The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Date: 12/21/08
Theatre.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/

Warning. Pretty heavy spoilers regarding both versions of the film to follow. I normally try to avoid this, however, it is absolutely necessary in breaking down why this film fails.

The Day the Earth Stood Still.

     Alright. Let's start with the good. The cinematography. A few pretty sweet moments. Notably, when the spaceship (if you can really call it that) is descending and beams of light are are showering cathedrals and buildings in downtown NY. Okay, that's pretty much all I've got for this category.
     This film is quite simply a failure. Why? The message is completely lost. One can but wonder who is to blame for this. Is it the director? He seemed to have good intentions, however under-realized they may be. The studio? That's where my money is. There hasn't been much conceptual science fiction as of late, so I guess it's cool they at least green lighted this. However, they mistakenly decided to try and "upgrade" the quiet, thoughtful film into a summer OMG CGI blockbuster. One only has to watch the seemingly endless action sequences the film degrades is swimming in to realize this. Okay, so the studio is trying to make money by pushing the action sequences non-stop, fair enough. Unforgivable, however, is the studio's constant product placement. A little bit here and there is expected in today's Hollywood, however, this film sets a new low. McDonalds, LG phones, Citizen Watches, Hyundai, Vista, Worlds of Warcraft, you name it. The absolute worst is the McDonalds moment. Groan-inducing, is too nice of a term for this scene. Keanu Reeves literally drives us to a McDonalds, only to proclaim "we're here." right as the big, glowing, golden arches reflect on the car window. This moment is followed by a tracking shot of a cup of coffee. Is this supposed to be a joke? A film (that once had) such a strong message has been degraded to a McDonalds commercial.
     Pretending the film didn't have the aforementioned issues, clearly the film's most major issue is it's plot and message. The original film had a very clear message and a logical ending. For this "re-imagining" only some aspects of the plot are updated while others remained unchanged and the film is worse off because of it. The idea behind the updating is clear enough, and definitely appropriate in today's society. The "alien race" is threatening to eradicate life on Earth, because humans are destroying the planet. Their plan is to remove all of the innocent creatures, wipeout everything the humans once were, and then replace animals who will revive the Earth to it's former state. At the end of the film, Keanu Reeves changes his mind and decides to save the people of the Earth instead of letting them be massacred. The film expects you to ignore the fact that the aliens want to save the planet because it supports intelligent life by wiping out the one species that is arguably intelligent on it. Okay, ignore that. Lets move on to the climax. Keanu is so moved by seeing the love between the mother and her step-son that he decided humans can change and save the planet. Ummm... why, exactly? In the original film, the issue at hand was humans killing each other, so having the Klaatu character moved to save the Earth because of witnessing the true love between people actually makes sense. In this new, updated setting where Keanu Reeves is destroying Humans to prevent humans from destroying the Earth, how does this ending make any sense at all? It doesn't. "Aw, humans can love. They probably won't destroy the Earth, it's cool." is all I can figure went through Keanu's head.
      Thankfully, we'll always have the original Day the Earth Stood Still to remind us of a time when a motion picture could be art with higher ambitions than selling french fries and cell phones. The only thing this update to The Day the Earth Stood Still reminds us of is how important films like The Pleasure of Being Robbed are; without them it would be far too easy to argue that the art of cinema has vanished in favor of fancy commercials.