Friday 13 March 2009

The Day The Earth Stood Still 2008...

Aye, a bit behind on this one - but it's not exactly like it's worth rushing to see. Far from it - just "worth a watch", especially as I've recently seen the original 50's version ... unsurprisingly, it's a case of the original movie "for the win".

The remake starts fairly promising, with a thankfully quite faithful update of Gort - but it all quickly goes downhill once Klaatu Reeves legs it with micro-biologist woman and her snotty-little-know-it-all-gets-in-the-way-snide-bastard step-son tagging along for the ride, which is basically staggering from one place to another evading the authorities.

There doesn't feel like there's any real purpose in their farting around, it all seems to be set up to stall for time so that Klaatu Reeves can learn that mankind is worth saving by using micro-biology woman and her shitty little step-son as unintentional ambassadors for human kind.

If I was Klaatu, I'd have bitch-slapped that snotty little kid for being a gigantic, arrogant pain in the arse - why is it, that kids in movies and TV, often end up being such know-it-all shits that just fuck everybody's day up? You'd have also thought that micro-biologist woman would have explained to her snotty little WoW-playing step-brat that his KIA father was a military engineer, not some arse-kicking GI Joe knock-off ... i.e. kid, you shouldn't demand that mankind destroy an alien visitor "just in case" - a complete 180 from the original movie, which had a kid with some intelligence and faith ... even if his relationship with Klaatu was damn-near paedo-like in this day-and-age of 'paedo's are everywhere!' fear.

Bung in a toothless role for Kathy 'bust an ankle or two' Bates, and a shoe-horned-in appearance by John Cleese as "the professor" - a character who is introduced so poorly you wonder if they lopped out five minutes of "why the fuck are you, Mr Matrix, erasing all my very complicated equations from my chalk board? ... oh you're an alien? ... and this is the answer to my questions? oh okay then" - none of that, and then step-brat goes and thoroughly fucks up everyone's day ... and you've got a rather luke warm hodge-podge soup.

Strange that it's only after Klaatu senselessly slaughters two helicopters, pilots-and-all, that step-shit realises "hey, this Klaatu guy isn't bad" ... indeed, what an utter little bastard.

Then Gort is chucked out the window in favour of that crap you saw in the trailer of trucks and baseball fields getting rinsed by grey clouds, and mankind gets handed the shittiest ending of all.

**SPOILER START**

We'll let you live and develop your way of life, but we're gonna royally screw up your technological advances, industry, incredibly important scientific research, and economy by somehow disabling all power - WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

Then the movie just cuts out ... seriously, what the crap was that turd-pile?!

**SPOILER END**

So aye - decent start, but then it all turns into a mush of nonsense and running around (script before plot, not plot before script, unfortunately), and it ends on a completely rubbish note ... without enough Gort, nor some of the most famous words in cinematic history - Klaatu, Birata, Niktoo - WHY REMAKE A GREAT FILM AND THEN NOT USE THOSE WORDS?!

See - visually flash, utter nonsense.

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