Gort, There Is No Spoon
Dec. 19th, 2008 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drpaisleyWork has actually been involving work this week, to the point of overtime even, and between that and the craptacular weather we've had this week I have not yet posted my thoughts on the re-make of "The Day the Earth Stood Still." I figure I should do so before it all fades into the æther.
I think I can best sum up my feelings with a précis of the opening of the film. After a prologue set in the '30s somewhere in the Himalayas that provides the setup for how Klaatu gains human form, we cut to the present. Jennifer Connelly is quickly established as a professor, an astrobiologist, a widow and a single step-mom. Then the Feds show up, and whisk her away to a military complex, where she and a number of disposable scientist-types are told a large asteroid that can steer itself will crash into Manhattan in just over an hour. Evacuation is logistically impossible, and the scientists have been grabbed up to help deal with the aftermath, being experts in various fields that sound sciency and stuff.
Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC. One of the Disposable Scientists does some quick calculations, and tells everyone that the impact will be so great that it will produce an exinction-level event. Someone (either Disposable Scientist or Disposable Soldier) counts down the seconds to impact, everyone scrunches their eyes shut, the carefully opens them when nothing happens. The object has slowed, and is landing in Central Park.
But let us return to the first statement in the previous paragraph: "Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC." I'm going to repeat that for those of you on drugs*: "Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC." The government is able to find and acquire all these experts to help deal with upcoming disaster, and decides to fly them to the impact point as the object is about to crash. Um, WTF? No, wait, that's not strong enough. How about "Motherfucking What the Fucking Fuck?" This pretty well sums up the movie: complete and utter contempt for anything remotely resembling logic, coherence or basic thought processes.
I could go into more detail about the terribleness of this movie, but then I'd have to think about it again, and I would hate to waste several days of enjoyable drinking by dredging those memories back to the surface. The acting is competent, from Keanu's affectless Klaatu to Kathy Bates's smugly obnoxious Secretary of Defense. The obiligatory scene-stealer is Jaden Smith (Will and Jada's son, and I must say this would have been a much better movie if Will Smith had been Klaatu, just to listen to all of the whining from the "smartest guy in their mother's basement" crowd). There was even a brief appearance by the redoubtable character actor James Hong, which got me fantasizing about a "Big Trouble in Little China" crossover, which was alas not to be. Even Gort was not that impressive, just bigger.
*Proctor and Bergman, "TV or Not TV."
In short, I would not recommed seeing this film without paying as little as possible and/or being under the influence of mind-altering substances. This could have been a timely updating of a classic movie, with the aliens bringing a warning of the consequences of humanity's continued destruction of Earth. Instead it's a poorly-written waste of CGI and actors. Even Rohanna's 10-year-old grandson wasn't that impressed with it (from the ads, he had thought it would have more action and general splodiness). If it serves as an excuse to get other half-assed remakes cancelled, at least one good thing will have come of this mess.
I think I can best sum up my feelings with a précis of the opening of the film. After a prologue set in the '30s somewhere in the Himalayas that provides the setup for how Klaatu gains human form, we cut to the present. Jennifer Connelly is quickly established as a professor, an astrobiologist, a widow and a single step-mom. Then the Feds show up, and whisk her away to a military complex, where she and a number of disposable scientist-types are told a large asteroid that can steer itself will crash into Manhattan in just over an hour. Evacuation is logistically impossible, and the scientists have been grabbed up to help deal with the aftermath, being experts in various fields that sound sciency and stuff.
Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC. One of the Disposable Scientists does some quick calculations, and tells everyone that the impact will be so great that it will produce an exinction-level event. Someone (either Disposable Scientist or Disposable Soldier) counts down the seconds to impact, everyone scrunches their eyes shut, the carefully opens them when nothing happens. The object has slowed, and is landing in Central Park.
But let us return to the first statement in the previous paragraph: "Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC." I'm going to repeat that for those of you on drugs*: "Cut to the scientists being helicoptered toward NYC." The government is able to find and acquire all these experts to help deal with upcoming disaster, and decides to fly them to the impact point as the object is about to crash. Um, WTF? No, wait, that's not strong enough. How about "Motherfucking What the Fucking Fuck?" This pretty well sums up the movie: complete and utter contempt for anything remotely resembling logic, coherence or basic thought processes.
I could go into more detail about the terribleness of this movie, but then I'd have to think about it again, and I would hate to waste several days of enjoyable drinking by dredging those memories back to the surface. The acting is competent, from Keanu's affectless Klaatu to Kathy Bates's smugly obnoxious Secretary of Defense. The obiligatory scene-stealer is Jaden Smith (Will and Jada's son, and I must say this would have been a much better movie if Will Smith had been Klaatu, just to listen to all of the whining from the "smartest guy in their mother's basement" crowd). There was even a brief appearance by the redoubtable character actor James Hong, which got me fantasizing about a "Big Trouble in Little China" crossover, which was alas not to be. Even Gort was not that impressive, just bigger.
*Proctor and Bergman, "TV or Not TV."
In short, I would not recommed seeing this film without paying as little as possible and/or being under the influence of mind-altering substances. This could have been a timely updating of a classic movie, with the aliens bringing a warning of the consequences of humanity's continued destruction of Earth. Instead it's a poorly-written waste of CGI and actors. Even Rohanna's 10-year-old grandson wasn't that impressed with it (from the ads, he had thought it would have more action and general splodiness). If it serves as an excuse to get other half-assed remakes cancelled, at least one good thing will have come of this mess.