Here’s the extended trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still. While it looks cool, I can’t help but think that it’s going to wildly deviate from the original film–something I do not support. Hell, I don’t even support the remake in general, but perhaps if this movie had a different title, it wouldn’t sting quite so bad. What I’m mostly looking forward to is seeing Jon Hamm in a role outside of AMC’s Mad Men, but that’s about it.
Okay, I’ve seen the original 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. It’s amazing. Now, I’ve heard very little about this remake, other than that it’s happening. Today, I found the first trailer for the movie and, I must say, Keanu Reeves as the alien, Klaatu, looks pretty much like Keanu playing and exaggerated version of himself. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll get to hear him say, ‘Klaatu Barata Nikto, DUDE!’ but I suppose I’ll be able to live with that.
This movie looks like a complete departure from the original film. The entire message of the original pretty much revolved around world peace. Klaatu comes to the planet Earth to urge humans to live peacefully with one another only to be met with a giant ‘SCREW YOU’ in the form of armies and tanks and guns, showing just how barbaric we can actually be as a people. It was a brilliant movie to come out in that transitional period between WWII and the Cold War. It was the first time an alien came to Earth that WASN’T trying to destroy us and we became the bad guys.
Where the original dealt with man vs. man themes, the new one will deal with the themes of man vs. nature. I guess now that we’ve stopped destroying each other, we can move on to other issues like staying environmentally friendly.
I’m all about protecting the environment and everything, but I think we’re still struggling with the whole ’stop destroying each other’ thing. I don’t know if I’m ready for an environmentally conscious remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I mean, the whole point of the original was to show how violent we are by attacking an innocent outsider. What’s Keanu gonna do, give us a slap on the wrist for polluting the planet? Oh and, according to SlashFilm, there’s no Gort. WTF?
I don’t know. I just don’t see how the themes can be changed while staying true to the original film. What do you think?
UPDATE: Gort will be in the movie and, fortunately, will still resemble to robot from the original film. Well, at least there’s that to look forward to.
