Thursday
Jul032008
Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 9:48AM Trailer - 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'
You can see this trailer blown up real good like if
you check out Hancock this holiday weekend, so we're either spoiling your fun or
getting you in the know about the new teaser for
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Spare me the
Keanu Reeves talk, incidentally. He's choosing
better scripts these days and better movies are confident casting him. Once he
figured out his limits, Reeves became pretty good at playing that part. It's
what movie stars should do.December 12th will be
The Day Earth Stood Still. Or stands still, whatever.
Without rehashing the entire premise behind our theory, there are remakes that need to happen, remakes that can be good if handled properly, and movies that should never be touched. I think the original Day the Earth Stood Still needs to be remade, and I'll tell you why. It's been over half a century since the original, which is a great film, don't get me wrong. But part of its appeal now is purely camp. The staging and the effects are so magnificently cheesy that we respond more to that than we do the story.
Our level of sophistication for telling not just science fiction stories but specifically planetary invasion stories has advanced quite a bit since 1951. It would be a shame if we didn't remake this movie based on the things we know now and the way we're able to make more believable sci-fi.
Reader Comments (15)
The trailer is gone... bummer.
We found another copy, so it's back...for the time being.
There is no justification for remakes. We're in a sad point right now for moviegoers. The greatest movies of all time, the ones that touched us and inspired us were original stories! New fresh ideas. Things we hadn't seen before. It just stinks of laziness and greed to me. And to your point "It's what movie stars should do" are you kidding me? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. An actor should challenge him or herself every film they make, like Cate Blanchett for example. A bad actor should stick to the one thing he does fairly well. Like, say, Stallone or Van Damme.
Yeah, that's my point. Reeves plays one type of role well. Hard for that to be the dumbest thing you've ever heard when you contradict it two sentences later.
Keanu is not Cate Blanchett. Who is? You give Cate Blanchett the chance to play Queens and Bob Dylan. You give Keanu Reeves soft-spoken, one-dimensional heroes. It's the same logic either way; they're both playing to their strengths. It's not that they couldn't find a better actor for that part - there are tons of them - but better he should be in quality films playing the one-dimensional heroes than awful ones.
To the belief that all remakes are bad...well, that just doesn't make much sense. Nor is it entirely true that we have run out of original ideas. They've been adapting books and plays into films for as long as they've been making films, and they've been making sequels forever, too. There were, what, six Thin Man movies in the 30s and 40s?
And what do you do when a movie like Disturbia is actually a really quality remake of something like Rear Window, my all-time favorite film? Some remakes are worthwhile because the very good originals either become outdated or they were too controlled by the morality of the day or the idea becomes relevant again. Some remakes can't possibly offend anybody (or so I thought) because even the original wasn't that great to begin with but it has an audience for whatever reason. And yes, there are definitely movies that need not be remade. I think we all know what movies are at the top of that list: Kane, Godfather, Casablanca, Vertigo, Gone With the Wind...insert your own here.
But having no remakes would mean we'd never have a Lord of the Rings trilogy because someone tried it once, no matter how silly and childish that version looks today. We'd have no Magnificent Seven because Kurosawa did it first (although that's not even an original idea). There would only be one Hamlet and only one series of Batman movies.
The notion that we can't have remakes is actually antithetical to what movies are ultimately designed to do: Entertain audiences.
Frankly, I think you under-estimate Keanu Reeves. Have you seen
The Gift? He was remarkable in that film ... with Cate Blanchett,
coincidentally. He was great in Something's Gotta Give. I can
name a few others. He's not the greatest actor on Earth, granted,
but he's a whole helluva lot better than a a lot of actors out there.
The poor guy is judged before he even makes a film and that's simply
not fair. People should watch some of his better films before they
shoot their big mouths off. I like Keanu and always will.
I agree that he's been harshly criticized; nobody's acting could make Point Break any better than what it was. But, since The Matrix films, he hasn't made too many missteps, and over the past five, six years, it's quite a good filmography.
I don't think this film should have been remade. It should have been a sequel. At the end of the original Klatu said that he would return in 50 years if we were still a violent race. We still are. I want to see a movie were an alien race comes to Earth and looks for are weopons of mass distructions to spot us from bring our violent ways to space.
I am pleased that they are finally remaking what I consider to be one of the finest sci-fi movies of all time. Gort needs a major role because he was clearly the star of the movie. My only hope is that this time he does destroy Earth. Now we need a remake of Forbidden Planet.