Robots, spheres and Klaatu’s OH MY!
When an alien sphere/spaceship decides to fall from space onto earth, America panics a bit. The military gathers all the relevant scientist in the country together and forces them to face the alien encounter up close and personal. Thanks to an itchy trigger finger, the first handshake becomes one to help stop the bleeding from a bullet wound. An alien is shot then transported to hospital facilities for repair and questioning; thus Klaatu is born. Klaatu’s sole purpose is to determine if the human race should survive (or be trusted) or if it should be terminated before it’s too late to save the earth. Klaatu finds his way out of the hospital and out of the arms of the military, and into a scientist named Helen’s life, to figure out these burning questions.
I’m not sure critics gave this movie enough credit for what it preserved from the original. Sure it was mostly special effects (and sometimes not very good ones), but it did probably give an accurate representation of what we would do now if an alien landed and warned us of impending doom. When you look at this movie you have to translate it just slightly; what I mean is when you say things like, “In 1950, $1,000 dollars is like $100,000 now”, you have to keep that sort of mindset intact. So, again, how the military reacted in the original movie would translate to how they reacted in the remake. It’s completely believable and it helps when Kathy Bates reinforces it with a bitchy attitude. I commend Derrickson on his direction. He put together a very healthy film that could be very believable to a point. He kept the ride going from beginning to end and he didn’t choose to slow it down. You have to give him props for that. Of course, no good director would ever survive without a screenplay.
David Scarpa’s writing was almost well-balanced. I think that once Klaatu entered the scene Scarpa did the right thing by making him cold and heartless. Sure will joke that’s because Reeves was playing the character, but Klaatu has to separate himself from the human race; he’s required to be cold and an outside judge. Scarpa stuck to this ideal, even towards the end, which gave plenty of props to the original film. Now with that said, Scarpa’s one main fault, in my opinion, was that he didn’t balance out the negative and positive of the human race. Everyone in the film wants Klaatu dead, except Helen. Every moment he is discovered an explosion happens or a gunshot is fired (or a gun is pulled). Most of the film we have a lot of violence on Klaatu; this poses a problem for the story. If you were an alien trying to decide on whether to save the human race or dispose of it, would you really want to be constantly kicked/shot/beaten? If he has to base this story on his decision, we would completely screwed. Klaatu supposedly finds love/redemption within Helen and her son Jacob. The problem is that there wasn’t enough from them to outweigh or even balance the amount of negative shown in the story. Again, if I was Klaatu the human race would be out of here based on this story.
Overall, I was impressed with the story. I think that it still is a fun, yet fast, adventure. I think there is a lot of praise that should be given for Keanu Reeves. He doesn’t break from his character one bit. Make jokes all you want, but he is a perfect Klaatu and he does the role justice. The story just needed to be tweaked a tiny bit for this to work.
A Blu sphere of fun
If you don’t give 20th Century Fox props for making this a good looking Blu-ray, you need to sell your player back to whoever you bought it from; clearly you don’t deserve to own it. The movie looks positively gorgeous in HD. It does help that it was shot and shown in an IMAX environment. All the sights and sounds from this one top-notch, some of the best. The only knock I have on it is that the HD makes some of the effects look cheap. The end scene, which I won’t ruin for you, looks positively awful. That’s my only complaint, and it’s not major. Sheesh, it’s about an alien coming to wipe out our race, I will suspend my believability.
Now, commend Fox again for what they included in this 3-disc set. Sure you get the digital copy, and features, but you also get the Blu-ray version of the original 1951 film. That is unbelievably cool. They did right by including the movie that started it all and it shows how much they honor the original. Very cool of them and worthy of note.
Speaking of worthy of note, you get some good features to boot. You get some fantastic commentary from writer David Scarpa and some good featurettes (you’ll like the one about Gort) that enhance the experience of the film. I always appreciate the production processes when they’re broken down into individual featurettes, so I was disappointed with what this set had to offer. You’ll find some good stuff here waiting for you.