The day the earth stood still
Year of release : 2008
Run time : 1h44m
Genre : Sci Fi / Thriller / Disaster
Cast : Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, John Cleese, Jaden Smith, Robert Knepper
The movie is the remake of the 1951 movie of the same name, both based on the 1940 short story “Farewell to the master” by Harry Bates.
The movie opens in 1928, in the Karakoram Mountains, India, when a mountain climber looking like Keanu Reeves (this is important, as Klaatu is also played by Keanu Reeves, so maybe their race looks the same, and also, maybe, the man’s DNA was sent to the aliens) finds a sphere, touches it, and wakes up later with it gone.
In present day, astrobiologist Helen Benson is a professor at Princeton University.
Helen takes care of her late husband’s kid, Jacob, who misses him, and lashes out at her, thinking that she’s stuck with him, and she doesn’t really love him.
That’s not what I see though, I see a woman who considers Jacob her son, and who’d do anything for him.
As she’s putting the food on plates for dinner, she’s called by a man who’s asking her name, telling her someone will be at her place shortly, without giving her any more information.
When she goes to the front door, she sees the police surrounding her house. Afraid they have something on her, she leaves Jacob with her neighbour, and goes with them.
She comes to her senses in the car, asking to know where are they taking her and what is it about.
The agents admit they don’t know, they just obey orders.
On the helicopter, talking to other people, they discover they are all scientists.
At the base they are taken to, they have to give up all the phones and cameras, and Helen keeps hers.
Finally, they are told they discovered an object from deep in space, flying towards earth with speed, and is looking like in a little over an hour, it will crash in Manhattan.
Helen goes to the bathroom and calls Jacob telling him to hide in the basement as there’ll be a huge storm.
Entering the atmosphere, the object slowed down, and landed in Central Park.
Going to see what’s happening, a being got out of it, and the soldiers shot at it when it tried to touch Helen.
As the being fell, a huge robot came out sending a signal, deafening everyone, disrupting their technology. It checked the being, which seemed to have said something involving Klaatu, and then seemed to have been turned off.
They take the being to a hospital, trying to save it, and not knowing how it will react to anything they would give it, they use the defibrillator trying to bring it back, as it flat lined.
The being seems to have survived, and being wounded, they send for a surgeon, who realizes what they think to be its body is a bioengineered space suit resembling a placenta, as if he was born into our world in order to survive it.
As it’s falling off, a humanoid being is revealed underneath, which, as time passes, looks like the mountain climber in the first scene of the movie.
The Secretary of Defense finds out many spheres like the one they have, landed all across the world.
The being calls himself Klaatu, saying he represents a group of civilizations, and that he wants to speak with the world’s leaders. His request is denied.
The Secretary of Defense says whenever someone explored and came to a less advanced civilization, that civilization became extinct, and this time that civilization is us.She wants Klaatu interrogated, and wants him drugged, so he can tell the truth.
Helen offers to do it, swapping the substance they gave her for water.
They interrogate him, but he uses the man to ask him how to get out of the building.He sends a signal to all the agents in the building, making them black out, puts the interrogator’s suit on, and leaves.
Helen leaves too, seeing what’s happening.
Klaatu ends up at Penn Station, where he gets a sandwich and watches people.
Helen is home with Jacob, who always does the opposite of what she asks him to do, like for example, answering the phone.
On the phone, a man tells her her patient is asking for her, as she has his medicine. Helen realizes is Klaatu, as she took a sample of the placenta-like bioengineered suit.
Helen offers Klaatu a ride, and the sample which he uses to put on his wound, healing it.
Whenever asked about it, Klaatu says he is a friend of earth, and when finally pressed about it, he says humans need to die in order for the earth and its species to survive.
Helen is trying to persuade him to reconsider, taking him to her mentor.
The army manages to take the giant robot to their quarters, after they tried to blow it up (but it controlled and destroyed all their planes), and as they keep it there, talking about how to destroy it, one of them notices it follows him with its “eye” whatever side of the room he goes to!
The Secretary of Defense realizes the spheres around the earth are arks.
The movie started well, but it ended up boring me and annoying me, wishing it will end.
I hated the kid, he was so annoying! I think the movie would have been better without that awful, annoying character. My first assumption about it, was correct, as I recall hating the movie and the kid the first time I watched it, back when it was released.
Whoever wrote this didn’t have much imagination or inspiration, as they could have come up with an alien-made v1rus to k1ll humanity, if humanity was the problem, instead of destroying earth with nanobotes, and taking pairs of each species on earth on their arks! So although Klaatu said humans had to die, he was k1lling every being on earth to repopulate it!
I’m so sick of these kind of movies with the good-doer aliens who care so much for other planets,in case ours. How about they look after their own, and stay out of others’ business?! Nobody asked for their help! I don’t like it when I’m being preached to by a movie, or bad writers!
I also hate it when characters die, or are about to die and they bring them back!
The acting was good. I thought Keanu Reeves didn’t give 100%.
The visual effects were great.
The soundtrack was good.
When it comes to the ratings, the movie sits at a 21% tomatometer against a 27% popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 40 metascore against a 4.9 user rating on Metacritic.
Cinema Score audiences graded it a C-.
The movie grossed a little over 233 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 80 million dollars, being a success.
It was nominated for the Best Visual Effects and Best Sound at the Satellite Awards, 2 Saturn Awards, but also for the Worst Prequel, Remake,Rip-Off or Sequel at the 2009 Razzie Awards.
Apparently the movie has been in the making since 1994, when Keanu Reeves played in Speed, and Erwin Stoff, who produced it, saw a poster of the 1951 movie, and thought Keanu could play Klaatu.
If you are interested in watching it, you can find the full movie for free on the Ok.Ru platform, in English, with Spanish subtitles, Russian and Hindi, I think.
Rating : Could have been a contender !