As a fan on the original I was excited to see what Hollywood would do with this great script. With today's special effects there were so many ways they could do a nice update of the movie. In this review I will talk about the special effects, plot, acting of both the remake and the original.
Special Effects:
The alien space craft was a huge disappointment. It was a spherical in shape and look more like a gaseous planet.There where smaller spheres that where used to collect a variety of life on earth that would be used to reseed the earth without humans.
The alien robot "Gort" on the other hand did not disappoint.It was a nice update of his look. I would of like to have seen more interaction between "Gort" and "Klaatu".
I was not that crazy about the end of the movie when "Gort" turns into a million of flying micro-bots in the shape of insects. They had the ability to disintegrate all type of matter including people. In the movie they morphed into a swarm of destruction.
The special effects for the military was also a disappointment. When the object was hurling from space the military could of taken over NASA's deep space satellites for fly bys.Not having time to send up the nukes before it hit our planet was lame. They could of used SETI in the movie as the ones that first identified an unusual sound coming from the meteor. Sending tanks, jeeps with machine guns and infantry on foot was a joke. The drone jets controlled remotely flying in formation through Manhattan was a joke. Moving the robot to an underground facility and drilling it with a diamond drill was laughable. This is 2008 and this is the best the military has to offer. The final bomb drop of what might of been nukes was a waste of screen time.
The facility they first took "Klaatu" to after he was shot could of been had more cool effects. Instead of using a human surgeon they could of done remote robotic surgery. They could of used a lot of cool imaging devices that show first the skeleton, then the muscle mass, and the organs developing in the embryonic space suit.
Plot
In the original movie the other alien races where concerned we would blow up the planet through the misuse of weapons of mass destruction. This is very relevant today so why change it to us killing the planet ecologically.
The opening scene in the remake starts in 1928, a mountaineer encounters a glowing sphere while on an expedition in the snowy mountains of India.He suddenly finds himself awakening after a sudden loss of consciousness, with the sphere now gone and a scar on his hand.
Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), a Princeton professor, and other scientists are hastily assembled by the government in order to formulate a survival plan when it is feared that a large unknown object with a speed of 30,000 km/s is on a crash course to the Earth, due to impact Manhattan in just over an hour.
There are so many issues with this first contact scene. First the meteor theory that no one thought of it being a spaceship.No one was prepared for a first contact. Normal citizens where in the park and some people where killed by the impact of the alien ship.The group of scientist who could of played a bigger role in this movie was reduced to one person with a dysfunctional family life was a HUGE disappointment.
A representative of an alien race named Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), taking on the appearance of the man from the opening scene of the film, emerges from the sphere while accompanied by a large robot. Klaatu has come to assess whether humanity can reverse the environmental damage they have inflicted on their own planet. I like Keanu Reeves but his Klaatu dragged the movie down verses Michael Rennie Klaatu's version in the original.
Michael Rennie the actor in the original was intelligent and had the presence of a person from a race of highly intelligent people.
I like the character of Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray) in the original. Helen is a widow; her husband was killed in World War II.In this movie
Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), is a Princeton professor, and her stepson is Jacob (Jaden Smith). Jennifer Connelly does not have the screen presence like Patricia Neal. I also did not like the Jacob character played by Jaden Smith son of Will Smith.I can see how Klaatu in the original could relate to Helen and Bobby. In this movie there was no chemistry between Klaatu, Dr. Hellen Benson or Jacob. The problem with this is they are in 80% of the scenes of this movie. The John Clease scene which could of been extended and given him a large role in this movie. Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe)in the original played had a larger role which benefited the movie greatly.I did not buy the scene in the cemetery between Helen and Jacob that made Klaatu change his mind to eliminate the human race in this new movie.
The ending to this remake was awful and anti-climatic. I just sat in the movie theater and was a gast at the ending.Jacob and Helen have been infected by the nanites. She pleads with Klaatu to save Jacob. Klaatu saves both of them by transferring the infection to his own body, then sacrifices his physical form to stop Gort by walking through the nanites to the sphere and touching it. His actions cause the sphere to emit a massive EMP-like explosion which stops Gort, saving humanity, but at the price of all of Earth's technology becoming useless and immobile. Klaatu disappears, and the giant sphere
leaves Earth.
In the original movie A flying saucer lands on the Ellipse in President's Park, Washington, D.C. Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges and declares he has come on a mission of goodwill.
However, when he opens a small, menacing-looking device, he is shot and wounded by a nervous soldier. In response, a large robot called Gort steps out of the ship and disintegrates all weapons present without harming the soldiers. Klaatu orders him to stop and explains that the "weapon" was in fact a gift to the President that could have been used to study life on other planets. Klaatu is taken to Walter Reed Hospital, where he recovers.
He escapes and stay in a boarding house to learn more about humans. Bobby a young boy takes Klaatu on a tour of the city, including a visit to his father's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, where Klaatu learns with dismay that most of those buried there were killed in wars.
The two next visit the Lincoln Memorial and the heavily-guarded spaceship. Klaatu, impressed by the inscription of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, is hopeful that Earth may harbor people wise enough to understand his message.
He meets a scientist Barnhardt offers Klaatu the opportunity to speak at an upcoming meeting of scientists he is organizing; Klaatu accepts. Barnhardt is stunned when Klaatu declares that, if his message is rejected, "Planet Earth will be eliminated". The professor pleads for Klaatu to first provide a small demonstration of his power as a warning. Klaatu returns to his spaceship the next evening to implement the professor's suggestion.A montage sequence shows that Klaatu has neutralized electric power everywhere for a half hour (with the exception of critical systems such as hospitals and planes in flight), bringing the world to a standstill – the demonstration Barnardt had suggested.
After the blackout ends, the manhunt for Klaatu intensifies and Tom tells the authorities what he knows. Helen and Klaatu take a taxi to Barnhardt's home. Klaatu tells Helen that if anything should happen to him, she must go to Gort and say, "Klaatu barada nikto." When they are spotted, Klaatu tries to flee, but is shot dead.
Gort awakens, killing two guards before Helen gives him Klaatu's message.
Gort gently carries her into the spaceship, retrieves Klaatu's corpse, and revives him.
Klaatu steps out of the spaceship and addresses the assembled scientists, explaining that humanity's penchant for violence and first steps into space have caused concern among the other spacefaring worlds, who have created a race of robot enforcers like Gort and given them absolute power to deal with any violence.
He warns that the people of Earth can either abandon warfare and peacefully join these other nations or be destroyed, adding that "The decision rests with you."
I love Sci-fi and sometimes even bad Sci-fi. This remake had a great foundation in the original script to make this classic as good as the first. What was got was bad acting, streotypical roles and bad special effects.
