An extraterrestrial object is headed for Earth and lands in central park. An alien emerges but someone is trigger happy and pops him one. A giant robot follows him out, but he stops it from doing anything. After emerging from a biological shell the alien looks human and says he has a message for our leaders, but its decided he should be interrogated instead. A scientist helps him escape and tries to find out what he’s doing here as other spheres arrive.
I’m a big fan of the original. Well, I say big fan. I’ve seen it a few times and I think it’s a pretty intelligent 1950 B+ movie. It has a smart message, is well handled and is largely a character piece from what I recall. Low on the kaboom.
The new one isn’t quite that, but it came pretty close which is rather frustrating. I wish they’d kept the ships ship looking instead of big glowing balls, but that’s not a big deal. I’m glad they kept Gort looking like Gort. I’m also glad that Keanu insisted that Klaatu Barrada Nikto was spoken in the film as its what the original is most known for.
I also think that Keanu was a very good choice for Klaatu. People complain about his acting not having much emotion in it, and that’s fine for this character. He really suited it. Updating the nuclear threat to a climate change one was also fine. However it would have been nice if he’d been allowed to say what it was at some point.
LET THE MAIN FUCKING CHARACTER SAY WHY THE FUCK HE’S HERE AND LET PEOPLE DECIDE!!!!!!!!
Ahem, excuse me. But seriously, why didn’t he take over global communications and give a message at some point? Have the normal people rise up and show that humans deserve a chance. This doesn’t happen, sorry if that’s a spoiler.
They missed the mark widely on two things. And yes this probably will get spoilerific. For a start, the kids character isn’t very believable and felt extremely underdeveloped. He didn’t have any realistic motivation. And his dead dad must have been a right prick before he died going by the way the kid thinks he would have acted.
Secondly, the international community puts NO visible pressure on the States to stop being dickheads and try talking. This is FAR to visible an alien encounter for them to be able to behave the way they did. That was massively unbelievable. The fact the aliens gave us basically no chance was unbelievable.
This IS a spoiler too. The fact that Klaatu was totally up for wiping the slate clean and changed his mind suddenly because of a kid and his mum crying and hugging is ridiculous. No effort was made to give him a decent reason. What I said up there about telling everyone and having the normal people rise up and say they want a change? THAT would have been good. It would have gotten the climate message across, heavy handedly I’ll admit but the original was hardly subtly, and it would have been realistic that he’d change his mind.
Also, keep Gort a robot. A giant robot blowing shit up is a lot cooler than a big swirly cloud of nanobots. Galactus in the second Fantastic Four movie kind of proved that.
The first hour is surprisingly decent and this wasn’t the dumb action movie I expected, but they flew far off course in the last third. Particularly Kathy Bates characters action towards the end when she KNOWS she’s doing the wrong thing and does it anyway.
Also, what the hell is supposed to happen next?!
Just go watch the original. Not that this is horrendous, but until I wrote this I didn’t get how much it had actually pissed me off. It’s a reverse grower…
Next up: The Hunting Party
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