The Day The Earth Stood Still kind of sucked

Yes, this is sometimes a sci-fi blog. In fact this is a really bloggy blog entry and is probably best ignored.

One of my first posts on here was about Hollywood's sudden urge to respin sci-fi's forgotten classics for today's audience. Death Race was surprisingly fun; not nearly as outrageous as the original but gratuitous enough for today's audience to have a blast. Yep, it was pretty good, though hopefully it inspired people to check out the first o0ne. 

The Day The Earth Stood Still was not. While I don't think either movie really needed a remake, the message from the original (NUKES ARE BAD) is still very true, just less trendy than... wait what is it they were warning us about in this one? When watching you probably infer a global warming theme, but really all they ever come out and say it "humans are really destructive"

But we can change! In our darkest hour Keanu Reeves is convinced to save humans because... they love each other. Sure, NO NUKES is a pretty easy answer to the original one, but without a real answer to humanity's problem in the new one, I'm left wondering what the aliens wanted from us. What was this movie about? Why did we remake it? What are you trying to tell America?

But I will give them this much: there was plenty of reverence for the original. Klaatu and Gort are pretty cheesy now for sci-fi names but they still used them, and Gort is extremely similar to the original in appearance and function. I was especially pleased that they kept Klaatu's solving an equation as a means to meet the the professor. It was a pretty minor role really and not necessary, but it was probably one of the nicest scenes in the movie.

Because it was boring. The first one wasn't actionfest '58 and thankfully neither was this, but when it was attempted it wasn't really great and it held none of the ominous tone that the first one had. I loved Gort's inclusion but he really didn't mean much, just kind of stuck in there while in the first he made a great parallel to the could-happen-any-second power of nuclear weapons. The first one achieved drama by situation, and this didn't deliver in that respect or with action.

Kudos for making Will Smith's kid one of the biggest shits I've ever seen in a movie. I mean, no problem with Will Smith, but usually they try to give the kids some degree of likeability. Not here.

Anyway, don't worry I've got some good rock & roll coming up. I just needed a little closure from one of my first posts. Or just reason to gloat because I was totally right about everything. And if you really cared what I thought about this movie, I'd suggest you get a hobby until I come back from seeing Cadillac Records

Death Race Disparity

Many folks don't turn on the TV much these days so I feel it's demonstrating.

There's a Death Race remake coming out this Friday. It's starring Jasan Statham, who I guess is about as B-Movie as it gets these days but why, why would you slaughter my sacred cow? Why would you hand it to Paul W.S. Anderson, who has already slaughtered Alien and Predator in one fell swoop? Who keeps giving this guy a budget?

Now behold the Roger Corman classic. Apparently this remake was originally backed by Corman but had to go through multiple rewrites until it became what it is now.

The question is who wanted this? Anybody that's seen death race and likes it enough for a remake would obviously be disappointed by this new version, why keep the name?

Also see 

Note in the remake, the earth does not appear to be standing still, rather EXPLODING. The original was about a space ambassador warning that we would be destroyed IF we continued to use nuclear weapons. No explosions! Just tensions! The slow sci-fi movie has been dead for ages now, but does it have to be a disaster movie? From checking out the wikipedia, the director absolutely loves The Day The Earth Stood Still and sought to modernize it with a more relevant message to today (because nuclear weapons are no longer a threat or something). So the new message is "mankind has been found to be a danger.... AGAINST ITSELF AND NATURE." How long did it take to come up with that because surely it's never been used in any other sci-fi movie, let alone any that Keanu has been in