The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

Introduction

This remake of Robert Wise's 1951 Sci-Fi classic updates the central theme to what the writers consider a more topical theme: climate change rather than nuclear war. Whether this is a valid point is open to debate, the number of nuclear warheads around now dwarfs those in 1951 but perhaps global warming is a more pressing issue now the Cold War is over.

Dr. Helen Benson, an astrological biologist at Princeton University has a fraught relationship with her stepson and, getting tea ready for him one night, receives a strange phone call informing her that cars are on their way to pick her up but won't give her any information why or where they'll take her. Taken to a military installation run by Michael Granier, a man with whom she seemingly has a past, Benson and several other scientists and engineers are informed that a UFO, possibly a meteorite, is in a collision course with Earth with Manhattan as the likely impact point. The object is in a strange trajectory, ignoring traditional gravitational pulls and amazingly slows up as it reaches Earth, slowing to land gracefully in the middle of Central Park.

From this giant sphere, an object emerges and Benson breaks from the ranks of Hazmat-suited scientists to greet the arrival who is promptly shot by one of the massed trigger-happy soldiers. Taken to a surgical ward, the bullet is removed and the surgeon notices that, under the blubber-like outer layer, the interior is very much human. The creature ages rapidly and even speaks English and, with the President and Vice-President in their secret hiding bunkers, the Secretary of Defense is in charge. Wanting the alien, who calls himself Klaatu, interrogated, she orders the doctors to medicate him and set him up for questioning. They all refuse apart from Benson who switches the classified compound she'd been given for a phial of saline, injects him and tells him to run. Klaatu manipulates the interrogator, finding out where the guards are before knocking them out with an electrical surge, taking his questioner's suit then walking out the building.

When his incision begins bleeding, he gets a message to Dr. Benson asking for her help, and she goes along with her son. On the run from the authorities, she realises that he hasn't come here for a benign sight-seeing trip, but to gather information and different species of animals to save Earth from the humans but sees it that we are not beyond saving and tries to convince him to give us another chance.

Video

As you'd expect from a film only a few months removed from its theatrical release and shot using the highest-quality modern equipment, the film looks tremendous and the CGI is used very well and, for the most part, extremely convincingly. By now audiences are getting wise to CGI in films and some shots look a little fake, something borne out by the supplementary material.

One of the biggest changes from the original is Klaatu's craft and companion/guardian, GORT. A flying saucer would be a bit hokey so they've changed it so he lands in a sphere, something intangible and intelligent. GORT is no longer a man in a suit but a huge robot which, at the end of the film, disintegrates with his tiny parts forming a locust-like swarm devouring anything in its way. These sequences are obviously computer-generated but are extremely convincing and even some elements I thought were real proved not to be so.

*The pictures contained in this review are taken from the DVD and so do not reflect the image quality of the Blu-ray Disc.*

Audio

The disc contains a healthy selection of audio and subtitle options (see the disc's main page), spearheaded by the super DTS-HD MA English soundtrack which is bombastic and subtle when the occasion demands. The film is well-scored with clear dialogue and an excellent soundstage.

Extra Features

The commentary by screenwriter David Scarpa is a trial of patience and endurance and one to say that I failed. It seems that Scarpa was involved only in the pre-production and early production stages before the infamous WGA strike so he has little to say about the shooting process and the only thing he has to tell you about Jennifer Connelly is that he thought she'd be good for the part but didn't meet her! The commentary is full of gaps and dead air and is really one to miss - it's a shame they didn't sit him down with director Scott Derrickson, then it might have been something informative and worth a listen.

If you do go through the film a second or third time, there are interactive options, so the red button will give you the commentary, the yellow button displays storyboards and the blue button developmental footage - I used the latter to relieve the boredom of Scarpa's gap-track and there is some interesting video footage on the blue button option.



There are several featurettes available, from a look at how and why they updated the story from 1951 to 2008 and all the differences; a brief look at the new GORT; a lengthy and rather dull piece on the possibility/probability of extra-terrestrial life with an interesting mix of scientists and UFO "experts"; a feature on how the film was made carbon-neutral which is really an advert for Fox's efforts to go green by 2010 (I thought a safer way of saving resources would have been not to make the film in the first place, rather than use china crockery and biodegradable bamboo cutlery) - this is a noble aim and similar to the X-Files: I Want to Believe shoot.

There are three very short deleted scenes and a, quite frankly pointless, "Build Your Own GORT" interactive feature which allows you to design the robot but the do nothing with it - perhaps if it could be inserted into a scene then you'd at least get something out of it rather than choosing different arms, legs and torso shapes for the robot.

Conclusion

Remakes and reimaginings have been around as long as cinema itself so it's almost a wonder that The Day The Earth Stood Still hasn't been remade before now, it could have been done in the 1970s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. One of the most discussed and contentious points in this version is the casting of Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. Michael Rennie was an almost unknown in 1951 so his portrayal of Klaatu as an everyman, blending in with the Americans to find out more about them worked perfectly but the character is different here. Klaatu is an ambassador from a group of civilisations who have had Earth under surveillance and now consider the human race a threat to all the other species on the planet, but don't seem to know anything of human emotion - this felt a little like War of the Worlds where the aliens had been studying us for years but were then completely caught out by our atmosphere - it's one of those imponderables that make you think "why didn't they see that before they got here?".

Anyway, if you need an actor to play an alien having trouble getting to grips with the human body, Keanu Reeves is your man. Fine playing surfer-types in Bill and Ted and Point Break but completely out of his league when trying to portray intelligence! I'm still trying to figure out whether this piece of casting was a stroke of genius or a terrible miscalculation, slightly leaning towards the latter. Jennifer Connolly is fine as the doctor, begging the extra-terrestrial that the human race is not beyond redemption, but when she takes him to see Professor Barnhardt - played memorably in the original by the Einstein-lookalike Sam Jaffe - you get John Cleese here who puts in one of his pay-check performances. Also phoning in her appearance is Kathy Bates but at least Jon Hamm (unfortunate name for an actor, but great in Mad Men) emerges with some credit. Dr. Benson's stepson, Jacob, is played by Will Smith's son Jaden who was last seen with his Dad in The Pursuit of Happyness and he was much more convincing and naturalistic there, coming across more whiney and unsympathetic here.



There really wasn't any need for a remake of TDTESS, but doing it with a green message: change your behaviour or the planet is doomed, is really odd for a blockbuster film and I doubt it will have found much of a receptive audience. The message is put across so badly that it wouldn't have worked if shown to an audience full of Greenpeace members - leave such environmental posturing to people like Al Gore because at least An Inconvenient Truth was persuasive.

This doesn't really work as a Sci-Fi thriller and fails to convey its central point with any force. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have again released a very fine Blu-ray Disc with a below-par film - if they get a movie worth the obvious attention they pay to the disc, they're on to a winner.