As many of us drooling sci-fiers know, the classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still is being remade, with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. I will reserve judgment on the movie until I see it; while many people are gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over the casting, I think Reeves may make a pretty good alien. I’m more worried about the plot; instead of nuclear war the aliens are concerned about our ruining of the environment. Sounds goofy, but who knows.
Anyway, the trailer for the movie is now online at apple.com. For some reason, they don’t allow embedding, which makes it clear that Apple is still in some ways rooted in the 20th, not the 21st century. Get with the times, folks! You wanna start a buzz, do it the right way. Let us bloggers help you carry the water. Sheesh.
Anyway, the trailer is interesting, and not what I expected. It’s very Gort-light, which is distressing. Gort is awesome. At least they didn’t fiddle with him.
Turns out there will be stuff about this movie at Comic Con. I’ll find out what I can and report back when I’m there.
Oh– I posted this picture before (in the linked page above) but I thought it was funny and worth reposting. I have mad Photoshop skillz.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Like a remake of ‘Gone With The Wind’ — this is a classic that IMO should not be messed with. The original stands on its own as a classic. A remake will probably come across like a remake of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” or Tom Cruise’s “War of the Worlds.” In other words, not so good.
Offtopic, Phil, now that you have some connections at Discover, could you tell them to stop making documentaries that show the Asteroid Belt, the Kuyper Belt and the Oort Cloud as densely packed rings of rubble? Seems like every space-related doc I watch that mentions those areas always depicts them as though they were the rings of Saturn. Last night, I watched a DVR’d version of “A Comet’s Tale” and was really annoyed by that (and of course the tired cliche comet=apocolypse scenario.)
July 9th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Should Keanu’s mug be on the OTHER body, if he’s Klaatu? jus’ sayin’…
July 9th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Gort (at least a Gort style character) will be present in the movie according to the interwebz. They’re just trying to save that image as long as they can.
If you look for the word “Totem” in conjunction with The Day the Earth Stood Still, you’ll probably find the story concerning it.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:14 am
MDF is right. The head should be on the other body. Unless Keanu is playing Gort.
By the way, why would they call this a remake of the day the Earth Stood Still? If the whole gist of the movie is that aliens are concerned about us screwing up our environment, wouldn’t it be a closer fit to call this a remake of The Man Who Fell to Earth?
Of course, there’s no way Keanu could match David Bowie in coolness.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Defly the head should be on the other body (madge nods her head sagely)The original was just awesome and I am so very afraid that they will mess with it. It doesn’t need fancy CGI and special effects. That was the beauty of the original. It’s simplicity. All that said the trailer looks pretty cool
July 9th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I am posting simply to request that Phil never uses a variation of the phrase “Mad Skillz” ever again.
Thank you.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:25 am
When Carpenter sends the message “klaatu barada nekto”, will characters in the movie recognize it as a line from Army of Darkness, a cheezy 70’s band or a cubicle decoration in Tron?
July 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
You can also find quite some discussion and info on “Ain’t It Cool News”. It seems Gort won’t really be in it but instead a dog shaped device called Totem that wields some kind of weapon and when it’s done it stands upright and sort of looks like Gort only then.
Or maybe they are just trying to mislead and have Gort be the big surprise. Anyway, there is a lot of discussion about the remake, fanboys falling over eachother calling ‘blasphemy’ but the thing is, although it is hardly original to make a remake, certainly since there have been so many in the last years, the only fair thing to do is to judge the film on it’s own merits. There is nothing wrong with taking a story and interpret it the way you see fit, reinvision it, it’s trying to really remake the original is where things can go wrong. Or pointless remakes, like doing a remake of “Blade Runner”. But the messeage of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is one that is still relevant, the original is great but also extremely dated, even if it is in a good way, but seems very open for reinvisioning (is that a word?).
Anyway, we’ll see if it’s any good when it opens, the trailer looks pretty good, and Jennifer Connelly is in it, which is reason enough for me.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
The same thing that will make this a bad movie is the same thing that ruined ‘I am Legend’. There was no need to make this as a remake of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. None. Just use different names for the characters and no one would ever know that you just took the barest outline of the original’s plot. With the original ending the only similarity between the book and the movie is the name of the main character. Without that Will Smith was just in any generic monster/end of the world movie. They could have made a cautionary tale about the environment with the same basic idea as the original’s tale about nuclear weapons without using the same name. Instead they are trying to shoe horn in elements of the original movie. All they are going to do is ruin peoples impression of the original and create a severely lackluster product.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
The aliens are concerned about our environment? That premise is almost as bad as aliens, with a water allergy, coming to a water planet in Signs.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:03 am
You guys are outdated. The original is good, but not flawless. plus, at least they are remaking something from the 50s and not from the 90s, like Robocop or the new Terminator (much of a remake even if they don’t admit it). Oh! And that AICN script review is slowly being dismissed as Gort IS in the movie and is looking much like the original, Keanu said the words “Klaatu Barada Nikto” are in the movie, as well scenes with Klaatu and the kid, what the “reviewer” from AICN said were gone. The director Scott Derrickson himself told that to MTV last week, as well saying it is not all about enviroment but much about men versus men.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Youtube as a copy of the trailer here, if you want to embed it.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:05 am
I find that Trailer Addict is a much better resource for (embeddable, high res) trailers:
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/day-the-earth-stood-still/teaser-trailer
July 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am
this trailer made me want to stab out my eyes and then wander through traffic.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:12 am
If it’s all about the environment, the robot should be renamed Al Gort.
(And damn, I wish I’d thought of that joke myself — can’t remember which scifi fansite I got it from or I would attribute it properly.)
And yes, I’m one of the teeth-gnashers. I don’t see any way that this remake can work. The text of the original movie was that our warlike ways made us a potential threat to other planets, and we were being warned off. The subtext, of course, was that our warlike ways made us a potential threat to our own planet. In the remake, it sounds like the subtext has become text — typical loss of subtlety for today’s Hollywood.– so why would the aliens consider us a threat worthy of intervention if we are only trashing our own planet? Is the big closing speech from Klaatu going to go “If you don’t stop destroying your own environment we’re going to send an indestructible robot to… um… uh, never mind. Apparently we didn’t think our plan all the way through.”
July 9th, 2008 at 10:18 am
“By the way, why would they call this a remake of the day the Earth Stood Still? If the whole gist of the movie is that aliens are concerned about us screwing up our environment, wouldn’t it be a closer fit to call this a remake of The Man Who Fell to Earth?”
Or they could have remade The Day The Earth Caught Fire, Britain’s greatest sci-fi movie.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I agree. Reeves has an alien face.
…seriously I hate that actor. He stinks and I don’t get the buzz about that dude.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I almost hate to say this (and like all good geeks I get worried about remaking a classic,) but it kinda looks like I might enjoy this movie.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Really can’t understand why they would remake a classic either, but any movie that has cool computer generated destruction can’t be all bad.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Michelle: Ditto. I’ve always thought that as an actor, he’s just 2 legs short of making a great coffee table.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’ve never found Keanu very convincing. And I agree that remaking a classic is usually a mistake.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Everyone’s burying the lede. The real news here is that you can’t make a movie based on avoiding nuclear Armageddon any more.
Remember “better Red than dead”? Remember “unilateral disarmament”? Remember when nuclear Armageddon was a mathematical certainty?
And now it’s not even an adequate McGuffin for a Keanu Reeves movie. Sic transit gloria mundi.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I’m so tired of a Hollywood that mines past movies and tv programs in search of the creativity they sorely lack.
Reeves’ monotone acting style would work better with him as Gort.
The only good thing about a new overblown CGI version of a classic scifi movie is that some folks will seek out the real deal.
What’s wrong with a little originality? Too much risk for entertainment corporations, apparently.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Classic film; and Bernard Herrmann is too dead to compose the music. So what’s the point?
July 9th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Shane, those weren’t aliens in Signs, they were demons! I never saw any space ship, space suit, or any technology. In the end it was holy water that sent them away. It’s pretty subtle, which is surprising for a Shyamalanadingdong movie.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
i just re-read the short-story that “the day the earth stood still” was based on. i haven’t seen the movie since the 70’s, so i don’t remember it very well. i do recall i enjoyed it.
however, i suspect the movie, when i see it again, won’t stand up to the story. i added it to my netflix queue a few days ago, so i’ll be able to test my theory.
my assertion is based on the completely un-scientific observation that whatever comes first is usually best:
movies based on stories suck.
stories based on movies suck even more.
a corollary is that movies based on games should never be considered.
sure, “blade runner” doesn’t support my theory. but “i,robot” and “starship troopers” do.
“wing commander” and “doom” definitely support the corollary.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
The short story “Farewell to the Master” is WAAAAY better than the original movie. It was good for that generation, not anymore.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Given Hollywood’s usual track record in such things, I do not have high hopes. I guess I really shouldn’t care one way or the other since the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” has little to do with “Farewell to the Master,” on which it was based.
What’s so bad there’s a huge plot hole right in the premise: Aliens come to stop mankind’s destruction of the earth’s environment. Now, if they borrow a page from the original movie, that mankind can mess up it’s own nest, but they better not try to climb out until everyone plays nice, then it might work. Then again, that’s a huge plot whole in the original.
Feh.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Time for my When The Earth Stood Still rat. Enjoy.
I *hate* the original. There. I said it. Deal.
Here’s some things that lead me to that feeling:
1. The scene where he gets shot when approaching the humans for the first time. I guess it was supposed to be all “Ooo! The primitive hoomans are violent!”
Not quite. Klaatu later explains that his people have been watching the Earth for years and years. They should have a completed psychological profile that states humans in general are paranoid and fearful of the unknown.
So Klaatu saunters out of his spaceship up to a line of armed Earth soldiers (there must be volumes devoted simply to that topic in their alien databases), doesn’t even take off his helmet to, you know, maybe present a human face, points something that looks like an Earth weapon at the human leader, and then has it pop out all sorts of pointy bits without warning. And, remember, this is after they’ve studied us and learned our languages. He doesn’t even say “hello” or that he “comes in peace” or “please do not be alarmed by this weaponlike object I’m pointing at your head.”
The fact that only one soldier took the shot shows amazing restraint, I think. In the real world, they would have needed a sponge to mop up the remains.
Klaatu’s First Contact Protocol: FAIL!!!
[2] The threat near the end of the film that if Earth does not end its warlike ways, it will be reduced to a charred cinder.
OK, so a few global leaders can’t behave themselves- and, again, they’ve studied us, and should understand the intractability of the existing power structure. But, no, they are going to pretend that none of their species ever arose from a primitive and ignorant age, and they will MURDER billions of sentient beings along with a multibillion year old, diverse ecosphere containing even more innocent animals and plants. Why? Because humanity had discovered nukes? With Klaatu’s technology, a simple cordon of ships around the Earth could just keep us from leaving.
OK, wait… who’s the warlike, violent species here?
The Judgment Skills Of Klattu’s People: FAIL!!!
3. Then Klaatu admits that his people have deliberately submitted to the dmination of the Gort robots! He admits they can’t control themselves either without drastic measures.
The hypocrisy of Klaatu’s race: FAIL!!!
If I were doing the remake, I’d have humanity, using 1950s tech and sheer monkey inventiveness, send Klaatu and his fascist bully boys packing. Gort would be taken out by a rocket assisted B-52 dropped on him from orbit.
Ever read “The High Crusade” by Poul Anderson? Along those lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Crusade
July 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Oh, and the fact that the screenwriter (Edmund North) of the original admitted it was just a retelling of the Christ story designed to annoy the director (Robert Wise).
July 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Andy Beaton Says:
When Carpenter sends the message “klaatu barada nekto”, will characters in the movie recognize it as a line from Army of Darkness, a cheezy 70’s band or a cubicle decoration in Tron?
Of course they won’t. AND they won’t recognize it as a line from the original movie.
I have been wondering about the casting of Keanu Reeves. I mean he was a most excellent Johnathan Harker in the Dracula remake. And as Johnny Mnemonic, he was not bogus. But who else to play Klaatu? It could have been worse: Leo DeCaprio? Haley Joel Osment? Johnny Depp? John Travolta?
I think BA’s casting him as Gort was right on. Then they could have had a CG Klaatu. Problem solved.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Wow. This one slipped under my radar completely but that trailer makes it look awesome!
July 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Quiet Desperation–
Good rant! Most entertaining. Perhaps in there you have stumbled on the problem of the two movies. In the 1950s the original was meant as a (rather heavy-handed)message about how dangerous the world had become and how big a threat we were to ourselves and each other.
The remake cannot use the Cold War and global catastrophes created by our selves on us is not a threat to the rest of the galaxy–because we’ll probably be extinct before we manage any truly effective space travel.
This will just be a lot of CG destruction and Emmerichesque (a perfectly cromulent term if I do say so!)Booms and Blasts–all sound and fury signifying not a damned thing except we spent $10 to see it.
BTW, why do you suppose Michael Rennie’s Klaatu was the last friendly movie alien to visit the earth until the arrival of ET almost thirty years later?
July 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Quiet Desperation -
Right on. And I’d pay good money to see your version. (Unlike this remake, which I’ll wait until my local library has a copy of the DVD to see.)
July 9th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
BTW, why do you suppose Michael Rennie’s Klaatu was the last friendly movie alien to visit the earth until the arrival of ET almost thirty years later?
The unseen aliens in 2001 could be argued as friendly. Maybe.
Close Encounters predates ET by 5 years.
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976?) was just trying to save his family and homeworld.
Chewbacca. Mr. Spock. Superman (movie was late 70s)
Aaaaannnnddd…. that’s all I got off the top of my head.
Oh, and The Cat From Outer Space.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
This is why Greenpeace should never have technology more advanced than Rainbow Warrior.
The only people who tick me off more than the Back To The Trees crowd are the Hooray Human Extinction crowd.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Keanu Nanu!
July 9th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The hardest part about writing a book on the famous flying saucer movies of the ’50s is staying ahead of the remakes. When I wrote the “War of the Worlds” chapter, the Spielberg film was still in pre-production, now it’s three years in the past.
This looks absolutely awful, based on the trailer. Another self-hating, western angst, light-and-sound show with lots of destruction.
The original movie is the first chapter, and I even spend several pages of the Epilog discussing the point that QD made above, which I don’t disagree with. The logic of the choice humanity has to make at the end reduces down to: join them and voluntarily submit to robotic tyranny, or don’t join them and be subjected to robot tyranny anyway.
- Jack
July 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Quiet Desperation Says (among other things): “So Klaatu saunters out of his spaceship up to a line of armed Earth soldiers (there must be volumes devoted simply to that topic in their alien databases), doesn’t even take off his helmet to, you know, maybe present a human face, points something that looks like an Earth weapon at the human leader, and then has it pop out all sorts of pointy bits without warning. And, remember, this is after they’ve studied us and learned our languages. He doesn’t even say “hello” or that he “comes in peace” or “please do not be alarmed by this weaponlike object I’m pointing at your head.”
Actually, he does say “We come to visit you in peace, and with good will.” He should have added, “So if you’ll just turn over the keys to the planet, we’ll be on our way.”
- Jack
July 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I forgot to add this in my post a couple back.
Robert Wise was constantly being approached about doing a sequel to TDTESS. They even hired Ray Bradbury to do the script at one point. His feelings on this can be summed up in the following quote from a ’90s interview:
” My agent was called [by the studio]. They wanted to know if
I’d be interested in doing a sequel. I told him, “Hell, no” –
I’d done my piece; I didn’t want to do that, I don’t believe
in those things. Ray Bradbury worked on the story for a sequel
for some time over there; he turned it in and they didn’t like
it, and it was just put on the shelf. I’ve heard that there’s
talk of remaking the picture, which of course I don’t like at all.”
Basically, they had to wait until Wise was gone to do this film. Interesting that it was green-lighted only a couple months after he died.
- Jack
July 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Quiet Desperation Says:
The unseen aliens in 2001 could be argued as friendly. Maybe.
But they weren’t visiting earth after the “dawn of ape-men.”
Close Encounters predates ET by 5 years.
Got me there!
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976?) was just trying to save his family and homeworld.
Okay– One More.
Chewbacca. Mr. Spock. Superman (movie was late 70s)
Wookies and Vulcans were not exactly space aliens visiting
Earth- (time travelling in Star Trek not withstanding)
Superman–well OK–but he kept passing for a mild-mannered earthling
Aaaaannnnddd…. that’s all I got off the top of my head.
Oh, and The Cat From Outer Space.
Dang you and your facts! There goes my non-researched generality!
July 9th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
The original movie ranks as one of my earliest and favorite science fiction movies…along with “Forbidden Planet” and “War of the Worlds”. Michael Rennie was brilliant as Klaatu. I hope Keanu can make the charactor as believable. Remakes and movies based on science fiction novels can turn out to be really lame. I was real disappointed with “I, Robot” which seemed to have nothing at all to do with the collection of Asimov stories whose name it bears. I hope they don’t trash the plotline of TDTESS too much.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Actually, he does say “We come to visit you in peace, and with good will.”
I totally remember him saying that afterward, just before he says the device would allow interstellar communication. Ah well. The rant still stands.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Keanu Reeves was awesomely, hysterically hilarious in the two Bill and Ted flicks. After that, it was all downhill.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Quiet Desperation Says: “just before he says the device would allow interstellar communication.”
Close. The actual quote is “It was a gift for your president. With this he could have studied life on the other planets.”
The sad part is that I didn’t even have to watch the video again to get that quote. It’s amazing what you retain when watching a movie dozens of times, then write a plot synopsis. And then watching other pieces even more times to try and figure out just how something was supposed to work.
“The rant still stands.”
As well it should. You made quite a few valid points, and you are far from alone in them.
- Jack
July 10th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Again, who remembers the 1954 British adaptation co-starring Patricia Neal or the 1959 travesty with John Carradine?
Actually, both soldiers on the turret of the tank fired at Klattu, although we only hear the one gun report accompanying the close-up of the discharge. However, if you look very, very carefully the wide-shot of the tank that follows, you will see the muzzle flash of both pistols.
Regarding, Harry Bates’ original story, I’m afraid I don’t hold it in high esteem. All the time spent on Gnut’s after-hours activities and that business with him/it and the gorilla, plus the tag line that felt more like an afterthought than it did momentous irony…I don’t know.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:50 am
S-s-say, it just dawned on me. Maybe with the sphere-thingy, it’s really a remake ofThe Cosmic Man after all.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Keanu Reeves is a better actor than he gets credit for. Anyone who films with Forest Whitaker and Hugh Laurie can’t be all bad.
Then again, he makes a better Gort.
As in photo chop? Because … damn.
Uh, oh. Seems like engaging brain while watching will be like The Day the Earth Stood Stiller.
The trailer had good action though.
@ QD:
I agree with your over all point. Even if I think the movie is quite interesting despite the inherent fascism. I assume it was a case of the rampant McCarthyism of the day, with the aliens symbolizing the communist threat on the politics of democracy and market economy.
However, I don’t think the first contact was illogical in the frame of the movie. My impression was that it was a (logical) test of Earth’s “warlike ways”.
But the original short story (”Farewell to the Master”) is much better, here and on the whole. Klaatu is killed outright. There isn’t any test or external fascism, they are just visiting.
And of course it is the robot who is the master over the clone, which is a theme well worth exploring. For example, the STNG/STV Borg wasn’t quite like that - the drones didn’t mind. Mainly because they had none.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Eh, how did that happen? “over all point” - overall point. Slip of mind or slip of finger?
July 10th, 2008 at 8:31 am
You all keep talking ’bout videos. Am I the only one left who saw these in a movie theater on a big screen?
July 10th, 2008 at 8:48 am
I heard Keanu helps defeat the evil Earth authorities with the help of the Ewoks. I may have been asleep when I heard this, though.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I had heard that Gort wasn’t actually in this film, but the trailer seems to indicate otherwise. Also gone, supposedly is klaatu barada niktu(sp). The trailer looks fairly decent, so I will reserve judgement until I see it. It was filmed in Coquitlam, BC, which is a suburb of Vancouver, about 40 miles from where I live. I always love seeing shows filmed around here and recognizing the scenery. When I go to Vancouver, I am always pointing out buildings from Battlestar Galactica.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Actually, instead of `klaatu barada niktu`, he says, “Elekto Baaraak Ohbahma“… Ooooo bad
July 27th, 2008 at 3:40 am
“Whoah.”
August 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Mr. Reeves is accomplished and gifted. I believe that the role of Klaatu should have been reserved for a more dramatic actor, i.e., Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Adrian Brody because of the very serious message the original historical film portrays. I certainly wish Mr. Reeves much continued success with his work. Perhaps, after viewing the film, I’ll have more to say about his performance on December 13th. Many thanks.