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The Day the Earth Stood Still Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sci-fi disaster images and violence) Genre: Science Fiction Theater release: December 12, 2008 by 20th Century Fox Directed by: Scott Derrickson Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes Cast: Keanu Reeves (Klaatu), Jennifer Connelly (Helen Benson), Jaden Smith (Jacob Benson), Kathy Bates (Regina Jackson), John Cleese (Professor Barnhardt), Jon Hamm (Michael Granier), Mousa Kraish (Yusef), James Hong (Mr. Wu) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

By now, you know the routine: Every time a major movie studio announces that it is going to remake one of its classics, fans all over the world slap their foreheads and wonder why anyone would want to mess with perfection. But some movies are more adaptable than others, in theory at least, and The Day the Earth Stood Still is just such a film. Produced in 1951, as the Cold War was just getting started, the original film depicted an alien who comes to Earth and warns us that our militaristic ways could lead to the destruction of the entire planet—if not at our own hands, then at the hands of interstellar robots who have been programmed to prevent any planet from posing a threat to other planets. The political landscape has changed in many ways since then, and the world has moved on to other dangers, but that, in its own way, creates a whole new set of storytelling opportunities; there is no reason an alien couldn't pay us another visit and give us a whole new set of warnings.

Keanu Reeves as Klaatu

The trick comes in the execution of that idea, and the new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still—directed by Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) from a script credited to David Scarpa (The Last Castle)—is, like so many other remakes, caught between the need to bring the material up to date and the pressure to recycle familiar elements from the original film, even when they don't seem to fit the internal logic of the new film. The result is a film that is a lot more complicated in some ways, while overly simple, almost to the point of triteness, in others.

On the more-complicated side, the alien messenger Klaatu is no longer just another man who happens to come from another planet; this time, he lives within a human body that he has created for the express purpose of moving around in Earth's environment. The body itself is made from the DNA of a man who died years ago, and when it emerges from the bright, spherical spaceship that lands in New York City, it is coated in a sort of goopy, placental slime that, over the course of the next few scenes, will fall away to reveal a pale, naked Keanu Reeves. (Shades of Keanu's first appearance in the real world in The Matrix!) Klaatu's "birth," messy as it would have been anyway, is complicated further by the fact that a member of the U.S. military shoots him the moment he emerges from his ship—and this rouses the ire of a giant robot who also emerges from that ship.

Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Helen Benson

Here the film begins to show signs of being constrained by its source material. Why does the robot have a humanoid form? Given all the high-tech stuff on display—and it gets even more intricate later on—why does this robot assume the rather old-fashioned form that it does, with a visor and a beam-shooting eye? If the flying saucer of the original film can be replaced by the more abstract sphere, why risk making the robot look so retro? Fans will know the robot as Gort, but this name does not come up until very late in the film—and when it does, you cannot help but groan at the reason given for it. Matters are not helped by the fact that Gort looks rather smooth and cartoonish, like the digital special effect that he is.

And what message does Klaatu have for the world this time? Something to do with our lack of care for the environment, though he doesn't try very hard to get his message across. After his request for an audience with the United Nations is blocked by American Defense Secretary Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates), Klaatu uses his alien superpowers to escape the military base and to make contact with his fellow aliens, who decide to intervene pre-emptively—without any warning—and wipe out human civilization so that all the other species on our planet can survive.

If you have seen the trailers for this film, then you know that swarms of microscopic beings—insects, robots, or both—are sent forth to set the apocalypse in motion, shredding everything from giant sports stadiums to moving vehicles. (Even though most major cities have been evacuated by this point in the film, it seems there is still at least one poor, unfortunate truck driver determined to make his deliveries.) So, unlike the original film, where the aliens merely warned us of the consequences of our actions, the new film shows the aliens taking action immediately—which raises all sorts of questions, some of which are not resolved all that satisfactorily.

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