THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) - KLAATU
Well in case you haven't been paying much attention to anything lately, the state of the world is a bit of a mess. Beyond the pandemic that will potentially never go away while a party that doesn't believe in testing or science "leads" the way, we've also got more civil unrest that I can only imagine will continue for the foreseeable future.
So it's in this environment that I figure I better keep cranking out these posts, especially while I still have electricity! I'll get to why that's a joke as I reach the end of the synopsis of the 2008 Keanu Reeves led movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
One quick note that's non-specific to this movie - Blogspot recently changed their format and I've noticed that my embedded Youtube videos no longer show up on mobile devices. I don't know why, I don't know how to fix it, and I'm annoyed because sometimes I like to throw in some really great content here and the only way to see this as it's supposed to be seen is now through a desktop computer. So while I'll continue adding some Youtube embedding things when I want to, just know that if you're reading this on mobile there's a chance you might be missing out on just some great stuff.
Okay, on with the show and as you should know by now if you've read a single post to this point, full spoilers are ahead.
So "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a remake of a classic movie from 1951 of the same name, and while I've never seen the original, my understanding is that there is very little overlap in plots aside from some very basic setup elements.
The movie opens with Keanu Reeves as an unnamed hiker in the mountains of India in the year 1921. I'm not sure if he's supposed to be Indian or not because as you may or may not remember, he's already played an Indian once in the wretchedly boring movie, "Little Buddha."
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| Remember me? |
The hiker notices a big glowing orb buried in the snow and starts hacking at it with a pickaxe, he's knocked out cold and awakes to find a scar on his hand.
The movie then cuts to present day where we meet Dr. Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, teaching some sort of astronomical biology course at a college. I didn't quite catch what kind of scientist she is but I'm pretty sure it was something made up.
Anyway, she goes home to her stepson Jacob, played by an excruciatingly annoying Jaden Smith. We quickly learn that his dad is dead and he doesn't appear to have much respect for his stepmother.
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| How can this movie be real if our eyes aren't real? |
Helen is alarmed when a goddamn cavalcade of military and police vehicles show up at her house and sweep her off to an unknown location. She's whisked off to some sort of military installation where Jon Hamm tells a roomful of scientists that some sort of large object is rapidly headed towards Manhattan and they only have about 90 minutes to figure out how to stop it. Like, way to give us some time, the least you could have done was call Bruce Willis and a bunch of other off-shore riggers to try to stop this thing.
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| We're busy this time around |
Rather than do anything to attempt to stop whatever is coming, they all head towards downtown Manhattan with a shitload of helicopters and other military vehicles, where inexplicably the object slows down as it enters orbit and slowly lands in the middle of Central Park. It's this giant, glowing sphere and Helen's first instinct is to approach it, where a figure emerges and is immediately shot by an unknown person because that's probably exactly what we would do if this actually happened.
The object is also trailed by a gigantic robot/which is later named "GORT," who I will get to a bit more shortly. The now shot figure is grabbed by the military and swept off to another location where a doctor attempts to perform surgery to remove the bullet/save its life.
Slowly, the "placenta" like material is stripped away from the creature and what finally emerges is our hero, Keanu Reeves, who looks like the hiker from the beginning of the movie because the aliens harvested his DNA so they can blend in on Earth.
Nobody really knows what to make of this, but the Secretary of Defense, Kathy Bates as Regina Jackson, is alarmed. Helen starts to talk to Keanu, who thankfully speaks and understands English. We learn his name is Klaatu and he's come specifically to Manhattan in order to address all of the world's leaders at the United Nations.
Now if the name Klaatu rings a bell and you haven't seen either versions of this movie, it might be because a small part of the original film was borrowed in one of my favorite scenes in a much more entertaining movie, "Army of Darkness."
Well, Kathy Bates isn't having any of that shit and because Klaatu won't tell anyone what his intentions are, demands he be sedated and interrogated. This is idiocy of course because clearly this alien is a far more advanced species than humans. None of the scientists want to help out with this task and in the funniest if unintentional line of the movie, Jon Hamm declares, "As scientists we can't consent to this!"
Helen volunteers to administer the sedation, but swaps out whatever the military was planning on giving Klaatu with a harmless saline solution instead and warns Klaatu to run away.
I won't go much into the absurdness of the situation because it's a science fiction movie, but it never dawns on anyone in the room that this is an alien creature that might not react the same way as humans to anesthesia, saline, water, or anything else given or used on Klaatu upon his capture.
Anyway, Klaatu is brought into a room where he's essentially given a lie detector test and asked what the hell he's doing on Earth, but instead of answering the questions, Klaatu uses alien powers to crash the lie detector test and disable the proctor and all of the military guards outside the room.
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| "Do you willingly choose to star in mediocre movies?" |
Oh, and he also steals the proctor's suit (thankfully they wear the same size), which he wears for the rest of the movie.
By now, it's all over the news that a fucking alien has landed in a ship, which everyone is now referring to as "The Central Park Sphere," not to be confused with the "Central Park Five," although Donald Trump probably wants the sphere executed as well.
Panic starts to grip the world at large, with millions of people in multiple cities trying to evacuate, to go where I'm not entirely sure. GORT, who stands at something like 40 feet tall, is still hanging out in Central Park. Kathy Bates makes a good point that whenever two civilizations meet each other for the first time, the one with inferior technology usually ends up on the wrong side of the stick. There are many examples of this throughout the course of history and despite the fact that she knows that humans are probably fucked here, she orders the military to take out GORT in the park.
Of course, this attempt fails, and GORT is able to shoot down and destroy all the drones that are sent in to kill him. I don't even know why they bothered with this plan, particularly because at this point Klaatu's intentions are still unknown to everyone.
By now, Klaatu has escaped and made it as far as Penn Station, where he notices he is injured and collapses on a bathroom floor. He makes a call to Helen, who shows up at the station and picks him up and along with the most annoying child ever, head on the run. It's at this point we learn about Klaatu's miracle cure, some sort of balm that when applied to his skin is able to heal all wounds. He should be hawking this shit on late night television: Klaatu's Miracle Balm! If only Trump knew about this he might have finally found his COVID miracle cure.
Around this time, Klaatu tells Helen that he's come to "Save the Earth," but won't really elaborate, and in one of the most amazing product placements in movie history, has her drive him to a McDonald's. Seriously, that is something that happens in this movie.
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| Supersize me |
At McDonald's, Klaatu has a rendevous with an old Chinese man, played by James Hong, and they exchange words in Chinese despite the fact that they both speak English. Perhaps they don't want anyone at this McDonald's overhearing their conversation and I guess that would make sense since they are both aliens talking about the destruction of Earth. In any case, James Hong is also an alien who has been studying humans for over 70 years and basically says that they are all a lost cause. They're killing the planet and the species is basically worthless, and you know what? I can't really disagree with the man/alien.
Well, that about settles it for Klaatu. He lets Helen know his real intentions for coming to Earth, it's not to save the humans, it's to save the Earth from humans. See, Earth is one of the only planets in the entire universe capable of sustaining life and humans have gone and completely fucked it all up. And once again, I can't really disagree with the man/alien.
So there you have the message of the movie, it's basically about climate change, how prophetic.
Despite the fact that everyone in the country is looking for them, Helen tells Klaatu she can convince him to not destroy all of humanity. He tells her that it's already decided but she doesn't give up and instead drives him to one of her old professor's house.
They arrive and meet John Cleese and his chalkboard of mystery calculations, where Klaatu explains that his civilization had to change when they were also on the precipice of destruction. Cleese replies that now that the humans know that they are also on the brink of destruction, they can change too. I guess nobody told Klaatu about this great new fuel power, "Clean Coal."
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| Nails on a chalkboard |
This fucking idiot
Meanwhile back at Central Park, the military has managed to capture GORT and brought him to some sort of underground bunker, where Coach Taylor himself explains that they've run all sorts of tests on it including an MRI and a PET, and I would still love to know where they found an MRI machine capable of running a scan on a 40 foot tall robot.
| Clear eyes, full hearts! |
Back at the professor's house, Jaden Smith has fucking ratted out Klaatu and his step-mom to the FBI, so they show up in helicopters and attempt to recapture Klaatu, but manage to only get Helen. Klaatu and Jaden Smith run off while Helen tries to devise a plan to literally save the world.
It's at this point that GORT GOES BALLISTIC. The orders are in and GORT starts disintegrating into some kind of gigantic alien locust swarm that explodes, taking the bunker and everyone in it with it. Sorry Coach Taylor, you should have listened.
The locust swarm escapes the bunker and starts to destroy/erase everything in its path and humanity is doomed. Around this time, various glowing orbs all around the world also start to appear and leave the planet, taking all varieties of life with it as Kathy Bates determines this is like Noah's biblical ark come to life so that when all the humans are dead and gone, the aliens can rehabilitate the planet without them. Once again, I don't think this is a terrible plan.
As the locusts are destroying everything in their path, Klaatu and Jaden Smith meet up with Helen at the cemetery where her husband is buried. The locust swarm, I should note, are incredibly reminiscent of the atrocious made for TV movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Langoliers although the CGI in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is night and day better.
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| Trust me, there is no reason to ever watch this |
Here's where things start falling apart for me - Klaatu witnesses the love that Helen has for her horribly annoying stepson and decides, hey, let's give the humans another chance! I don't like nitpicking science fiction movies for logical flaws but this makes no sense. Klaatu is right - human beings are a garbage species that have destroyed the planet, so why does this one scene of Helen and her kid make him change his mind? I don't know, he never says and a movie that had previously been simply mediocre loses several points here.
Klaatu tells Helen he can reverse course, but humans will pay a price. He navigates his way through the locust swarm and returns to his sphere and the power goes out (forever?) all over the world. The sphere leaves the planet and the movie ends.
This leaves me with a ton of questions that aren't answered. So humanity gets to live, but without electricity? Is this going to repair all of the damage we've already done? Is there any reason humans can't get electricity back? What about the seemingly millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of people that have already died from the locusts or the people that are now going to die without a source of power?
Fuck it, who cares.
Just a small amount of scattered thoughts on this one:
*We are told that John Cleese has won a Nobel Prize, or what the president would call a Noble Prize, in "Biological Altruism." Yeah, I"m pretty sure that's not a thing.
*I'm just a bit curious how McDonald's came to be heavily featured in this movie, aside from an extremely long shot of the exterior of a McDonald's, there's also that long shot inside of it where it's determined to end humanity on Earth. I guess McDonald's is as good a place as any to make that decision, especially if Klaatu ordered a filet-o-fish. If only he'd gotten a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit perhaps he would have gone the other way.
The only thing to ever order at McDonald's
*Speaking of McDonald's product placement, I think I prefer this one (sorry if you're on mobile and I don't know how to fix Blogspot):
*There's a far shot of Times Square where we clearly see a gigantic advertisement for "The Soup" back when Joel Mchale hosted the show and wow did that make me long for the days of Joel Mchale hosting that show.
*I'm not sure the status, but as of a few days ago we learned there's a meteor headed towards Earth with about a .5% chance of hitting us. Given how 2020 has gone so far, it wouldn't surprise me nor would I be particularly upset if it took us all out.
*The special effects in this movie are pretty good! I especially liked when the locust swarm destroys the New York Giant's stadium, because fuck the Giants.
Box Office Information: $79 Million Domestic ($100 Million inflation adjusted)/$158 Million international for a total of $237 Million worldwide on a budget of $80 Million. I had no idea this movie was this successful. It was released in December of 2008 so it was just the 43rd highest grossing movie of the year but would have been higher had it not overlapped two calendar years.
Rotten Tomatoes: 21% Critics/27% audience. I'm a little surprised at these really low numbers, it's really not that bad.
IMDB: 5.5
My Movie Rating: 4.5 - I wouldn't recommend this to anyone and I even would have been willing to give it a half a point higher if not for the very stupid ending where Klaatu decides to save humanity for basically no reason in return for shutting down electricity forever. You know what, just typing that sentence I'm revising my rating to a 4.
Keanu Rating: Oof, this is a tough one. Keanu is playing a very stoic, very robotic alien creature and I actually think he was cast pretty well for this type of character. I don't want to let my feelings on this movie color my grade for him, so I'm going to give him a relatively generous 6.5
Up Next: Some movie called "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee." I get the impression that he has a very small role in this a la "Thumbsucker," but you know what, if I watched that despite his minimal role then I guess I'll watch whatever the hell this is as well, assuming I can find it.
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