lu71.net

So, I saw the trailer for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” remake with Keanu Reeves this weekend before Hancock (watch it here) and I gotta say I’m more than a little worried about this movie. In fairness I need to point out that I’m biased because the original 1951 “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is my favorite movie. Not like, “oh hey, this year I like Iron Man,” but a lifetime favorite that I first saw when I was 6.

My biggest problem with the trailer isn’t Keanu Reeves, surprisingly. It’s that it depicts Klaatu (or Gort?) destroying a sports stadium and a semi truck. Basically he’s killing people.

The original Klaatu was a peaceful messenger who shutdown all machinery (mechanical and electronic) on earth but spared things like hospitals and airplanes in-flight to avoid hurting anyone. He uses this as a warning to the people of Earth that our inclination towards violence and movement towards space exploration have been noticed by other space faring worlds and will not be tolerated.

For me, this is a more profound statement in its subtly. Were they worried that people today wouldn’t “get it” so they had to show that he and his alien buddies can destroy an arena? Pfft, I can destroy an arena too with enough explosives but I can’t change the rules of physics and stop machines from working on an entire planet. This shows substantially more power than simply “blowing some shit up, bro.” In fact, it shows that we’re still cavemen waving around a big club (the atomic bomb) in comparison to them.

This movie really didn’t need to be remade but has been. Hopefully I’m misunderstanding what I’m seeing in the the trailer, but I doubt it.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the original here’s the Wikipedia page on it and I highly recommend seeing it. You can get it from Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll have a ton more to say about this movie in the future…

PS - The Quantum of Solace trailer, on the other hand, was freakin awesome.