The new remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is getting terrible reviews. But is there something more going on here? S. T. Karnick writes.
The new remake of Robert Wise’s excellent 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still opened fairly strongly at the U.S. box office this past weekend, finishing first with a total of $31 million in ticket sales in its first three days of release.
That pales compared with the same weekend last year, when I Am Legend premiered with an impressive $77.2 million and Alvin and the Chipmunks snagged $44.3 million. But Day’s opening weekend was certainly respectable, and Keanu Reeves’ star power, whatever may remain of it, probably helped garner some attention, as did the interesting trailer.
In fact, the film’s first weekend box office total can be seen as impressive given the absolutely terrible reviews the movie received. I haven’t seen the film yet, and the advance word suggesting that it has been turned into a message movie espousing something sounding very like radical, human-hating environmentalism sends a chill down the spine of all reasoning beings.
This is especially true for those of us who like the 1951 original directed by Robert Wise and starring Michael Rennie as Klaatu. In particular, I admire the original version’s intelligent and nuanced presentation of Christian ideas, and the idea of such a brilliant little film being turned into a big-budget vulgarity parroting fashionable antihuman radical nonsense is appalling.
But I wonder. Scott Derrickson, the director of the remake, is an avowed Christian and the director of an excellent small-budget film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, in which he showed great intelligence and taste. And the next film on which he is reported to be working is his self-proclaimed dream project: an adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.
I suppose it’s possible Derrickson turned in a horrendous clinker this time around, but maybe there’s more to the film than most critics are seeing. Or perhaps Derrickson has become one of those weird evangelical Christian environmental radicals. After all, everything happens in the Omniculture.
I’ll be interested in your opinions on this film, and will update this item next week when I can pry loose a couple of free hours to head to the local multiplex. In the meantime, here’s an interesting and perhaps terrifying comparison between the two film versions of the story, from USA Today.
—S. T. Karnick
A very astute comment indeed, Mike. I think your analysis of the 1951 film is spot-on. Like you, I am convinced that the Christology cannot be accidental, and I give the filmmakers much credit for that.
I appreciate the link to the original story, and I look forward to reading it.
Sam:
When Hollywood does a redux, the producers must feel it necessary to update the cultural concerns contained in the earlier version.
In 1951 (and throughout the ’50s, the era of my own adolescence) the main concern was a possible war with the Russians. The Robert Wise film exploits that concern to the hilt, and does so expertly and on the sly.
Sly? How could it be sly when just about everybody KNOWS that the alien Klaatu threatens Earthlings with destruction unless they disarm — Ban the Bomb and all that?
But if you listen carefully to Klaatu’s farewell speech, that’s not what he says. Rather, he makes it plain that he and his cohorts couldn’t care less what you Earthmen do to one another; just don’t export your violence to our neighborhood. In other words, stay off my lawn!
It may be that Wise, et al., did indeed want to Ban the Bomb — it would be surprising if the notoriously liberal Hollywood types responsible for the 1951 film didn’t have unilateral disarmament in mind — but that’s not the impression I get based on Klaatu’s remarks.
Once in college, my English prof threw one of those “You’ve got eight minutes to write and revise a short essay on anything you want to”-type assignments at us. Since I had just seen the 1951 film the night before, I wrote about it.
The Christological motifs are definitely there (although I expect today’s secular progressives, more and more ignorant of Western culture, might miss them altogether): Klaatu is “wounded” for no good reason; he takes the Earthling name of “Carpenter” and goes about incognito in order to learn more about the people whom he hopes to save from certain destruction; and he is “resurrected” after being fatally shot.
I’m persuaded that Robert Wise expected audiences to catch these references, and credit to him if that’s the case.
As for the newest version, which I haven’t seen yet, from what I’ve already heard this one ain’t subtle. Like you, I get the feeling it’s going to be one of those preachy gotta-save-the-planet environmental sermons — and may God save me from sermonizing by messianically-motivated secularist lifestyle nags!
As you say: “[T]he idea of such a brilliant little film being turned into a big-budget vulgarity parroting fashionable antihuman radical nonsense is appalling.”
The Klaatu of the 1951 version (Michael Rennie) was accessible to audiences; he had a personality and learned sympathy towards the people he had been sent to give warning to — even if later he might be compelled to look on and not interfere as his culture’s robot policemen punished any Earthlings who might extend their violence out into space.
Keanu Reeves seems more like Gort in the first film: impassive, implacable, unsympathetic to the human condition. A perfect avatar for Gaia, the cruel mother Earth who births her species and over the eons grinds them down to molecules — tough love from the mindless, directionless cosmos that today’s intellectuals want us to believe in.
This latest version just may be a loser.
Best regards,
Mike Tooney
P.S.: “Farewell to the Master” (1940) by Harry Bates is the story upon which the 1951 version was loosely based; you can find it on-line here: http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/bates.html.