Day the Earth Stood Still - Freeper Review w/ Spoilers

My seething mind | 12 Dec 08 | Moi

[A_perfect_lady]

I have just seen The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Keanu Reeves and some skinny chick. Three warnings before we continue:

1) I never saw the original, so this isn't going to be a comparative essay.
2) I will forgive Keanu anything (it's a female thing). and
3) I'm writing this for those of you who wouldn't go see this at gunpoint, so that you can still make fun of it anyway. In other words, there will be spoilers. If there's any chance you're going to see this and want some tiny iota of suspense left (ha) then run away, run away! Be free!

Okay.

First of all, yeah, it's an environmentalist message. It's not specific, there's no whining about carbon credits, polluted rivers, the ozone, global warming, or anything else. In fact, the movie proceeds with the assumption that everyone knows The Danger We Are In. This is a movie for a generation of children educated in public schools. On the bright side, there's not much lecturing. Klaatu (played by Keanu, who can point his nose and stare better than anyone) remarks that this is one of the few planets that can support complex life, and humans are a problem, so they've just got to go. That's pretty much the extent of the preaching. The rest is special effects, and rain.

The role of the military/American government... well, it's kind of interesting. There's a little of the "American government being the Heavy" but since no other government is pictured at all, much less being any better, it's not as if there is a Noble Savage being depicted as the downtrodden victim of American Might. Things clip along pretty quickly, once the introductory scenes are over:

Spaceship lands, alien emerges, though all the military and police that can be crammed into Central Park are drawn on him, it is not a matter of the Americans Gunning Down the Alien. It's a single shot, probably squeezed off in panic. The Alien collapses into the skinny chick's arms, and the huge robot, Gort, emerges. The robot leans down, does something that seems to keep alive the alien (still indistinguishable in a huge, movable placenta) and then straightens and goes still.

Medics then rush the alien away to what looks kind of like the same room Neo was taken to when he was first liberated from the Matrix.

I'll take a moment to note that Keanu gravitates to roles where he is reborn again and again. Poor guy obviously wants a do-over in this life. It must suck to be tall, gorgeous, and wealthy.

While Kathy Bates is indeed the stern voice of American authority, she's not evil. When Klaatu asks to speak to the UN, she denies him, remarking later that when civilizations meet, the lesser of the two goes down, and this time it's us. We do not want to mess about with addressing the UN, we want to know what you intend. That she might have found out by letting him address the UN seems fairly obvious to me, but oh well.

Of course, near the end of the film, Klaatu admits he's here to wipe us out, so what he was going to say to the UN, I do not know. "Hello, I am here to wipe you out. Thank you for your attention."

The skinny chick (Jennifer Connelly, who is all spider legs and eyebrows) helps him get away because scientists do not "interrogate," it's just wrong. She ends up coming to the conclusion that Klaatu cannot be stopped by force, he can only be persuaded to give us One More Chance. To that end, she drives him around, helps him evade authorities, and dragging her stepson with her, tells him that we can change.

In one bright moment, Klaatu tells her that he had wanted to talk with our leaders (at the UN) and she informs him that they are NOT our leaders. (Yes!) Instead, she takes him to meet a scientist because he won the Nobel Prize (No!... oh well.) The scientist, John Cleese, reasons with him a little, telling him that if indeed we are on the precipice, that is exactly when people DO change, as by Klaatu's own admission, the aliens learned as well. So give US the chance to do the same, Cleese reasons. Klaatu appears willing to think this over, but then the government helicopters are on the way, and they are all on the run again.

SPOILER: Gort disintegrates into a trillion tiny locusts who begin the destruction of civilization as Klaatu mulls over the possibility that humans are worth saving. As Connelly struggles to get him back to his spaceship (in hopes, I guess, that her helpfulness will bring him to the conclusion that we aren't so bad) it ends up once again being love that saves us.

And here is where the movie either turns into a cliche or illustrates a human truth, depending on how you feel about it: It's our capacity for love that is our salvation. This shows up in movies again and again, be it on an individual level or communal level: The authority bent on our destruction, be it God, Satan, or Aliens, sees that we have the capacity for love and self-sacrifice, and relents, deciding that we are salvageable after all. Usually, it's romantic love that saves us. In this, it's Connelly's selfless love for her snot-nosed little brat of a stepson, a child I'd have flung from a bridge ages ago... that proves to Klaatu that humanity isn't all bad. So the tide of destruction is stopped, and the spaceship leaves, rather abruptly.

In the end, all I can say is that the special effects were alright, the film was alright, the pacing okay, and if an Alien who looks like Keanu ever lands here, I am following him directly into that spaceship, come what may.

[A_perfect_lady]

I think it's the plot of a bunch of movies: you have been judged unworthy to live, and just as judgment is about to fall, you redeem yourself by an act of love.

It's a very Romantic Age notion. It used to be that humans were redeemed by their recognition of their unworthiness. Now it's love (usually romantic love, but sometimes familial or platonic love.)