Day The Earth Stood Still Remake

[Sam Fisher]

Perhaps they're advertising Wolverine because they know...the movie sucks?

 

[Nightmare]

This has probably been mentioned, but I'm lazy.

AMC is showing the original TDTESS on Thursday night.

Thanks, i have yet to see the original. Ill set up my tivo now.

 

[WarBlade]

After seeing this tonight my take: 3 Stars.

What struck me about The Day The Earth Stood Still was just how average it was. There was nothing particularly bad about it and nothing particularly good about it. Keanu came off as appropriate for the Klaatu character. Jennifer Conelly did okay with what she had, but her role was struggling to get some emotional impact (in conjunction with the score) happening where the film could have used some. John Cleese in a brief cameo was good and I actually wished that he'd had more screen time, but oh well. Can't win 'em all. Smith Junior might just do well in the acting business if he sticks with it.

Gort. Well the name is corny enough to cause worry over how it might have been used. I was impressed by how cheesy it wasn't when the name was brought up. Bravo to whoever made those lines work.

The CGI stood up decently most of the time. Gort could have done with some more touches - Reflexions or something to make it look less like a cartoon piece of black rubber.

Overall, not bad. Just not good either. The Day the Earth Stood Still was sufficiently decent to sit through a screening.

 

[louiebling$]

If I see this its only for the wolvie trailer.

 

[xwolverine2]

saw a tvspot last night during heroes..

it had its own shout-out to the wolvie trailer

 

[The Guard]

I still want to see this.

 

[SuGarRush]

I am really pumped for this movie, do you think Deadpool will make an appearance in the trailer?

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

After seeing this tonight my take: 3 Stars.

What struck me about The Day The Earth Stood Still was just how average it was. There was nothing particularly bad about it and nothing particularly good about it. Keanu came off as appropriate for the Klaatu character. Jennifer Conelly did okay with what she had, but her role was struggling to get some emotional impact (in conjunction with the score) happening where the film could have used some. John Cleese in a brief cameo was good and I actually wished that he'd had more screen time, but oh well. Can't win 'em all. Smith Junior might just do well in the acting business if he sticks with it.

Gort. Well the name is corny enough to cause worry over how it might have been used. I was impressed by how cheesy it wasn't when the name was brought up. Bravo to whoever made those lines work.

The CGI stood up decently most of the time. Gort could have done with some more touches - Reflexions or something to make it look less like a cartoon piece of black rubber.

Overall, not bad. Just not good either. The Day the Earth Stood Still was sufficiently decent to sit through a screening.

Sounds okay to me.

 

[GhostPoet]

I'm stoked for this movie. More so than any other at the moment.

 

[TheVileOne]

In terms of The Day The Earth Stood Still, the original was meant for the Cold War audience to eliminate aggression and live in peace. The arms race is over, and audiences are looking at the faces of new threats, global warming being among the most prudent. If an idea can be renewed to improve on and expand the content of its themes, then it can be remade. After all the Nolan Batman films are much more of a literary skill than the Burton and Shumaucher's.

Or how about making a new story that makes those ideas relevant. HELLO WALL-E.

Children of Men.

I mean THEY LIVE? C'mon!

One can argue that The Day The Earth Stood Still is still relevant today despite the timeliness of the Cold War at the time.

 

[xwolverine2]

regardless what the message is/was.... that didnt make the original great, everything else about it made it great.

and yes...at the time it was considered a vfx film, even though nowadays the fx look laughable.

 

[Hunter Rider]

Just got back, I can only imagine Jen Connelly is a big greenie and wanted too get the message out any way she could, b/c there really is no other explanation for an actress of her calibre too have taken this script.

The film starts out fine and lays the groundwork well, but then Connelly's character starts making illogical decisions along with the secretary of defence

Why try to coerce info out of Klaatu when he is their of his free will ?

From here the movie becomes a "chase" film as it's doddery plot unfolds, we get a dull and forced step mother/step son relationship between Connelly and Jayden Smith (bereft of the charm he displayed in Pursuit of Happyness) that is the completely and utterly unrealistic catalyst to the conclusion.

Keanu is good as Klatuu, his general stilted style fitting the role well, Jennifer Connelly tries hard too add emotion and pathos too her character but is fighting a shoehorned parent angle and banal dialogue, that sees her regularly shout "We can change" in desperation but without any credible evidence.

The effects are mediocre and the film lacks any really epic destruction shots too convey the imminent demise of our planet or thew scale of the terror. There are a couple of action sequences that pop up for no other reason than too put explosions in the trailers, both of these are bland and feel under done.

In fact being bland is the movies biggest problem, it approaches the subject matter with a Poe faced seriousness that it's naive and corny script cannot accommodate, it would have been better giving up and aiming for some Armageddon or ID4 style cheesy fun, at least then it would have been entertaining b/c it was never equipped to be anything more.

5/10

 

[Venom'sDad]

While Robert Wise's science-fiction classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still" was a simple story of deep ideas, the remake is an overblown, puny-minded tale featuring extraterrestrials too stupid or lazy to do a background check on the species they condemn.

The new, dumbed-down "Day the Earth Stood Still" predictably updates the nuclear warning of the original to a caution about our rapacious treatment of the planet itself. Keanu Reeves' Klaatu shows up proclaiming he represents a coalition of civilizations that are friends of the Earth, and woe to us if we don't start treating their buddy more nicely.

Klaatu then makes the most halfhearted "take-me-to-your-leaders" speech imaginable. When he's told the United Nations has better things to do than listen to pitches from busybody spacemen, he shrugs and settles on Plan B: Save patient Earth by eliminating the infection.

Naturally, spending a few hours with some nice humans (Jennifer Connelly as an astro-biologist, and Jaden Smith as her stepson) makes Klaatu realize our race has its good points, too.

"There's another side to you. I feel it now," Klaatu obtusely mutters.
Let's see: These aliens have been visiting Earth for ages, they've had spies living among us, and when they land, they go through the elaborate process of transforming from their own species into humans; but after all that, they don't sense anything worth saving in us until they hear a bit of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" and see a mom hug her kid?

The shortsightedness of Klaatu and his kind is just cheap, shallow storytelling by director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa so they can unleash the visual-effects hounds and show devastation wrought on the planet courtesy of computer-generated imagery.

John Cleese has a small but satisfying part as a scientific genius, though the fact that his character won a Nobel Prize for research into "biological altruism" will draw barks of laughter.

Kathy Bates is horribly miscast as the U.S. defense secretary. Here's an actress who should never be called upon to state ponderously, "I still answer to the president."

Unlike Wise's film, there's no thoughtful message here, no insight as to our place in the cosmos.

The remake even befouls the original's iconic images. Gort, Klaatu's robot pal, now stands 28-feet tall, four times the size of Wise's metal guy. And while the filmmakers maintain key elements of his design, he's lost his menace, coming off as a sleek cartoon giant vaguely resembling an Academy Awards statuette tarnished black.

The 1951 original offered a warm, wry, compassionate performance from Michael Rennie as Klaatu, an alien arguably more human and humane than any of Earth's inhabitants.

In contrast, the stiff and stony Reeves scores a new high on his own personal Zen-meter, coming across as so aloof and lifeless that he might as well have played Gort.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still," a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence. Running time: 104 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...=VARIT&SECTION=ENTERTAINMENT&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

[MissHades]

The reviews will be mixed, that's for sure. Here two, positive. SPOILERS!

4 1/2 out of 5 - AZ Central

The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is dumb fun with a message.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's worth nothing that the dumb-fun part is more effective by far.
Director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter David Scarpa obviously had to jettison the nuclear threat from the 1951 original, replacing it with a warning about . . . don't want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that it's timely, if obvious. (Hint: Maybe Klaatu can do something about gas prices.)
The basic premise is the same: A visitor from another planet shows up; the military doesn't exactly roll out the welcome wagon. Nothing says hello like a gunshot. What is the reason for the visit? Can we see beyond our myopic world - um, universe - view to even receive the message, much less heed it?
Derrickson wisely keeps some of the more-memorable aspects of the original intact. Keanu Reeves is the perfect choice to play Klaatu, the emotionless alien who visits Earth with a series of seemingly inscrutable statements (he's saving the big message for a meeting with world leaders that no one seems to want to make happen). And Gort, the giant robot-looking creature, is still around, menacing (and dangerous) as ever.
The film begins with a team of scientists corralled by the government to deal with an imminent threat - something is whizzing through space, heading for Manhattan. They're led by Michael Grainer (Jon Hamm), but once an enormous globe has landed in the middle of Central Park and deposited Klaatu, Helen Benson is clearly the only one with enough on the ball to recognize that we might want to listen to what the visitor has to say.
Certainly U.S. government representative Regina Jackson isn't interested, at least not at first. It's all a bit generic, the Big Bad Government Official too arrogant to think that she needs to pay anyone else any heed (a position effectively shot down with Klaatu's snide retort, "Your planet?").
Klaatu escapes and ends up on the lam with Benson and her adopted son, Jacob (Jaden Smith). He reveals his intentions to her: He is, indeed, a friend of the Earth. That's not necessarily the good news/it may sound like for the people living on it.
A meeting with Helen's mentor, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), along with a little well-timed Bach and self-sacrifice leads Klaatu to believe that we might not be the hopeless case he thought (what if Barnhardt had been a Barry Manilow fan?). But is it too late?
Though both Connelly and Smith are fine, their scenes together are nothing special; it's more fun to watch short-sighted government officials demand ridiculous experiments involving Gort. And though Reeves is nobody's Daniel Day-Lewis, he's quite good at intoning lines of serious import; he gradually becomes more human, but never to the extent that he has to, you know, stretch.
On the other hand, he never says, "Whoa," either.
Not that this would have been a bad thing. While its intent is undoubtedly serious, you're more likely to take away the cool, stylish elements from the film than anything else.
That's an OK thing. Audiences are more cynical than they were in 1951; using what is in effect an expensive B movie for social commentary doesn't pack the same punch. Better to just sit back and enjoy The Day the Earth Stood Still for what it is: a fair amount of fun.

Klaatu: If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives.

Be warned, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" starts slowly and modestly and is mired in a minefield of movie cliches. But give "Day" a few moments to warm up. There are some spectacular moments, and some innovative moments, even if a lot of it was imagined for the first time in 1951.When a flick features a cast that includes the mythic Keanu Reeves, the chic Jennifer Connelly and the irrepressible John Cleese, it's probably worth seeing just to see what each of them get up to. Kathy Bates as the Defence Minister, and a President (among a slew of world leaders) who never make an appearance are among many flaws in this flick. That said, how effectual are our leaders today? Do we ever see them do anything that matters?

David Scarpa's screenplay makes a mockery of the 1951 script upon which it was based, and Scott Derrickson (who?) is not the industry's most accomplished director. Derrickson is responsible for duds like "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and "Hellraiser".

With "The Day the Earth Stood Still" Derrickson graduates to another the level. This flick will be remembered for a couple of good reasons. And one or two bad ones.

The title of the flick is confusing. This is not a spoiler by the way; in fact it may help curtail certain niggling thoughts most people in the audience would otherwise have for the first fifth of those 103 minutes. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is not about a day that the Earth stood still. For some crazy reason I took the title literally, imagining the rotation of the planet - for one reason or another - stalls, and this creates a crisis.

No, the crisis is about something else altogether. Since the flick releases worldwide on Dec. 12, 2008, I am not going to retell some of the vital elements of the flick. In order to enjoy this flick, you need to suspend some of the myriad cliches "The Day The Earth Stood Still" has to bump against before it emerges as a story in its own right, a story with a fairly original take, and a meaningful, important message for our present circumstances.

Why does it take so much time for the 1950's freshness of the script to emerge? It may be a fluke, or coincidence, or that Sci-Fi has inspired further Sci-Fi over the past 50 years, but in "Day" you will find allusions to "Independence Day," "Superman Returns," "I am Legend," "The Abyss," "ET," "The Matrix," "The Happening," "Sphere," "War of the Worlds," "Cloverfield," "Star Wars," "Close Encounters," "The Fifth Element" and others. For some, all these references -- which as I say seem incidental -- will irk. If you can try to wipe away your internal movie archive, and all that movie memorabilia, "Day" has an important message.

Polygraph Operator: I'm going to ask you a series of control questions. Are you currently in a seated position?
Klaatu: Yes.
Polygraph Operator: Are you human?
Klaatu: My body is.
Polygraph Operator: Do you feel pain?
Klaatu: My body does.
Polygraph Operator: Are you aware of an impending attack on the planet earth?
Klaatu: You should let me go.
​

The message is goes something like this: Would an alien species consider humans worthy of saving?

It is interesting to see the number of movies coming out now with a more and more serious message. People -- collectively -- will have to change. The message is becoming more radical in the movie zeitgeist, which makes this a timely and appropriate flick and a worthy addition to this particular theme. Interestingly, and uniquely, this flick cites exactly this sentiment, where (sitting in McDonalds) one being says to another:

"They sense their own demise but don't know what to do about it." Or words to that effect.

While not as cheesy as the "Fifth Element" (where the princess saves the Earth by getting true love's kiss at the last moment), I nevertheless found the brat in the film really annoying. Keanu Reeves is perfect as the "anomaly" walking between the human beings.

It is the message of the movie that resonates above all, however I am not so certain I'd agree with the alien's sentiment at the end. I believe our standards (for ourselves) need to be much higher than they are, and "Day" does well to open our eyes to this.

7.5/10

 

[Obi-Ron]

were so over anti-nuke right now lol....


back then nukes were scary, and people believed they were always on active.

now we see them as dust collectors.

Ummm.... nukes are still a threat. "Dust collectors" my eye.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

I saw the trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still once and didn't think much of it. You think for a guy who runs a film site, I would know more about it? Oh well.....I went in with no real high or low expectations which is always a bonus.

PLOT

An alien named Klaatu(Keanu Reeves) arrives on Earth to save it, but to do so he needs to wipe out the human race, as we caused too much damage to mother Earth. Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) with her brat stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith) journey with Klaatu to try and convince him that our race is worth saving.

THUMBS UP








I liked the first 20 Minutes of this film. I felt like it was moving at a nice pace as the world was heading into mass panic. Within that time span we are introduced to this giant alien named Gort, who looked badass. Anything with Gort ruled. Someday I would like to see a film based on him.

Jaden Smith sure has acting chops like his Dad(Will Smith). He played a brat kid who you'd like to see get caught in some massive explosion. Smith has some emotional scenes where he cried his eyes out like a baby. You feel sorry for his character and at the moment you realize this kid just acted circles around, both Reeves and Connelly. I can see Jaden having a good career ahead of him. Reeves did an ok job playing an emotionless alien. I guess that really wasn't hard of him anyway. I liked Connelly in this film and I never really like her before, so that says something good about her in this.

There wasn't much action all, but when there was, it was done very well, top CGI.

THUMBS DOWN








For a film about an alien attack, you really didn't get a sense of world doom. Sure at the beginning you do, but after that...nothing. We are shown stock footage of riots from around the world, which I'm stick of films doing. I blame the lack of action for this. In the poster it looks as if some big war is going to go down, but no, it doesn't. It's like ordering a cheese burger, but you don't get the cheese.

Like I said above, Smith did a fantastic job, but having to put up with a brat kid for almost the whole movie, got on my nerves. And when he was not on screen, you were left with ok performances.

I also got bored during the film. I was waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. So between the brat kid, little action and the feeling for non-upending doom, I was surprised I did not nod off.

OVERALL

With the lack of Sci-Fi films over the past few years, I was hoping this might bring the genre back, but it didn't(hopefully Star Trek will do that now). This is a film you should stay clear of, hell, I wouldn't even give it an Rental.

Overall I give The Day The Earth Stood Still-4/10

 

[Octoberist]

I think Star Trek will help bring back legit Sci-Fi back.

 

[TNC9852002]

Perhaps they're advertising Wolverine because they know...the movie sucks?

-TNC

 

[MissHades]

I also got bored during the film. I was waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. So between the brat kid, little action and the feeling for

So, it was exactly like the original. That one wasn't an action movie and I am pretty sure the remake is far less "sleepy" .

 

[GhostPoet]

I'm seeing it this Sunday. Can't wait!! Looks like a great sci-fi film, much like the original with better effects. Probably not a movie for ADD people.

 

[xwolverine2]

I think Star Trek will help bring back legit Sci-Fi back.

serenity tried

 

[Shifty]

What did you think of Tyler Bates' score?

 

[Nightmare]

Hmm, lots of negative reviews.

 

[Nirvana]

I'm going to see this over the weekend at some point either with some friends or my family. I'm not sure what to think of this, but I certainly am curious to see what they do with the remake.

 

[djkris]

I watched it this morning, on an early screening. I agree with most reviews and I say that the film barely qualifies as decent. Maybe my expectations were high...

The Good: I have a soft spot for Keanu, who did a good job. I loved every single close-up of Jennifer Connely's face. John Cleese was good. The concept of Gort was cool but...

The Bad: ...his(?) CGI was like something out of a 1998 movie. He looked extremely fake and out of scene. I was hoping for some great music score, but it didn't impressed me.

And boy, was that Smith kid annoying! I hope his character doesn't represent the average American kid these days, because I wanted him to perish in the most cruel ways imaginable. Anyone else noticed how many times he pointed out that "his dad would have kicked the aliens' butt back to space" or something? Oh, I get it, funny, his dad is Will Smith, ok...

And once again, as pointed by a previous reviewer, they didn't make this feel global. Which is ironic, considering the fact that they showed the trailer for "Monsters VS Aliens" right before, in which a news reporter comments "an alien spaceship has landed in the USA. The only country aliens ever seem to land..."

Oh, and before I forgot, the ending was way to abrupt! (just like this post )