The Day the Earth fell flat on its face

By David W. Shelton | December 13, 2008 |

To say that The Day the Earth Stood Still (hereafter DTESS) missed the point is the biggest understatement since a NASA official droned “Obviously a major malfunction” after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Clearly, this is a film that has the dire hope that no one who watches it will have any memory of the 1951 classic of the same name. For those who have never seen the original, they might find themselves quietly wondering if something was missing from this film. In fact, if you’ve never seen the original, just stop reading right now and see the film at your own risk.

For the rest of us, though, this film represents everything that’s not only wrong with modern disaster films, but with American culture itself. DTESS clearly has a lofty series of goals it hopes to accomplish, yet achieves nothing more than one abject failure after another. It’s so bad that I found myself pulling my hair out, wondering why the hell I even bothered.

Surprisingly, very little of the blame can be squared against Keanu Reeves, who plays essentially the same character he’s done for the last dozen or so films. Distant and aloof? Check. Emotionless? Check. Superhero powers? Check. Acting ability? None needed. Perfect! He seems to be drawn to roles that have a not-so-subtle messianic nature to them – to the point that I’m beginning to wonder if he has a certain ego issue. Look for that oh-so-obvious walking on water. Yeah. He’s here to save the earth, but not the people on it. Hallelujah.

In this film, Klaatu (Reeves) comes to earth to warn humanity of its evil and destructive ways, and only Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson (Jaden Smith) stand in the way of Klaatu and his plan to wipe out humanity. Before he can say anything, he’s shot, comes back to life, and then subjected to interrogation under the watchful and suspicious eyes of Defense Secretary Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates).

Since the comparisons to the far-superior original are all-too obvious, it’s important that we understand just how seriously this film missed a classic opportunity of speaking out against some of the greatest political evils in our day. In 1951, the original DTESS was birthed during the height of the McCarthy era, and the darkest days of the cold war. Americans were conditioned to fear anything remotely communist, and the late director Robert Wise crafted a story that spoke in volumes against not only the threat of nuclear annihilation, but against the reigning communist hysteria of the day.

Not so with the 2008 DTESS. The US is at the precipice of a potential slide toward a similar xenophobic mania (where instead of communism, we have a fear of anything that isn’t “normal:” Hispanics, Homosexuals, Muslims, Democrats, Liberals, you name it). Many of us are on edge after a series of horrifying terrorist attacks over the last few years, and are told we have to be vigilant against an enemy whose face we many never really know.

As this year’s election has shown, we are a country that is more divided than we’ve been in the last sixty years. Even with a near limitless canvas of emotional and political fodder available, none of these facts ever even come to the mind of scriptwriter David Scarpa. Instead of being our own worst enemy, we’re put at the brink of extinction because we’re slowly killing the environment.

Yeah, you read that right. This film is little more than a collective orgasmic fantasy for the entire environmentalist movement.  Here, we have an alien force that’s about to wipe out humanity – to save the earth from humanity. It’s so separated from any semblance of reality that there’s no possibility of reprieve – from the script or from the story.

It’s as if Scott Derrickson, the film’s director, saw this incredibly inept script as a great way to update the “big bad robot” from the original. There was clearly no coherent thought of whether or not there should be any MESSAGE to this film, but after all, who wants to be taught anything these days?

If there’s anything at all to praise in the film, the visuals are what we’ve come to expect in today’s blockbusters, and there’s a certain glee we all have when we see major cities leveled as only CGI can deliver. However, there’s just something about how our world comes to the brink of destruction. Possibly the only person who’s really worth watching is Jaden Smith, who clearly got his acting chops from both of his parents (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith). Quite simply, he’s brilliant, and is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise hopeless film.

Speaking of fresh air, when the giant robot (yeah, here’s an uncharacteristic-for-me spoiler because it’s just THAT bad) turns into a series of microscopic robotic baddies, it forms a destructive cloud that wipes away everything in its path. I don’t know if this would be called “Big Bad Robot Flatulence,” but it sure seems like cinematic flatulence to me. After all, it literally begins by slowly peeling away layers of glass. It’s as if the great big film deity in the sky said to its audience, “Come here and pull my finger.” Like the bored audience we are, we pull that imaginary finger, only to be be bombarded with a film that should never have been made, let alone released.

When I say that this film completely ignores the grit of the original, and that it misses the point entirely, I can think of no finer example than that of the character of Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese). Cleese’s character is little more than a throwaway scene that only sets up another chase scene. It’s worth pointing out that his predecessor in the original film was Sam Jaffe, whose scene nearly ended up on the cutting room floor.

The cause for this potential omission? Jaffe was blacklisted, and accused of being a communist. The producers reluctantly decided to leave the scene and the actor in the film because he and his character were so essential to the story.  Because he was labeled a possible communist, Jaffe wouldn’t be in another film again until the late 1950s.

How tragically ironic that the new Barnhardt scene could have easily been discarded. Hell, the whole movie could have been discarded, and we would have been saved the temptation to pull the big bad robot’s finger. But then, there are those among us who have to pull just to see what happens. For everyone else: you have been warned.

About David W. Shelton

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