Movie Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still
Posted December 13th, 2008 by Howard TaylerI had a great time at the movie with Richard and all our friends from GWAVA, Grouplink, Omni, Brainstorm, and of course Novell. About twenty Schlockers showed up, too, but there’s a healthy chunk of those IT guys reading the strip as well. It was quite the party.
The movie was lots of fun to mock. This is not to suggest that it is going to be a cult classic, however. It’s just a fairly dull movie remake with great special effects, big names, beautiful faces, and no proper ending.
The remake omits the most famous line of dialog from the original, “Klaatu barada nikto,” which words were used to stop the destruction of the human race. My friend Bob said that he thought MAYBE that dialog was present in Keanu Reeves last mumbled line, but if we can’t hear it in the theater it doesn’t count.
The high crime, however, was underutilization of John Cleese. But now that I think about it, they underutilized everybody except Keanu Reeves. Him they used just right.
Towards the end the little boy is standing over his father’s grave, and tells Klaatu to bring him back. Klaatu says he can’t. The boy cries. Me? I really, REALLY wanted Klaatu to at least try. He’s got nanotech at his disposal. We could have had a good zombie movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still Of The Dead. Oh well, another missed opportunity.
For all this, we still had fun. We’ll definitely be doing this again in a few months. Watch this space.
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December 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I’m glad you all had a good time. I was at work, without transportation to Provo that wouldn’t have taken a good three hours to get me there. (Bus downtown, Trax to Sandy, bus to Provo - it’s enough to make me wonder if there isn’t a conspiracy to protect the Happy Valley from the corrupting influence of us profane liberals in Salt Lake City.)
Last Keanu Reeves movie I saw was “A Scanner Darkly” which was a well done take on the PKD story. I even liked the rotoscoping effect they used, which made the movie take on this air of a paranoid druggy nightmare.
I’ll have to put DTESS in my Netflix queue. But I’ll want to see the original before I see the remake. Luckily, with Netflix that’s possible.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I saw a blog post, years ago, of a fellow whose jogging route took him past two road work text message trailers that had apparently been forgotten. After weeks of an irrelevant message, he stopped, looked, and found that the road work crews had neglected to lock the keyboard cabinet.
I’ll give you one guess on the new message… ;)
December 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Not seen the movie yet - Having heard the comments f Dr Kermode & his listeners I might not bother. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/kermode/) . but I have ordered the original, with Bernard Herman’s Theramin score, on DVD
December 13th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Ok, it appears that I did not really miss anything.
At least I got to see two really great explosions instead.
I love my job.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Interesting that I seem to have seen an original film with the same name which is certainly not the original you refer to! It involved two atomic bombs going off at the same time and stopping the earth’s rotation. This caused odd weather effects.
I enjoyed it, not least because of the acting(!) of the Newspaper editor. He was dreadful, so unconvincing that it was hard to realise he was actually one of the top editors in reality. So don’t cast real people in roles, it seems not to work!
December 13th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Hesperus: You are thinking of ‘The day the earth caught fire’, The Editor of the Daily Express was played by Arthur Christiansen, who was editor of the Daily Express in real life. Yes, an odd decision
It is a generally well-regarded bit of understated scifi and an early vehicle for Michael Caine. Largely a conspiracy film, there are few special effects apart from some dodgy fog in establishing shots as the rivers vanish.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Personally, I think the only reason _TDTESS_ was remade was to
attach it to the preview for _X-Men Origins: Wolverine_…. :)
December 14th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Sounds like I have to wait for a proper movie version of the story then.
December 14th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Wait! I missed the Wolverine preview?!? FIE!
Now I may have to go see it.
Oh, wait, I’m on the internet, I can probably find it here somewhere….
December 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Several years ago (Before Army of Darkness, AAMOF), someone created a T shirt with Gort, fist in perspective, with a slot in the fist. One could stick things through the slot so it looked as if he was holding them.
Yes, a klaatu barada necktie.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Hey, Howard? Shouldn’t that title more properly be, “Day of the Dead Standing Still”? And I think this flick would have bored even them into a stupor.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
One interesting thing about the resurrection failure: the original story on which both this movie and the original of this movie are based, “Farewell to the Master”, revolves around on the attempts of the robot Gort to resurrect the dead Klaatu. And by the way, in that story, Gort is the master, not Klaatu. (Gort succeeds, but only partially; Klaatu dies again after resurrection.)
December 15th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Aha, the original story is out of copyright. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
(oops, the robot is called Gnut in the original story, not Gort. OK, that’s my last post for the day. Sorry.)
December 17th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yay! I’m Bob!
December 17th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Yay! I’m Bob! And I said I thought he said it near the beginning right after he got shot when the robot tried to help him. It was mumbled so I couldn’t hear the words he said but there were 3 distinct words.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:47 am
And as long as I’m here, the other movie that was just as … poignant as this one: The Happening, is really, really bad. Don’t see it unless you would feel less a completionist for not having seen one of M. Night Shymalan’s movies.