The Day The Earth Stood Still

[Geno]

As someone old enough to remember the 1951 original, I thought this remake rated a 4 on the zero to ten Suck-O-Meter. IMHO, it did have a few decent moments, but the overall plot was rather incomprehensible compared to the original. Keanu Reeves does his usual good job of looking totally vacant, the robot Gort was a pretty good update, but didn't have nearly enough to do. Jennifer Connely is entirely too babe-o-licious to be believable as the Most Knowledgable Astro-Biologist on the planet, but holds her end up well. Kathy Bates, the government spokesperson, and the numbskull playing the military commander were right out of Plan 9 from Outer Space. ( I kept yelling at him not to open fire on the robot, but he did it anyhway) John Cleese tried mightily to hold a straight face throughout his scene, and actually carried it off pretty well. The special effects in the later part of the movie were pretty cartoonish, and, IMHO, served to cheapen the rest of this dud.

Of course, that's just my opinion...I could be wrong

 

[captiankirk28]

Thats to bad, i was looking forward to it, the trailer looked good.

 

[Adam]

The trailer made me think that it's going to suck, but my dad really wants to see it. My parents are coming out for Christmas, so he and I will probably go to the new theater down the street and see it. I don't think that my mom would go to that one with him, so it'll be one of my presents to him.

EDIT: Confirmation. Just got an e-mail that he wants to take me to the movie.

 

[gene]

While it definately wasn't a blockbuster, it wasn't quite as bad as everyone claimed. I thought Keanu Reeves was par for the course with his mediocre acting skills. The boy almost ruined the movie completely, but luckily he somewhat redeemed himself towards the end.

Overall I'd give it a C rating.

 

[darien87]

The wife disliked it more than I did. She said she felt like she was watching a "made for TV movie". I thought it was all right. The original is definitely better. But I liked how they updated it.

GORT definitely needed to do more damage. Kinda funny how the movie is about how destructive humans are, and we're complaining that GORT didn't blow enough **** up.

 

[skizzerflake]

I thought it was pretty good. Bear in mind that the original is in my canon of definitive sci-fi, so my expectations of a high-tech digitized "Day" was limited. Nevertheless, I thought it was very good. Reeves was an ideal choice for Klaatu. In most of his roles he seems like somewhat of an alien, but for this it worked for him. Changing the message from bombs to the environment worked. I can't see the old device of convening all the world's scientists working today since, especially in the US, religionists have diminished the leadership of science. Only a stark demonstration of power would convince anybody and this movie delivered on that.

 

[highfigh]

While it definately wasn't a blockbuster, it wasn't quite as bad as everyone claimed. I thought Keanu Reeves was par for the course with his mediocre acting skills. The boy almost ruined the movie completely, but luckily he somewhat redeemed himself towards the end.

Overall I'd give it a C rating.

Part of my problem with KR in that role is that he could break into his character from 'Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure', which would ruin it for me, having seen the original. It might be OK for comedic effect, though.

I think the original worked so well is that when it was make, nuclear power was very new, it was a much more innocent time and people hadn't seen or carried out the acts of violence we/they have. It takes a lot more to shock people now.

 

[speakerman39]

I just got home from seeing this one. However, several members of my family came along as well. This is NOT the normal case for me as I prefer to go it alone. One of my nephews kind of got on my nerves a bit. For starters, he had ants in his pants so to speak. That is, my nephew could not be still for a second. Then to make matters worse, he likes to talk a bit too much during the movie!

As far as the movie goes, I must say I enjoyed it for the most part. Personally, I thought KR done a great job playing his role. Some of the special effects were done very well. Still others, were a bit too cheezy imho. Once again, I just did not like the ending. It seems as of late, that once I find myself enjoying a movie it abruptly ends leaving me with that WTF feeling. This one was no different on that part.

Cheers,

Phil

 

[MUDSHARK]

My two sons seen it last week. My eldest was not impressed thinking there was a lacking story and too much reliance on special effects. The original was a classic and I think my sons were expecting more. My sons are not harsh critics and enjoy most movies for what it is worth.

 

[mtrycrafts]

.. It seems as of late, that once I find myself enjoying a movie it abruptly ends leaving me with that WTF feeling. This one was no different on that part.

Cheers,

Phil

I saw it this noon and had the same feeling about the ending. It left me hanging for a few more lines, like 'we will keep on eye on your planet...'

 

[gene]

The ending was definately anti-climatic, no pun intended

 

[astrodon]

As I have mentioned in the past, the original TDTESS is one of the 3 best science fiction movies ever made (Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey being the other 2). As such, I was expecting this movie to be horrible, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be, though I still had a lot of problems with it. I agree with many of the posts here that the ending was lame and GORT was very under used. Also, I didn't think KR did a very good job acting. One of the things that makes the original so good is their accuracy of science (especially the physics presented) and mathematics. As is the case with most movies and TV shows of today, scientists are protrayed as either medical doctors or some type of biologist. I guess since so many college students these days don't take physics or do extremely poor in algebra-based physics (very few take any higher forms of physics in college), movie makers don't have the leading smart people as physicists anymore. I was very perturbed to see Prof. Barnhart as some type of biologist instead of a physicist and was even more perturbed when Klaatu says that the equation on the blackboard was wrong once I saw what was written on the blackboard. First, the equation appeared to be one of the field equations of general relativity, which a biologist would have no interest in solving nor even know how to write it down, and there was no solution written on the board, just the equation (unlike the original movie which had a Taylor series solution to a differential equation in celestial mechanics which Klaatu helps Prof. Barnhart solve). It was unclear what the current Klaatu (KR) was writing and what and why John Cleese started writing on the blackboard as this Klaatu was working on the board. Also, I didn't like what they did with GORT (I won't give anything away here). Finally, evidently Klaatu doesn't seem to think that plants are lifeforms, since he only seemed interested in saving the animal population. The animals wouldn't last long on the planet without plants (though perhaps the "cloud" was smart enough not to eat the plants). I see that this movie didn't do well during this second weekend which doesn't surprise me at all. I hope Hollywood does not try to remake Forbidden Planet.

I did buy the original movie on Bluray last week and was very impressed with this Bluray disk.

 

[mike c]

so should i watch the original before this one?

 

[speakerman39]

I saw it this noon and had the same feeling about the ending. It left me hanging for a few more lines, like 'we will keep on eye on your planet...'

Very much agreed here. It was as if they ran out of money or something and as such decided to pull the plug so to speak. Unfortunately, this pattern is becoming much more of the norm rather than the exception. This formula is not a winning combination in my book!

Cheers,

Phil

 

[astrodon]

so should i watch the original before this one?

Definitely! However you don't need to see the original to understand the current version. Once you see the original, I think you will see how much better the original is as compare to this one (you especially will see how much more menacing Gort is in the original).

 

[skizzerflake]

The ending was definately anti-climatic, no pun intended

I didn't think a climax was intended. In the original, Klaatu made his speech, got back on the saucer and flew away. In the new one, he tells the president's asst that we have messed up the world, stops everything, allows the nano-bots to eat the stadium and then goes away. Once again, a sci-fi movie ends with NYC in ruins, but this time we seem to know why. It was OK...not a great movie that broke ground like the original, but it was good.

 

[Tomorrow]

I'm with Crow....er, Astrodon on this one. The original was a classic. I was lucky enough to see it in its first run. This one was a mug-job for KR. CG was average.

Actually, I may have enjoyed this one more if they had turned on the heating in the theater. It was 33 degrees outside and roughly 34 degrees inside. My wife and I nearly froze. We complained several times, and they just said..."okay, we'll fix it". No...they didn't...but we sat like troopers to the end.

What a waste of time and money.

 

[skizzerflake]

I'm with Crow....er, Astrodon on this one. The original was a classic. I was lucky enough to see it in its first run. This one was a mug-job for KR. CG was average.

Actually, I may have enjoyed this one more if they had turned on the heating in the theater. It was 33 degrees outside and roughly 34 degrees inside. My wife and I nearly froze. We complained several times, and they just said..."okay, we'll fix it". No...they didn't...but we sat like troopers to the end.

What a waste of time and money.

I recall a better remake of TDTESS, which was James Cameron's 1989 "The Abyss". This movie got cut up in its theatrical release because it seemed too long for theater owners and because everybody thought Cameron was a megalomaniac (a fair accusation for the guy who thought he became King of the World after Titanic) and didn't do that well. In its director's cut on DVD however, it is a better and longer movie than the theatrical version and certainly better than the current TDTESS (even though I liked to new one too).

 

[robmlisanti]

My Brother in law and wife dragged me to this movie Saturday...I read the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.com and figured it wouldnt be as good as the original ( Not many remakes really are better than the originals)

All i can say is that like some have said there were a "FEW" moments in this movie that were ok...IMO they should have left it alone..... D+ or 2.5 Stars out of 5

 

[Tomorrow]