I realise that I’m kicking off with song lyrics for the second week in a row, but I can’t resist. Just hearing the title The Day the Earth Stood Still starts me singing the Rocky Horror theme in my head:
Michael Rennie was ill
The day the earth stood still
But he told us where we stand
And Flash Gordon was there
In silver underwear
And Claude Rains was the invisible man —
Three old science fiction classics are mentioned there, with Flash Gordon going back to the 1930s. This hero of the spaceways was cinematically reimagined most recently in 1980, in a film which was more camp, and more intentionally so, than the original. A new Flash Gordon TV series was flighted in 2007 and there is apparently a new film in the works too (estimated landing date: 2010). The Invisible Man was remade a few years ago by Paul Verhoeven, with Kevin Bacon taking the disappearing — and disappointing — lead.
Now, at last, the third of that triad has been remade. The Day the Earth Stood Still updates the 1951 movie, which had the distinctly otherworldly Rennie as a visitor from a distant planet with a message for humanity. He wasn’t really ill (he’d been shot), and the earth didn’t really stand still as such, but the 1951 film is still remarkable for its pacifist and anti-xenophobic message (unsurprising perhaps so soon after World War II), and for the simple, almost documentary way it is made. That was intentional: there are some special effects, but mostly director Robert Wise and producer Julian Blaustein wanted to make a meaningful emotional drama with an important message, set in the real world, rather than a spectacular sci-fi adventure.
The new version goes bigger on the effects, of course; this is now a big-budget extravaganza, though there is still a reasonably credible attempt at a message. Keanu Reeves replaces Rennie as the alien Klaatu — call it typecasting if you will. His limitations as an actor mean he plays the role as a kind of stiff and puzzled Mr Spock, instead of Rennie’s compassionate and wise angel-like figure, but at least this Klaatu has more extensive telepathic powers.
Such powers, though, do make us wonder a bit about the necessity for Gort, the enormo-robot that accompanies him on his voyage to Earth. The explanation for the robot’s existence and its very important assignment, as given climactically in the 1951 film, is now gone; perhaps nowadays we don’t need to be given any justification for the existence of giant indestructible robots. At least Gort is the beneficiary of advances in filmic special effects, so some poor person doesn’t have to suffer inside an oversized fake-metal suit while the art department worries about how much it’s creasing at the knees.
Basically, this upgraded The Day the Earth Stood Still has more visual excitement and less dramatic coherence. That lack of coherence is in part the result of clashing acting styles or absence of styles. Klaatu’s lack of human emotional affect and air of bafflement you can understand, but John Cleese’s cameo as the most brilliant scientist of his day simply has him looking like he’s pursing his lips as hard as he can to avoid giggling — or, for that matter, exploding into a funny walk. He gets the most sententious, moral-bearing lines of the film, which makes one ask why the filmmakers couldn’t find someone with more gravitas to speak them. Then again, this scientist apparently got a Nobel Prize for “biochemical altruism” or some such poppycock, so maybe gravitas is not required.
Kathy Bates as the US secretary of state looks as though she’s trying very hard to be tough, but she’s no Condi Rice-style terminator. Why couldn’t Bates draw a little on the terrifying Annie Wilkes she played in the Stephen King adapation Misery? That’s what you want to see in a credible secretary of state, though perhaps even Stephen King couldn’t have invented Condi Rice.
As for the other leads, the quality of the acting is equally variable. Jennifer Connelly is the brilliant young astromicrobiologist or something who is hauled into an emergency government meeting at the start of the alien crisis, and then gets more personally involved with Klaatu and his mission. Connelly efficiently displays the painful sincerity that is necessary here, which in fact makes her the most competent actor on display. She is, certainly, better than the wide-eyed, wooden Patricia Neal in the original. She can at least emote convincingly. Jaden Smith as her more suspicious stepson, in the regulation cute-child role, is simply irritating.
The Day the Earth Stood Still is not unentertaining, and the entity from outer space that lands in New York’s Central Park is impressive. Perhaps the filmmakers should have gone all the way towards a special-effects spectacular and not worried about trying to make it dramatically and emotionally credible, because that’s where it fails. If humanity must be saved, try to convince us there are real humans to save.