The Day The Earth Stood Still...

Introduction

Scientist and Professor Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) is whisked away from her home and tortured relationship with stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith) by the authorities in mysterious circumstances. It turns out that an object whizzing through our galaxy is set to collide with New York. Benson and a shed load of other scientists are choppered across to NYC just in time to see it slow down and land, immediately surrounded by half the US armed forces.

A mysterious figure emerges from the object and surrounding mist, with Benson drawn toward this figure before one of the big bad military people just can't resist temptation and decides to shoot him. Him turns out to be Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), a being in humanoid form who has been sent by alien civilisations alongside GORT, a giant and rather blank looking robot (who could also have been played by Reeves really). Klaatu's mission, oddly enough for someone who says very little, is to seek redemption for sins committed against the Earth by humanity. The clock is ticking and mankind must prepare to meet its maker in order for the Earth to survive.

Other spherical objects have landed across the globe and civilisation has mere hours to prove it can change or face total annihilation.

Visual

The picture looks rather fantastic, which you would expect from blu-ray. Unfortunately I can't show you how good as I haven't bought a blu-ray player for my PC yet. Sorry.

Extras

Commentary with writer Dan Scarpa

Build Your Own GORT - simple feature that allows you to design your own GORT from a small selection of interchangable body parts. Reminds me of character deign for a computer game but more pointless here.

Deleted Scenes - none adds anything in the slightest, clearly cut for pacing

Re-Imagining The Day - 30 minute Making Of featurette that also references the original film quite heavily. Usual big budget luvvie fest.

Unleashing GORT - specifically deals with the design of GORT and how the simplicity of the original is sometimes better than a modern resdesign. To be honest though, it all seems to be a waste of time based on the pitiful amount of screentime that GORT actually got.

Watching The Skies: In Search of Extra-Terrestrial Life - a very interesting featurette on the search for intelligent life by the Scientific community, also includes some footage from the UK Fox Mulder wannabe whose name escapes me…

The Day The Earth Was Green - an ultimately futile attempt to try to persuade viewers that the film is the first film to be a truly green film and how Fox is trying to be carbon neutral by 2010.

Still Galleries

In-Movie Features

Picture-In-Picture Bonus View - both the storyboards and pre-visualisation pictures look quite impressive but to be honest I found the whole picture-in-picture thing incredibly distracting. Why on earth do people think that you should divide your attention between two pictures? Do they not have the time to watch both separately? They should have been individual extras, case of using the technology because it's there methinks…

Trailer

Overall

Not the greatest of films, although it has to be said that it looks really good. The problem is two-fold; first off it's a remake of a classic 50's sci-fi film and therefore the obligatory remake is a poor imitation and secondly, cinema audiences aren't really interested in 'green' messages, especially as heavy-handed and moralising as this. And there's a reason for that.

a. People go to the cinema in order to escape the drudgery of everyday life
b. Everyone knows that Hollywood is an industry that is probably the most wasteful in the world

Therefore whilst they may have changed some of their habits for this film and allowed Fox to incorporate Green 'advisors' into the crew, this is a one off. It would be much better if they carried this across whole studio's but that won't happen. Another problem is that whilst they cut back on certain waste, such as printing, they end up offsetting that cutback by buying much more computer equipment that would have used valuable resources to build and would have caused pollution during the manufacturing process. Still, it's ok as they have takeaway cartons made from bamboo and disposal forks made from corn. Yep, that offsets all the huge monitors they bought. And I'm extremely pleased with the statement from one of the Construction crew when he announced that they were using wood from trees that fell down during a storm rather than felling their own timber. And doubly happy with the rather bizarre statement from the Costume department that they were donating all of their costumes to local theatres and that because they were being reused, there was no waste. What on earth are these people on? If they wanted to stop waste, then buy some bloody second hand costumes in the first place. Dimwits.

Anyway, onto the film. It all started rather promisingly but went downhill rather fast. Reeves is his usual blank self which is a plus and minus in this film. Plus because that is essentially the role of his character and that is precisely his natural acting style. Minus because for a messenger from Outer Space who is giving Earth mere hours to redeem itself for its environmental sins, you'd think he might just say something as soon as he is given the opportunity. Connelly is ok but wasted, Kathy Bates is just dire in this. John Cleese also appears in this film but I can't tell you much about his role as unfortunately I fell asleep (for about half an hour according to my daughter…) and so missed his entire contribution. Still, I'm not sure I missed anything as I woke up as all hell breaks loose thank to the stubbornness of the US authorities (don't they ever learn?) and humanity is doomed, only to be saved by the love of a mother for her child. Awww…

I haven't seen it, but I hope that An Inconvenient Truth wasn't as hopeless as this. Ultimately this films fails because despite all the rhetoric and moralising, no one has really come up with an answer on how we address global warming (if such a thing exists as a purely direct result of developing civilisations) other than attempting to raise more tax revenue in an attempt to pretend to address the issue. I'm sat at my desk now and looking around at DVD's, computer games, CD's, paper PR releases, iPod, PC and other plastic peripherals (which I'm helpfully told during one if the extras will take a million years to biodegrade, and I find is a rather contradictory message if the world will end before then…) and thinking that all of these things and just about everything we buy or use has an impact of some miniscule kind on the environment. Nothing will change whilst we stay a heavy industrialised world.

So there…