Surprise! It really IS a science fiction double feature because today I'm watching the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring KEANU REEVES AS KLAATU. Amazing choice. Jennifer Connolly is Ms. (Professor, this time) Benson/Mom, JADEN FUCKING SMITH is her son Bobby (renamed Jacob because no one names their kids Bobby anymore) - also amazing - and JOHN MOTHERFUCKING CLEESE is Professor Barnhardt. There's also Kathy Bates as Regina Jackson, a character I don't remember from the first movie. The casting directors really hit it out of the park with this one.

This movie has 5.5 out of 10 stars on IMDB and an abysmal 20% critics (27% audience) on Rotten Tomatoes. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE WITH THIS AMAZING CAST?? People must not have understood what a gem they were watching. But let's see what we think. I’ll try to keep this post shorter than the actual script of the movie, but no promises.

Link to my recap/review of the original.

The Day The Earth Stood Still - 2008

3/5 stars

Starring:

Keanu Reeves (Klaatu)

Jennifer Connolly (Professor Benson/Mom)

Jaden Smith (Jacob)

John Cleese (Professor Barnhardt)

Kathy Bates (Regina Jackson)

Recap

ACT I - An Alien Appears

Right off the bat we know to expect some changes, because the movie's description is Keanu Reeves is an alien who arrives on Earth with a warning for mankind: stop poisoning the planet or face extermination. Why does an alien care what we do to our planet? The original Klaatu was worried about Earth nuking other planets.

I really hope Gort is in this movie.

We open with a bearded Keanu Reeves in 1928 in the Karakoram mountains of India for some reason. He's climbing a mountain during a blizzard all by himself, trying to reach a throbbing light at the top of it. Maybe it's Gort! Nope, it's a glowing orb that sort of looks like ice but is obviously something more mystical/outer-spacy.

He breaks it open and it's full of swirling colors that look like the surface of Jupiter or something. Keanu passes out. He wakes up with some kind of weird round scar on his hand, and the ice ball is gone.

Cut to Princeton University, present day, where Mom is now Professor Benson and she's teaching microbiology. She wants her students to tell her which of three bizarre bacteria might potentially survive on Jupiter's moon, Callisto. Are we going to declare germ war on Jupiter?

Professor Mom goes home - we get an establishing shot of her crossing a bridge, so that we know she lives in New York I guess - AND OH MY GOD JADEN SMITH IS PLAYING WORLD OF WARCRAFT.

Oh my gosh and he's so little. This is years before Karate Kid I guess. He's a little too young to be playing WoW honestly. He looks about eight. He's probably one of those little shits I used to run into in battlegrounds. He’s a human paladin and he’s fighting naga in Stranglethorn Vale. He’s not using any add-ons and his spell bar is a mess. I think the spells are literally in the order you unlock them.

He tells Professor Mom to "stop being such a stepmom," so everyone who was wondering why Jennifer Connolly has a Black kid, you can relax. His dad seems to be dead and Professor Stepmom's relationship with the kid doesn't seem to be the best. We’ll find out later that his dad was an army engineer and died a year ago, leaving his stepmom “stuck” with him (Jaden’s words, not stepmom’s).

Professor Stepmom gets a weird phone call announcing that "someone will be there soon." Someone turns out to be some kind of federal agent, who tells her she's now in federal custody. The federal agent announces that There! Isn't! Much! Time! The motorcade screeches off. Professor Stepmom demands an answer but the federal agent doesn't know what's going on, just that her (presumably Jovian germ warfare) expertise is urgently needed. She's eventually put into an army truck with a bunch of soldiers and some other nerdy-looking (and exclusively male) civilians who turn out to also be scientists.

They wind up at a military academy in New Jersey, soldiers swarming everywhere. It’s time for the briefing. An object was spotted moving toward Earth! It's not an asteroid! It's on a collision course with Earth! It's heading straight toward Manhattan!

Someone suggests shooting down with a missile, Reagan-era Star Wars style. The man in charge of the slide show says that the chances of that succeeding are "slim at best." Someone should have explained that to Reagan. There's no time to evacuate the area so they're not going to attempt an evacuation or even tell the good people of Manhattan that it's happening. They're just going to "plan for the aftermath." How long do they have? 78 minutes! I feel like at least a few people could escape Manhattan in 78 minutes, but okay.

The scientists shout at each other. Could it be a primordial black hole, perhaps? Wait, black holes zoom through space? What's a "primordial" black hole? I have questions. It's a moot point, anyway - whatever it is, it's going to impact so hard that Manhattan will be reduced to dust and the entire planet will be sterilized. And guess what, the "slim at best" missile has been mysteriously de-activated. There's only seconds left to go! Professor Stepmom looks sad about Jaden Smith.

But there's no impact because Kea-tu (that's what I'm calling him - Keanu + Klaatu, get it??) has put on the brakes, of course. The object is his glowing space orb. It lands in Central Park - so, NOT the United Nations - and the army surrounds it with flashlights and guns. The scientists are all in hazmat suits. The orb of light puts out a little radiation and a lot of electrostatic interference. It’s also putting out some vibes that only Stepmom can feel. Then we see the ship and yes, it's the giant glowing ice marble that Keanu found on the mountain, only it's way bigger now.

The army is going into action! Everybody's shouting! There are sirens and guns! Nobody knows who has jurisdiction on this site. It’s Central Park, dude, are you telling me there’s never been an incident in Central Park before? Flood lights! Helicopters! Snipers! They're going to assassinate the marble!

A figure emerges from a blinding light. Professor Stepmom moves toward it. It reaches out for her. Someone shoots it. Stepmom, splattered with blood, catches it. It appears to be a human wrapped in a thick layer of Saran Wrap.

OH MY GOD GORT!!! GORT IS HERE AND HE'S ACTUALLY GIANT!!

He immobilizes everyone with a piercing screech. He's about to grab Stepmom when the dying alien says (take a wild guess!) "Klaatu barada nikto." Gort powers down.

Saran Wrap Alien is rushed into surgery. No one knows it's physiology but it sure doesn't seem to like the defibrillation paddles someone uses on it. That guy gets blown across the room. The surgeon takes a sample of the alien's flesh and describes it as the texture of whale blubber.

Yuck. But guess what, friends? Underneath the whale blubber, THE ALIEN IS HUMAN.

Okay, I see the problem with this movie. It takes itself too seriously. It refuses to be camp. It has to bend over backwards to explain how an alien can look like a human, and survive in our atmosphere, etc. If they'd spent a tenth that much effort filling the movie's other plot holes, it might have gotten better than 20% on Rotten Tomatoes.

ACT II - Humans are Bad but Aliens are Arguably Worse

Here's Kathy Bates! She calls herself "the eyes and ears of the presidency" (the president having fled to a secure location, of course) and she's addressed as "Madam Secretary," so I'm guessing Secretary of Defense. Check out all those pearls.

Plot twist! More of these things are landing all over the earth. And bad news: the aliens were able to hack into the satellite mainframe to disable the missile defenses, and now they know everything about the US's defensive capabilities and we have to assume they're invading!

This is nowhere near as wholesome, or as jingoistic, as the original. I just want to see Keatu and Jaden Smith visiting the Lincoln monument!

Keatu turns out to have three types of DNA going on. His body is human (boring), the blubber is a bio-engineered space suit resembling placental tissue (gross), and the brain is something else that they don’t bother describing even though that sort of seems like the most important part. But - aha! - the human inside the placenta suit is not the Himalayan explorer we saw before, but a clone! Back in the 20s they stole his DNA when he touched the ice orb. That’s why explorer Keanu had the scar on his hand, I guess. The clone was “born” when its placenta suit fell off, and then rapidly developed into Keanu Reeves.

And it’s time to talk to him now! Keanu made some unfortunate acting choices for this role that might have contributed to its abysmal ratings, because everything he says is in a monotone with no facial expression at all. It makes sense for the character, I guess, but it’s not very compelling to watch.

Anyway, he wants to talk to the UN! Yes! But Kathy Bates says no, and has him sedated when he tells her that the planet doesn’t belong to us.

Instead of taking the alien representing “many” alien civilizations to the UN like he asked, Kathy Bates wants to drug and interrogate him. She’s not wrong to suspect, or at least fear, that the human race is about to get the indigenous-culture-treatment by a band of conquering aliens, but I don’t see how having him talk to the UN would make that scenario worse. You probably want the whole human race on board with defending itself, don’t you?

Instead of answering questions about an impending alien attack, Keatu uses his alien brain to make the machine go haywire, electroshock the interrogator, and then ask some questions of his own, like how to GTFO of this military installation. He even takes the interrogator’s suit. Then he uses his alien brain to hack all the security cameras, and electroshock all the G-men in the corridor using their earbuds. This is not going to reassure anyone about you, Keatu. You’re kind of making Kathy Bates seem right.

So, just like in the original, Klaatu is wandering around town in a borrowed suit. Unlike the original, he electrocutes a vending machine into giving him a tuna sandwich. This is a useful skill! He watches, unmoved, as a man is mugged right in front of him. He watches news coverage - the rest of the world is kind of unhappy about how the US handled the whole sphere thing. Right, what was the point of not letting him talk to the UN again? It’s not like you can keep him a secret. Uh oh, he’s bleeding through his nice starched shirt! He collapses in a bathroom.

Stepmom and Jaden Smith are sitting at home. “School’s canceled on account of the aliens,” Jaden says. Great line. Stepmom gets a phone call - her “patient” is at Penn Station and says that she has his “medicine”. It takes her a minute to cotton on, but then she’s on her way to pick Keatu up, with Jaden in the back seat. Stepmom actually does have Keatu’s medicine, because he snuck it into her inside pocket at some point. He smears it on his bullet scar and feels better.

Meanwhile, the military is scrambling drones. I thought they were searching for Keatu but actually they’re attacking Gort. Gort uses his eye beams to take control of the jets and crash them into the tanks surrounding him. The army is mad.

Back in the car, heading against traffic on the highway, Stepmom and Jaden Smith get into a very funny argument about whether Jaden’s dad would have fought the aliens or not, which turns into a fight about which of them knew him better. This is so real. Jaden appeals to Keatu for his opinion. On what your dad would have done? Oh, no, on whether humans in general should run or fight. Keatu says neither, they should do nothing because there’s nothing they can do. Some brutal existentialism from Keatu.

But they’ve arrived at their destination. It’s... a McDonalds.

Keatu is here to meet someone. It’s perennial Old Chinese Man James Hong! He and Keatu converse in Mandarin.

James Hong is also an alien! He’s been out of contact a long time. Okay, I have questions:

• If James Hong has been on Earth for a while - 70 years, he says - and nobody noticed, why the hell did Keatu come in the giant orb of light that freaked everybody out?

• Why are they speaking in Mandarin and not in their native alien language?

• Is the grandson who brought him to the McDonald’s also an alien? (Stepmom asks this question too - “are you one of THEM?” - but then takes it back when she realizes it sounds kind of racist.)

• I guess if the aliens clone themselves human bodies they're capable of procreating. But then does the grandson know his grandpa is an alien?

We will not get the answers to any of these questions.

James Hong and Keatu basically agree that humans suck and there’s no saving them from themselves. As a human, I feel kind of insulted, but I can’t say they’re totally wrong. I mean, some of us are trying to do something, I feel like we deserve a little credit. Keatu says that since humans are irredeemable he’s going to “begin the process,” and then James Hong can leave with him. James Hong says nah. He’s gonna stay on Earth and die because even though humans are the worst, he kind of loves them. This is even more insulting. They also switch into English for this part of the conversation, with sad piano music in the background, just in case it wasn’t patronizing enough! Keatu listens to the emotional speech with absolute frozen face.

Meanwhile, the army is now trying to encase Gort in some panels so that he can’t shoot at their drones anymore. Gort doesn’t retaliate. Lots of people are calling 911 reporting Keatu sightings. Jaden Smith is asking some important questions like Who Is This Guy and Why Are We Giving Him Rides to the Forest and What’s Going On.

He will not get answers to any of these questions. Stepmom kind of sucks.

The forest is so dark that I can’t totally tell what is happening, but Keatu seems to be levitating one of the glowing alien orbs out of a swamp, Luke Skywalker-style. He touches it, and then we see a montage of other orbs - the one in Central Park surrounded by army equipment, one in a desert to which are bunch of snakes are being drawn, one in a jungle summoning birds. So the orbs are little mini arks? Keatu’s “process” is to suck up all the other life forms and take them somewhere else, instead of just culling the over-populated species?

Jaden Smith gets tired of being dragged around on this miserable adventure, and is afraid Stepmom is planning to make Keatu his new stepdad, so he get out of the car just in time to see the forest orb take off. All the orbs are lifting off, except the main one in Central Park.

Keatu finally explains to Professor Stepmom that he’s here to save the Earth from humans and that in order to do that, the humans have to die. So I guess they’re also wiping us out.

A state trooper guy drives up to them where they’re parked in the forest and tries to arrest Keatu. Keatu puts his hands on Stepmom’s car and causes it to drive itself over the trooper. That is a real asshole move. I don’t like this Klaatu. Neither does Jaden Smith. The sheriff is dead, but Keatu resurrects him with a combination of his magic medicinal ointment and electricity from the car, a process which looks a lot more painful than being run over by the car in the first place.

Stepmom points out the hypocrisy of saving the trooper (after murdering him) when Keatu is planning to kill the entire human race. Keatu explains emotionlessly that he meant the sheriff no harm, but considering he means the entire human race harm, this seems like splitting hairs. Stepmom insists that Keatu must be able to stop the process, and if he wants to talk to Earth’s leaders, she’ll take him to one.

Kathy Bates has figured out that the spheres were arks. Which means what comes next is… the flood. Duh duh DUHHHHH!!

Inside his little (or large) metal box, Gort’s eye slit lights up.

ACT III - Intellectuals Good, Army Bad

And who does Stepmom take Keatu to? MOTHERFUCKING JOHN CLEESE, THAT’S WHO. John Cleese won a Nobel prize for his work in biological altruism. I didn’t know that was a Nobel category. In a callback to the original movie, Keatu corrects Professor John Cleese’s math on the chalkboard. Professor Cleese walks in (in his bathrobe) to find Keatu writing on his board, and joins him. They communicate in math for a little while.

Keatu might be moved by the music of Bach playing over Professor Cleese’s sound system, but it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t emote.

The army is still trying to solve the puzzle of Gort, which they have named GORT - Genetically Organized Robotic Technology. Once again, a lame attempt to make something that was just cool 50s sci-fi stuff seem “realistic.” His name is Gort, just let him have a cool sci-fi name.

There’s now a control room built into Gort’s box, from which the military can watch tests being run on him… including an MRI, which how the fuck did they fit Gort into an MRI machine?? Is the box they assembled for him one giant MRI? They’re now drilling into him with a robotic diamond-tipped drill.

Jaden sees a warning about Keatu (who’s being described as an “escaped convict”) on the news and what do you want to bet he’s going to call the crisis number?

Professor Cleese explains to Keatu that humans are capable of change but that it requires the exigency of near-extinction to inspire the will to change. They have that now so if Keatu will just leave them alone they will surely fix everything on their own. “This is our moment,” Professor Cleese says; “don’t take it away from us.”

Keatu might be considering this but it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t emote. Before he can answer, though, here comes the military because yep, Jaden Smith sure called that tip line. Time to go. Professor Cleese tells Professor Stepmom to “change his mind - not with reason, but with yourself.” Excuse me? Just what are you suggesting, sir?

They run into the woods, but when Jaden Smith tries to flag down the military helicopters, Stepmom realizes he ratted them out. They fight about his dead dad some more, and then someone jumps out of the helicopter, snatches Stepmom, lifts her into the sky and flies away. That was way funnier than it should have been. Two more helicopters attempt to shoot Keatu, but he uses their targeting beams to fry their electronics. Neat trick. They crash and explode. This is upsetting to Jaden Smith and he runs away into the woods. Keatu follows him, less because he cares about Jaden than because he’s going in the same direction. But when he saves Jaden from falling off a rotting bridge, Jaden decides maybe Keatu isn’t all bad.

Some military dude removes a broken drill bit from Gort. The camera zooms in on it and… it’s covered in weird black insects that are reproducing rapidly via mitosis.

Some of them get on the guy who’s installing the new drill bit. He’s the freshest-faced baby soldier you’ve ever seen so you know he’s in for it. Gort’s eye is on so watch out! The insects are eating through his haz-met suit and also his skin. And also Gort’s restraints and the glass of the observation deck. The guy in charge hits the giant FLASH button that causes fire to burn everything inside Gort’s enclosure, but of course Gort is fine. Then he dissolves into a swarm of the bugs? Or possibly metal shavings? It’s kind of unclear what’s going on here.

The Gort swarm busts out of the military complex - which is in the desert so I guess they must have airlifted Gort from Central Park. All the army guys on site are killed. The military tries to hit it with some sidewinders but it only gets bigger. And it’s headed… EVERYWHERE! And seems to be eating everything as it goes.

ACT IV - Humans Might Be Destroying the Planet but They Love Each Other so it's Fine

Kathy Bates has finally decided that maybe she actually can’t do anything about this situation and agrees to let Professor Stepmom try to talk Keatu down. Now that the Gort swarm is out, I’m not sure you can put genie back in the bottle.

Jaden and Gort break into some kind of ranger station and use the phone to call Stepmom. Jaden comes up with the idea of meeting her at the cemetery where his dad is buried for some reason. I guess it’s conveniently nearby.

OH MY GOD the reason Jaden wanted to come here was to have Keatu resurrect his dad the way he did the state trooper. This miracle is beyond Keatu’s powers, but Keatu does give Jaden the Buddhist lesson that nothing dies, it is just transformed. Jaden finds this uncomforting. Keatu wanders off, leaving Jaden to cry on his father’s grave, where Stepmom finds him. They apologize to each other and bond over how much they miss Dad.

Keatu watches them. He’s had an epiphany, but it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t emote. He sees now what James Hong was talking about. Humans have another side! They’re not just destructive, they’re also loving and blah blah blah. But here comes the Gort swarm! Keatu confirms that that’s what’s going to destroy the Earth, and he doesn’t know if he can stop it. He’ll try though.

Kathy Bates talks with the President on the phone, explaining that any further military intervention will just make things worse. Sounds like the President isn’t having it. The swarm’s heading right toward Manhattan, scouring the earth as it goes. Seeing as how it seems to have escaped from a military installation in the southwest, this would indicate it's already destroyed most of the country. (Again - this saves the planet how, exactly?)

Team Keatu crashes through a military checkpoint on the way into the city, but turns out the military has orders to let them through anyway. They’ve also cleared the area around Keatu’s original sphere. Stepmom realizes a moment too late that this is too good to be true. The ground is mined. Fortunately for Team Keatu their SUV is just flipped over and not actually blown up. But the Gort swarm is here! They run to the sphere while the bugs/metal shavings destroy everything around them without actually touching them. The sphere is too far - they run under an underpass instead.

Jaden Smith passes out. Keatu explains that the Gort swarm is inside him, and he’s dying. Whoopsie. Keatu draws the insects out of him - here they look like ants. Then he walks out into the Gort swarm all the way to the sphere. He touches it just before the swarm turns him to dust.

The sphere flashes, and all the insects die. Except when they’re covering the ground, they look like metal shavings again. The electricity also goes out all over the world, in a call back to the original. All the cars die, too. Presumably planes fall out of the sky but we don’t see that. Oil wells stop drilling. Even Kathy Bates’s watch has stopped working. The world is saved! Though it's unclear whether this is temporary or whether Keatu sent the human race permanently back to pre-industrial times.

The sphere takes off on its own. Stepmom says, “It’s leaving,” but Jaden corrects her: “He’s leaving.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean since we saw Keatu get pulverized, but maybe his alien brain escaped into the ship or something.

The End!

Thoughts

Most of the negative reviews of the film focus first on Keanu Reeves’s utter lack of affect, and second on the movie’s slow pace. It’s only an hour and 44 minutes but it feels a lot longer than that. There are many shots that linger for too long.

On the whole, I didn’t think it was a terrible movie. It was fine. In 2008 the human-caused global annihilation message might have seemed heavy-handed (Roger Ebert says in his review, "The message of the 2008 version is that we should have voted for Al Gore.") but these days it’s just like, well, yeah, the plane'ts dying because of us, obviously. (Also, we fucking should have voted for Al Gore.)

The interesting thing is that they kind of reversed Klaatu’s character arc. The original Klaatu comes to earth pretty cheerful and not even too mad about being shot. He enjoys getting to know Bobby and learning about American values. But he ends the film mad, because the humans are so stubborn and keep using violence to solve their problems. He gives up on humanity at the end, leaving with the promise that he and his buddies will destroy us if they have to. But he doesn’t actually destroy us.

This Klaatu starts thinking humanity sucks donkey balls until he learns about the power of love or whatever. He does try to destroy us but then decides that we can be redeemed. I feel like this kind of pulled the punch. The original movie leaves you feeling kind of ashamed that humanity pissed off such a nice alien. This one ends more like, fuck yeah, we’re not so bad!

The most important change to me, though, is that Keatu wanted to talk to the UN from the get-go. That was my biggest problem with the original! And it’s stupid that Kathy Bates didn’t let him, but at least he arrived on Earth with a more logical plan. So while it might have been a 2 star movie - 2.5 at best - I'm bumping it up to a 3 in appreciation.