‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ sends a green message

‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ might as well have casted Al Gore for its lead role instead of… ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ might as well have casted Al Gore for its lead role instead of the somber faced Keanu Reeves, since the producers were looking for someone with experience delivering eco-friendly messages to a backdrop of overzealous fireworks. The 1951 classic was a well-received movie that boasted good storytelling, but more importantly a cautionary and (hopefully) inspirational message that we foolish Earthlings will destroy ourselves if we don’t cease our destructive ways. But the remake did little to update the story and relies on special effects and glitz in an effort to merely entertain as opposed to stirring audiences’ inner Green Peace soldier. The movie starts out following around the hottest microbiologist Earth has to offer, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), a great candidate to prove to alien Klaatu’s (Keanu Reeves) human body that there is something worth saving here. Everything is pretty normal in Benson’s life until government agents show up at her house demanding that she come with them because an asteroid is spiraling toward Manhattan and bringing with it inevitable doom. But alas, it’s just Reeves in another merely adequate role of Klaatu, accompanied by his 40-foot giant robot bodyguard equipped with an ever-handy ‘kill all humans’ button. All Klaatu wants to do is speak before the United Nations and tell humanity that it is going into the wood chipper, but Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) would rather probe the alien a little longer and aggravate it. Eventually, the less-than-heroic team of Klaatu and Benson escape the facility and find themselves running through the marshes of New Jersey and driving around in Benson’s eco friendly Honda, because Benson is of course not part of the problem. Klaatu’s mission is to activate glowing spheres, which will take away all of the animals on Earth so that they will be safe when the giant robot flips its kill switch, turning it into a swarm of metallic murderous locusts The locust scene is perhaps the coolest in the movie, as we get to watch the critters shred a contingent of the army and then proceed to rip apart the wonders of America, such as a trucker’s rig and a football stadium. The movie ultimately falls somewhere in the category of extreme mediocrity. ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ is an entertaining and action packed movie that will string you along well enough to make you forget that you could have seen something else with a little more substance. But again, the key word here is ‘entertain.’ This movie was not made to try and influence the world. At the end of the day, there is no real defining moments in cinema history that are made here, unlike the original version of the film, and as a result we are obviously let down a little. The movie also ends on a note of ‘never mind,’ claiming that things might be rough for the Earth now, but everything will be okay because a hot scientist will come along and save us all.