm just because he can, rather than the break occurring as an incidental occurrence during a hand-to-hand session. That movie should have had Heinlein’s name removed and been renamed “Bug Wars”. The scenes are crafted to create a subtle feeling of unease during what are supposed to be positive moments. It is a well-crafted sabotage.

Given the track record, I fear any attempt at Stranger In A Strange Land.

Similar commentary can be made about Eregon. I liked the book, even though it is a bit derivative. It still has a certain charm and creativity to it. However the movie systematically had every element of originality and creativity from Paolini squeezed out of it, until it’s just a mangled hash of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, with some Dragonriders of Pern thrown in for good measure. And maybe a little Dune – the Lynch 80′s movie version. (Can anyone say “Baron Harkonnen”?)

Actually, the Lynch Dune is a perfect example. I had no clue the first time I watched it, but a few years ago after I read the book, I purposely rented the movie to watch again. It was an amazing experience to watch along and see exactly the scene they were trying to reproduce, and when Lynch went elsewhere. The most striking thing (other than the “Weirding module” insertion) about the movie flow was how the movie suffered from time compression. To squeeze a lengthy epic into a movie format, the scenes play out with the minimal amount of time to get from point A to B. It just feels robbed of the richness of the scenes in the book while appearing to duplicate most of the events. That is very much the way that Eregon felt.

So no, I don’t have high hopes for the remake of TDTESS.

And by that I mean, “We must fight the aliens over there, so that we don’t have to fight them here.”

Sigh.

Forgot to cast the ‘Einnstein’ character.

Hmmmmm………..Halle Berry!

A woman, a minority, AND a babe!

Klaatu – Unknown pretty boy actor……..or Nicolas Cage
Gort – CGI (….or Vin Diesel…….)
Helen – Reese Witherspoon
Bobby – Hmmm….he’ll be moody and troublesome (because he doesn’t have a dad)……Does Edward Furlong have a kid brother? Get me his agent on the phone!
Helen’s boss/father figure (new character) – mature minority actor (Morgan Freeman, anyone?)
Helen’s boyfriend – Ben Affleck

Boarding house setting and occupants will be replaced by relatives of single mom Helen.
Her relatives will be Right-wing Republicans who hate gays and minorities.
One of them will be a closet gay
Bobby will be a rebellious, outspoken lib/environmentalist/civil liberties-type. He’ll get that from Helen’s hippie-mom who baby-sat him while single mom Helen went to work every day. His idealism will be a point of friction for the Helen character. Of course, Bobby will be acknowledged as ‘truly wise’ by Klaatu at movie’s end. Mom and Bobby will then hug.
Also, the gay relative will come out of the closet by movie’s end.

Did I mention that Helen is single? Know who else is Single? Klaatu! See where this is going? Hey! Maybe at the end of the movie we can get a shot of Klaatu’s ship flying away….then the camera will slowly pan to Helen as she gently rubs her slightly-swollen tummy! As the words ‘The End’ appear they’ll morph into a big ‘?’ (Damn, I’m good!)

Plot: Humans have to be baby-sat…..global warming….terrorism….blah-blah-blah.
Klaatu sez: Get it together or we’ll seriously kick yer azz.
Right-wingers, Christian fundamentalists, and Ben Affleck will want to hunt Klaatu down like a dog.
By movie’s end, Republicans will see the error of their ways and embrace the nearest Muslim.
And at some point in the movie there’ll be a minority character saying something ‘minority-like’…..”Yo, my man! Gort got some fo-shizzle!”….or “Why you be buggin, dawg?” But it will be acceptable because they’ll be portrayed as ‘folksy and wise’.

SFX:
Lots of slow-mo, ‘Matrix’-style, ‘Let’s ignore basic physics’ cgi crap
Astronauts/hero characters will walk towards camera in slow-motion
Gort will probably….scratch that: will definitely shape-shift.

Plot holes:
Gort walking. You’ve conquered anti-gravity…..so why is he relying on foot-power?
And if we’re dangerous enough to warrant a visit by Klaatu, then why ask us if we’ll behave? Just deposit a Gort on Earth and hope for the best.

Reviews: It will suck……..out loud.

And Michael Rennie and Robert Wise will be asking for more dirt atop their coffins.

Oh, and the aliens are all Teh Gay.

They should show footage of the death camp liberations. I saw one years ago that showed the lampshades. That’ll wake her cheeky little a** up.

If you don’t know what I mean by lampshades, shame on you.

Tell her to look for the little girl in red…the one spot of color in the movie.

Speaking of kids + B&W, a few weeks ago I was on a board discussing Schindler’s List, when a 15 year old kid chimed in that it was being shown in class, in pieces, over several days. She complained about how hard it was for her to stay awake during the movie, because as she said, “It was 8:30 in the morning; the movie was black and white. How could I keep my eyes open?”

“I could be amazing…”

Always it’s YOU, YOU YOU!!!

He took his information from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Earth: harmless
(update: mostly harmless)

J/P=?

Maybe I’m the odd man out here, but I hated The Day The Earth Stood Still. Oh noes! The humans got nukes! Oh woe is the galaxy!

Klaatu: “Hmm. So I’m going to come to this primitive world, land without warning, and point a menacing device at a line of armed soldiers. Oh, and then I’ll have the nerve to be surprised when I get shot.”

Way to study your Cliff’s Notes on Earth culture there, space nut.

>> They probably want to change Klaatu’s original message to more
>> closely match Bush’s.

In which parallel universe would *Hollywood* do that?

>> I cannot think of a single example of the remake being superior
>> to the classic.

Some have already mentioned Carpenter’s “The Thing”. I’d nominate Cronenburg’s “The Fly” and Jackson’s “King Kong”.

How about a remake where Earth pwns Klaatu even in the 1950′s? We can drop a rocket boosted B-52 from low orbit on Gort’s head (if the material is dense enough to withstand that, the robot would sink into the ground) and send Klaatu packing. We’ll work out our own problems, thank you, you alien fascist.

I guess I’m just more Campbellian in my SF tastes.