They were glowing green pods come from another world... a world called Poddington. They were here to enforce the peace. Keanu Reeves in... THE PODDINGTON PEACE.(Massive spoilers, but trust me, it's a piece of shit.)
The scene, a darkened room with seating. A man with a polygraph sits next to NervousPete, who is a test subject.
Man: "I'm going to ask you some control questions... are you sitting in a chair?"
Nervouspete: "Yes."
Man: "Do you fancy Jennifer Connely?"
Nervouspete: "My body does."
Man: "Are you aware of an impending re-screening of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' remake?"
Nervouspete: [Turns to coldly assess the man. A warning flickers like an ember in his eyes.] "...you should let me go."
The Day the Earth Stood Still is the worst film I have seen since at the cinema since Miss Potter. Because I hate it so much, and I think you shouldn't watch it, I'm going to spoiler the fuck out of it. I won't place this in spoiler tags... because I really do hate it that much. Here's a blow by blow account of its stupidity...
The film opens with a mountaineer, who comes across a glowing sphere at night up on the mountaintop. The sphere is a seemingly organic misty pea-soup vortex of weirdness and perfect roundness, an unnatural phenonoma that makes the Keanu Reeves mountaineer look a little baffled. Yup, instead of hiding from it or gawping and rubbing his eyes, he looks a bit baffled. As is the rool of sci-fi, Moutain-Man Keanu pokes it, causing him to black out and wake up hours later, alone, and with a scar on the back of his hand. He looks mildly put-out by this, and a little more baffled. Thrilling reactions there. Still, I liked the sphere, I'm with this film, enjoying after a fashion.
Cut to modern day. Astrobiologist Jennifer Connelly is teaching one of those classes that merely exist in sci-fi films to suggest that the professor is very clever. Naturally they are pretty and entirely placeholders. Jennifer goes home to her step-son, adorable moppet Ickle Smith is playing computer games. Or he would be adorable if he wasn't cranky and possessed of that freaky 'old-child adult vocab syndrome' that bad film kids have. Kid is upset because army dad's dead and all he got was a lousy stepmum. The source of his anger at her is never made clear beyond him missing his dad. Unfortunately in the limited time of the movie, it makes him look like an abritrary, whiny, ingrate fuck. Which he is.
Jennifer chops veg, being a good mum and feeding her kids healthy like, when a sinister man calls. Sinister man talks about how they'll be picking her up, and cars will arrive any moment. She is understandably freaked. Cars arrive. The equally sinister men in cars tell her that all will be explained on the way, oblivious to her cries of, "But what about my kid!?!" They could of course say, "Relax miss. I'm sorry, but we have a big problem that only you can deal with. Lives are resting on this. If you could arrange to leave your son with a trusted friend or neighbour, or bring him with you to our secret base creche, then we can get on with saving the world, which is pretty important, I say." Of course, that would result in logical reactions, so instead we get obtuse sinisterism and curt, terse nonsensical statements like, "They're already there..." and "It's bigger than you think..." which only serves to baffle the fuck out of everyone and make them paranoid. THIS IS AN UNINTENTIONAL THEME THAT DOES NOT LET UP. Honestly, it makes you long for the Orange guys to come along and start demanding that everyone gets talking with each other.
One big get together of scientists later, after an admittedly cool 'let's all go to the
lobby top secret military base along empty freeways with cool-ass humvees' sequence, and the Secretary of Defence played by a dour as Gordon Brown's Theme Time Radio Dour Power Hour glums her way through a briefing. Apparently an asteroid has changed course and is accelerating to a high sub-light speed, straight for Central Park, New York! (Again.) What do you think, scientists? It'll hit in like, 78 minutes, THINK FAST!
Well, scientists think that at that speed, most of North America is going to go whatever the size of the object. Best shoot it the fuck down, eh? A slim chance at best though. 'Best sneakily call Ickle Smith who I've left in New Jersey so he can coldly spurn me some more', thinks a tearful Jennifer, and achieves precisely that. Phew, eh? Still, at least she tells him to get in the basement, which the ingrate ignores.
So, small chance of intercepting rock - in fact, none, because your missiles have inexplicably disabled. What do you do with your big assembled minds and military forces? Hover them around Central Park, that's what, with a laptop counting down. Yes, that's right. They know that it's ET influenced, but for all the fuck they know it could be a mass-driver at work. (Boo-urns, Londo!) And yet they're all entirely surprised that the thing decelerates, and big sphere lands gracefully... DESPITE COCKING HOVERING AROUND IT LIKE GIMPS IN HELI-CHOPPERS. Idiots. I begin to have SERIOUS RESERVATIONS.
So Jennifer and scientists (including a charismatic Hindu one who you assume will be kicking ass, but who never appears after this scene) go to investigate the giant sphere in bio-suits. Jennifer wears flared jeans under her hip-hugging suit by the way, no, really. Snipers and police and machine guns surround the sphere. Snipers crowd surrounding rooftops a good mile up and away. A weird mushy man comes out of the glow, and Jennifer touches his hand. Then, because the plot demands it, the radio starts chattering with paranoid yells of 'Target closing!' and 'Target contact!' and 'Weapons released!' and the mushy man gets shot. By a sniper. Who we saw dispassionately looking down a scope a good half mile and more away. Oh noes! Shot! For some cunting reason. It's a breathtakingly ham-fisted reinterpretation of a classic scene. And the clottish directing and lazy script is only just beginning to suck, oh yes.
Fuck, this is going to take a while, I best speed it up...
Mushy-Man lies wounded, and fuck off big Robot Man comes out of vortex. He looks pretty cool actually, he's a robot with a big glowey eye like in the original, but more human shaped and scarier. This image is the one that got me excited, essentially. Awesomely, it disables everyone, and is ready to demolish everything when Mushy-Man mumbles, 'Klaatu Barada Nikto' to disable the big fella, only so muffled and discordant that half the reviewers failed to notice it, so if you're not paying attention it looks like the robot has a Mr Burns trademark change of heart.
And Mushy Man indeed turns out to be this 'Klaatu' after cool organic-space-suit-drippage, and he is whisked away to meet
Madeline Albright Secretary of Defence Kathy Bates. Kathy Bates has a ludicrous beehive and blathers on about how she speaks for the president, and what she hears and sees goes to the president. Keanu tells her that he represents a big interstellar civilization and that he needs to talk to the UN, that Earth isn't 'their' planet and that if earth dies, they die, if they die, earth survives. Turns out there's not many inhabitble planets capable of intelligent life, and aliens have to take care of them. (A neat idea squandered in this, alas.) And that since we're killing earth, something has to be done. And that something he can explain to the UN. But he doesn't get to explain this to anyone, at all, as Kathy glowers at him and basically detains him. She then acts as if she can't be arsed to get into a dialogue with Klaatu, and rather than chat with him for a while to see what he's about, she opts to have him strapped to a chair and polygraphed. Nice eyes and ears there, Kathy. But she justifies herself apparently, she says, "Advanced civilization meets lesser civilization, wipes it out."
This is one of those many ideas that are not followed to its logical conclusion, by the way. Instead of concluding, "So we've got no chance to defeat them, best make nice," she acts all beligerent. Why. I mean, you're looking at a race that can cross the fucking stars and has a giant robot, and hundreds of other spheres around the planet that have just been announced on TV? WHY ARE YOU FIRING FUCKING SIDEWINDER MISSILES (which are SUPPOSED to be air-to-air I might note) AT THE ROBOT?! They try doping up Keanu, but Jennifer foils that and tells him to run. Which he does, in the only genuinely cool scene that I parody at the top of this page.
Kathy is furious, but does not suspect Jennifer. She tells all the cops and army and oh... everyone, to look out for Klaatu the dangerous... er... escaped convict. No one is seemingly suspicious of this in the outside world by the way, network news ABOUT FUCKING HUGE SPHERES FUCKING UP PARKS IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING CITIES being interupted by updates on a mundane dodgy escaped criminal. So Kathy tells all law enforcement arms and TV to be on the lookout.
Somehow however Keanu still manages to walk around in Central Station New York, and get a sandwich, and start bleeding from earlier wound, and be rescued by a cop from the public urinals floor, and given a phone call to Jennifer, and have Jennifer pick him up, and the both of them drive off from the cop's very COCKING WAITING ROOM without any of these touted law enforcement agencies reading, say, their emails, watching the TV or listening to Kathy's orders and looking at a photo. DOLTS.
So now Keanu is stuck with Jennifer, who looks worried a lot, and Ickle Smith, who whines a lot, and since Keanu is emotionless planet-judger Klaatu - many laughs are had!
Jennifer drives him around a bit. They go to McDonalds.
MCDONALDS. THAT'S MCDONALDS. (Dislike product placement in movies? Go fuck yourself, apparently. Also be amused at the prominent Windows logo on the swanky touch-screens that don't actually exist really, among with many other cheery endorsements.) There Keanu meets aged Japanese guy, who's one of his race in disguise. He's lived there 70 years, and says that humanity is lovable, but doomed to fuck up the planet, so destroy them. Keanu gives him a bus ticket off of this shitty rock, but old dignified Japanese guy says that he'd rather die with us, because we're so noble and awesome and lovable, yet stupid and doomed. Keanu doesn't understand this, but gosh, something tells me he just might by the end of the movie! Oddly, this is the official report from old dude, and Keanu decides to act on it and destroy man. Yet he comes to the same conclusion later, and decides to save man. And he doesn't even get to fuck Jennifer Connelly. How bizarre is that?
A word, just after this scene TV footage shows rioting in all major population centres over food shortages and financial market collapse and general end-of-daysness. Planet is starving from mass hysteria presumably, as farmers flee their fields and get drunk and transport breaks down, and everyone seeks to loot and party. Apart from the calm people in McDonalds, in the preceding scene. And New Jersey.
Keanu asks to be driven to the forest, and there he engages with a sphere which is accomodating lots of forest swamp critters. I'm not sure why he has to do this, since it shows other spheres across the planet doing the same thing happily enough without him walking on water and touching them up. Kathy Bates sees this action correctly as a load of arks taking on board the animals and plants, and opts to try and blow up the robot, which is now called Gort through an admittedly cool acronym. That fails. So she tries to blow up the sphere. That fails too. She'll try again later, not quite getting the point that they're indestructible, even when fricking diamond drills snap when probing them. YOU'RE THE LESSER CUNTING CIVILIZATION, REMEMBER COCK-KNOCKERS? Jesus.
Oh noes! A cop has happend upon Keanu and co. Keanu kills him with a car, rather neatly, and then brings him back to life, as he's a fair bloke. This upsets kid though, who's just itching to tell the military to kill the freaky alien dude. There's further failure to bond between him and Jennifer, and the trust issue is *yawn* unresolved.
Off to Doc Banhart's! Who is played by John Cleese! For about a minute! Banhart listens to Bach, which is very beautiful apparently, so we can't be all bad. Or something. What kind of pussys are these aliens? So abduct our composers and orchestras and CD collections and wipe us out, for fucks sake! They get on roaringly, or as near to roaringly as the glacial emotions of this film allows. They bond through allgebra. And rather than Keanu thinking, "Retard! Kindgergaten stuff!" he develops instant respect. I guess the fact that we have satelites would have clued him to the fact we have a few amiable geniuses, but never mind. Banhart says we're not all bad really, which is what Japanese guy said. Ta mate. Jennifer chips in to say, "Listen to him! He's the kind of leader people really have, not teh governmnt!" Funny, I thought people listened to Simon Cowell and Louie Walsh when it came to rulings and judgements, heigh ho.
By the way, Jennifer and Banhart's arguement basically is, "We can change!" and Keanu's is, "No you can't, you lazy fucks." This isn't even remotely pressed. At no point does Keanu say, "Oh really? Can you give up eating McDonalds, that rapes the rainforest? Windows computers that suck on electricity? Your classy clothes and fancy houses, can you give them up and raise the standard of living to a sustainable, modest, content and educated level in impoverish nations? How about you Ickle Smith, fancy giving up computer games? How about your SUV's you drive around in this, can you live on mass transit for life? Can you give up on having so many children and settle for one each for a generation? Can you accept loss of personal freedoms for the survival of your planet? Accept mass enforced works projects to clean things up? Can you accept possible starvation through planning flaws of your overwhelmed frameworks, wars to enforce environmental protection, the end of a capitalist system? The end of cinemas and product placement? CAN YOU?"
But no, the film is too fucking cowardly to ask that.
Things barely discussed, they didn't even stop for coffee, they leave. Banhart's pretty smug, btw.
Only, oh no! Ickle Smith has phoned the cops. They run from the house into the woods. After a good... oooh... minute of running they stop. A helicopter grabs Jennifer and flies off. Keanu makes the other two crash into each other with his FRICKING HANDS. WITHOUT EVEN TOUCHING THEM. The other good bit. The kid runs off.
"This is the script? Klaatu Barada Don't Sign the Contract!"By the way, the only pleasure to be derived from this film is watching Keanu and Gort overcoming us puny humans. It's hilarious each time us dumb shits try to fuck with them, and they fuck our shit up with magic shit. Not that it plays with it or anything, it's too retarded a film to afford these moments anything other than cursory glances.
Keanu runs after the kid. Kid is scared. Kid almost falls in river. Keanu goes, "careful now!" and stops kid from falling in action any responsible adult would do. Kid suddenly thinks Keanu is the best thing since sliced bread and apologises for calling the cops on his ass. They drive off to find Jennifer.
They find Jennifer. I forget how. Oh wait, now I remember.
Remember Gort? They take him off to a missile silo where they try fucking him up the ass with diamond drills. Despite it failing once, they try again. Because the military just love pissing off infinitely superior space-faring civilizations for no cunting effect. But oh no! Gort is shedding super-nanite bugs that multiply. These nibble on a tech-boy and then wipe out the base. The army outside doesn't like this expanding cloud of grey-goo and fire at it, but it grows with every shot, unaffected by the dozens of tanks and rocket launchers! True to form, the army continues firing, like lemons.
By the way, an example of shoddy work in this film is the way digitised extras, and indeed human extras, fail to act. They could be in front of a giant Scarlet Johansen's quivering pussy sliding along the ground, scooping up the turf of central park, sluicing straight towards them, and they'd only stand there in stock 'shielding eyes'/'holding gun'/'reading paper' before being overwhelmed and absorbed in... I'll stop there.
Kathy Bates (instant cold shower) orders further strikes against grey goo and acts surprised when, no shit, our puny earth weapons fail against a state-sized cloud of billions of nanites. If this sounds cool by the way, it oddly isn't. The direction in this is atrocious. She finally agrees to let Jennifer Connelly talk to Klaatu, possibly quietly hoping she'll work on his joint and thaw that Hawaian/Asian/Californian zen scowley-glare.
Ickle Smith takes Klaatu to his dad's graveyard and asks him to bring him back to life like he did with cop dude. Klaatu refuses, probably accurately deducing that dad would be all zombiefied and gross and not much fun for the kid. Kid cries. (Incidently, I kept thinking that despite being the dad of a black kid, the dad was a white generic meathead, shows the level of character and emotion invested in Ickle Smith, eh?) Jennifer turns up. Klaatu/Keanu seems to think we're okay now, and agrees to save us.
EXCELLENT! "But there will be a price!"
BOGUS. OOoh, eh? Oooh. And they've got to nip in front of nanite cloud that is bearing down on New York.
They make it with friendly no-name government advisor who pops up now again and we're supposed to give a shit about, because, surprise surprise, he dies when the humvee crashes when it turns out all to be a trap by Kathy Bates acting reluctantly on orders of mad-eejit unseen bunker president. They bomb the car and the sphere in central park. Curiously, the overpressure, shrapnel, fireball and thermal effects don't scratch the other occupants, only the no-name driver, by the way. So yes, they bomb the sphere. Despite it not doing any good the other TEN TIMES THEY'VE TRIED IT IN THIS FUCKING RETARDED FILM.
Keanu announces that they can't make it to the spheere because of swirly cloud. Swirly cloud has already eaten a truck and a stadium and skyscrapers by the way. Again, this sounds cool, but oddly it isn't. Yup, all of Maryland and New Jersey have presumably being wiped out, as far as I can see, yet there's no panicking crowds in the street, no news headlines, no ashen faced advisors saying, "Oh my god!" and "EXPONENTIAL RATE!" (You can't have nanites amok without the words 'exponential rate' being said, it's law. They're stupid and know nothing, these scriptwriters.) Nope, the end of the world happens to no screaming or even mild cuss words.
Funny by the way. Despite arriving in bio-mass spheres, Keanu wearing a bio-mass spacesuit, and their being obsessed with bio-tech, Gort and the nanites are metal and eat biomass as well as man-made structures. This is akin to environmental terrorists announcing that they're mobilising to save the rainforest, and then attacking loggers with flamethrowers and napalm and fuelair bombs. Possibly dropping agent orange from hot air balloons to make them easier to spot. What's wrong with a simple virus, eh, Meester Aliens? Something that, y'know, kills man but leaves wildlife intact?
So Keanu says they can't make it to the spheere, so they hide in the park underpass, where I can only assume by Keanu's noggin' powers they are unmolested for a few precious minutes. But oh no! Kid has nanites in his body, he's dying! Keanu heroically takes 'em on and walks off the machine sphere, and shuts it down. Possibly dying in the attempt. I don't know. It's cunting awful direction. As he does so the planet's electricity switches off, power goes out everywhere and the sphere leaves with him in it! The kid now all healthy and loving his step-mommy, and Jennifer, watch it go. Kathy Bates watches the power go out and sits in a chair.
The End.
THE COCKING END.
Sorry, did I miss something? What about the millions of people stuck in lifts, on planes, at sea, with pace-makers, on trains, in hospitals? EH? Is the power gone for good too, or just a day like in the original? What's happened to that big chunk of America destroyed, how many died in that, huh? Are we going to try and clean up our act? IS THERE ANY POINT TO THE ENTIRE SHITTING FILM AS KEANU FORGOT -
CUNTING FORGOT- TO HAND OVER HIS MESSAGE TO THE UN?
Yeah, you can all live. Great. Bye. Oh wait, did I tell them the part about not fucking up the planet or you're all going to die? Huh? Maybe that was why I came here, right? LIKE I SAID AT THE START. So you made reconcilliation with man, great. You will still supposed to save the planet right? Yeh dumb shit. It's not like no electricity is going to stop seven billion people from fucking things up pronto. In fact, if anything, we're going to immediately chop our forests down and make loads of roaring fires until we work on industrial age coal and gas power again, fucking things up further. Well done alien gurus, you actually made things WORSE.
"YUS, WOTS ABOUT ME?! I HAS PROBLEM! RAAAGH!"
Well, sorry, fuck you Mr Polar Bear. Because in a film where the alien bangs on about saving wildlife over humanity, he actually favours us in the end. You'd think that they'd send someone a little harder to persuade by the way. I mean, so you've got tear-jerking relationships, well... didn't Japanese alien tell us that already, and we planned this anyway. I mean, it was always supposed to be a grim necessity right, so why chicken out, eh? Even better, why not have best of both worlds? A film that ends with the murder of 999/1000ths of the human race and the rest confined to an island to live a hippy creative lifestyle in an excellent compromise, overseen by a Godlike Gort like some Easter Island statue come alive, that would be one fucking awesome Arthur C Clarke fucking rock you ending.
But no. The film-makers are unimaginative cowards.
I mean, the sacrifice was one-sided. We learnt nothing. No one was sacrificed. Once again we had to be saved by proxy, by a Christ figure who cleans up our mess. Considering that Jennifer's arguement was, "We can change! We can change! We can make the effort!" it's a bit of fucking joke. My ending -
Jennifer: "We can change!"
Keanu: "Prove it."
Jennifer: "How?"
Keanu: "With you life. Lay down your life. Here's the biological machine code. Get it to the sphere. You die, I take care of your son, I make the UN listen."
Kid: "Mommy!"
Jennifer: "I love you, I have to do this."
Nanites: "GRRR-SCREAM-YOMYOMNOMNOM!"
Disintergrating Jennifer: "Can't quite... make it!" (Collapses dead, lifeless hand slams the genetic structure onto sphere.)
Nanites reassemble into Gort, that towers over them.
Keanu: "I shall fulfill my promise, you, and the human race will live. Tomorrow there will be a virus. I shall address the UN, they will address the survivors. Gort will be here as a warning and an enforcer. You can live the lives you wish, as long as they do not infringe on the planet and other species right to exist in harmony. There will be no warning, should you fail."
Kid: "Huh? Wot? Can I play World of Warcraft?"
Keanu: "No."
UN four months later: "Well, there's a million of us left alive, let's live on Madagascar with Gort towering in the corner and perfect the art of basketball, sustainable living, sweet contraceptive love and writing perfect three minute pop songs."
Keanu: "EXCELLENT!"
The ghost of George Carlin appears alongside Jennifer and Yoda for some reason, and waves and smiles. Polar bears dance and sing and play drums with US Marine helmets. The End.
MY END IS FIVE BILLION TIMES BETTER.
So in summary...?
Appalling direction with no atmosphere of tension or forboding at any point. Keanu comes across okay as emotionless alien, but you don't give a fuck because of shitty script. Jennifer struggles with a role that is of a blank faced "Oh noes!" taxi-driver - and I'm pissed off they wasted her so badly. Pinkett-Smith kid is dull and vacuous, but not his fault, blame Mr Director and Scriptwriter again. I think you know what I think of the script already. Special effects are conceptually strong but frequently rendedered not so well, and are badly timed and played out with no sense of pace, immediacey, realism or thrills. Kathy Bates looks bored. Score is so forgetable I cannot remember one note - compare and contrast to excellent Bernard Hermann score of the original. In fact, for a quality film look to the original, one that I haven't mentioned thus far as I want the film to stand and be shot to pieces on its own. As far as I'm concerned it's a good idea (aliens peeved at man fucking up planet, fuck us up with us helpless) completely hamfistedly executed.
Apparently they're doing Milton's epic poem next, Paradise Lost. Fuck me.
VERDICT:
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL IS A PILE OF SHITE.
1/10
"GO GET 'EM GORT, THE CLASSIC-DEFILING FUCKS."
*BZZT. WHIRRR.*
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