the Day the Earth Stood Still

We had a great office lunch today. Good food, good company, and I also got a set of measuring spoons in my cracker. Excellent.

Then, in the evening we went out to see "The Day the Earth Stood Still". This is a remake of a classic Sci-Fi film from way back, a tale of an enigmatic alien, his giant robot and shiny spherical spaceship on a mission to destroy all human life. Oh, and a mother with issues with her stepson.

Keanu Reeves didn't have much of a challenge playing the man from outer space. The biggest surprise to me was that nobody referred to him as "Mr. Anderson" at any point in the movie.  

The plot was pretty hackneyed, but resolved neatly enough at the end. One rather striking thing was the sheer number of product placements for a film where, at the climax, every machine in the world stops working. There was one bit where the heroine picked up her LG mobile phone just before checking her Citizen watch. The camera lingered just long enough for the names of these consumer durables to register, completely ignoring the fact that she didn't make a call, and at the end of the world perhaps the last thing that you really want to know is exactly what time it is. 

As a bit of escapism with full on special effects it does the trick, but don't go expecting anything else.

Comments

[Coops]

When I watched it I thought the first 20 mins was a Microsoft advert!! Not a bad movie though.

[Anonymous]

Lets not forget when it cuts to a view of a Microsoft surface table with a huge vista logo and shows you for a good few seconds, it was one big Vista advert, along with the millions of other products. The movie was terrible. It didn't go anywhere, it was one big advert.

The few shitty attempts at a story happened when an alien who had mastered intergalactic travel, corrected some bullshit equation, and although he had the technological prowess to build a robot made out of self-replicating nano-bots he was amazed by John Cleese playing Bach, and another alien decided to stay and die on earth for no good reason other than the lovely people who have destroyed it and kill each other are too interesting. What utter crap.

Worst movie ever.

[Zoe]

Thanks for the spoilers Rob et al...

[Coops]

I wouldn`t agree the movie was terrible. Although I appreciate movie taste is a very personal thing. It did seem like just another holywood remake. I havn`t seen the original (I`m not old enough for that!) but from what I have been told it`s a classic, which this movie was most definetly not.

I agree that the plot was weak. However, when I took a step back from the movie at the end I did find that it made me think about the state of the world. Thats not something that many holywood movies manage to achieve.

However, Keanu Reeves can`t act. Fact.

[Rob]

Sorry Zoe. Didn't think I gave too much of the plot away really though. I mean, I never mentioned that Keanu plays the alien.

Drat.

[JDog - Joel Parkey]

It looks terrible, but hey its a staurday afternoon :(

[Anonymous]

Coop,the movie was terrible, it's not a matter of taste, it was terrible because it wasn't about anything. It didn't even tell you what happened, the humans didn't reform their ways, nothing. Keanu Reeves kills himself for no reason. I don't even consider this a film in the same way I don't consider an advert a film.

Yes we should be environmentally friendly, I don't really see how the film showed this. Let's look at it objectively. Humans have four species of animal that they breed and that exist for the exclusive purpose of killing and eating. They go around wiping out entire species, decimating natural habitat and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Literally preventing any chance of life existing anywhere. So a group of aliens come to wipe out all human life and return the earth to the state it was in before humans completely ruined it. After being kidnapped and tortured the leader of the aliens decides that because he heard Bach, and some other alien that had experienced the horrors of war decided to stay, that humans are worth saving, so he sacrifices himself so save them all. The film ends with no indication as to whether the humans reformed.

And why, when the USA thought that an giant asteroid was going to hit the earth and sterilise the planet, did they fly all the most intelligent scientists to the predicted site of the impact?

The film was utter guff, I want my money back.