So none of you folks actually slept last night? No one slept off Xmas? I slept like a baby after a long day of preparing for guests and then eating like a maniac.
Anyway, I'm gladder than ever I decided not to see this travesty. The original "THe Day the Earth Stood Still" was a classic that still holds up remarkably. Anjd I used to live a couple blocks away from where Klaatu took up residence. There is an ineresting backstory to the film. The movie mogul who greenlighted the original--I forget which SOB it was--did so, disregarding its pacifist message, simply because he saw it was a good story and good make money. And voila. I hate all these remakes, because it's all about ramped up special effects, whilst whatever content the originals had is gutted. Hollywood fucked up the remake "Planet of the Apes" as they did so many other classics. It's bad enough these motherfuckers can't come up with new ideas, but they have to go and defile the good movies they managed to crap out. Yet another symptom of the dumbed-down millennium. -----Original Message----- >From: [email protected] >Sent: Dec 25, 2008 11:47 PM >To: [email protected] >Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Day the Earth Stood Still: Excellent Review IMO > >(I did you see the movie and was totally disappointed. Now I know why.:-) > > >Les wrote: "Keanu Reeves was the only good thing about the dreadful remake >of The Day the Earth Stood Still ...." > >I guess in the sense that there was no trace of human personality in the >performance, so if your aliens are meant to act like a pet rock, then it >makes sense. > >But the movie was so stupid and incoherent that even this characterization >fell apart. > >First, the idea that the entire biosphere needed to be wiped clean is so >monumentally stupid it can only be compared to the infamous "we had to >destroy the village in order to save it" from Vietnam. In this sense, this >new Klaatu is extremely American. > >Second, the guy is on a mission to deliver a message to the United Nations. >The first person he asks says no, so he decides the entire biosphere has got >to go, except that he and his friends had already prepositioned a bunch of >arks for such an eventuality. Talk about prejudicing the outcome. > >And the whole Noah's Ark idea that is central to the movie is just hoaky. >"Saving as many species as they can" isn't adequate remediation for ecocide, >as a race intelligent enough to recognize humanity is on an ecocidal >trajectory would surely understand. > >The presumably final decision to go ahead and do the wipe is made in the >middle of what is in essence an intrusive McDonald's commercial, but the >long-time spy the aliens have had on the planet refuses to leave preferring >to be destroyed as a human being. You'd think that would have given pause to >someone from an advanced civilization that even their own guy found >something of such great value here (implausible as that part of the movie >is) that he prefers to die with the humans than to go on living without >them. > >Inconsistencies abound. For example, when they get caught by a state >trooper, Klaatu chooses to crush him with a car and then resuscitate him, >instead of simply disarming him. And Klaatu quite considerately WAITS until >AFTER the state trooper has reported in before dealing with him. Similarly, >it takes the nanorobotic swarm about three seconds to demolish an entire >stadium, but once they get into the kid and his mom, they go into >ultra-slo-mo molasses mode so there can be an appropriate amount of time for >Keanu Reeves's failed attempts to emote and then for him to cast some more >of that alien magic pulling the robotic locusts into his body. We see >close-ups of the nanobots a couple of times and see that how they destroy is >to simply eat everything in sight. >Yet the kid, on the verge of dying with the nanobots in him, makes a >miraculous immediate recovery as soon as Klaatu takes them into his own >body, never mind the damage they had ALREADY done. > >And then there's stuff that just grates. Instead of the Einsteinian figure >in the original movie, the woman takes Klaatu to meet with John Cleese of >Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame. I know, I know, it is supposed to be >the world's leading scientist who just happens to be a close pal of the >woman, and who won a Nobel Prize for his work in biological altruism. >(Altruism! Get it?). But it is John Cleese just the same -- a complete >distraction especially as he is only allowed 4 or 5 lines to establish his >character, which they fail to do miserably. > >The blackboard scene from the first movie is repeated except here it makes >no sense: what is a Nobel Prize Winning biologist doing writing equations on >a blackboard about relativistic physics? Moreover, with the Nobel Laureate's >protégé (the woman) introducing and vouching for Klaatu, there should be no >need for this sort of demonstration on Klaatu's part. And finally, who uses >chalk on a blackboard any more? Shouldn't the world's leading biologist AND >physicist at least have a whiteboard, if not a touch-screen five-foot-tall >plasma display, like the way-cool ones CNN had for the elections to >graphically plumb the heights of electoral cretinism? > >And then of course there's the final tidbit -- after having committed >genocide and ecocide on a massive albeit not complete scale, and WRONGLY so, >because he reverses course, Klaatu then hops into his sphere and turns out >the lights -- not on the preposterous looking spaceship, but throughout the >entire planet. Then without even a mumbling word of apology or explanation, >he just leaves. > >At least the dolphins had the decency to say, "So long, and thanks for all >the fish." > >As the credits begin to roll we're left wondering whether Klaatu implicitly >lied to the woman and kid, making it SEEM like they would survive but >instead, by making human technology useless, causing the collapse of >civilization and thereby the elimination of nearly the entire human race by >a long-term turning off of the lights. And if that option WAS available, >wasn't the planned ecocide even more of a crime, not only against humanity, >but against nature, the earth, itself? > >Or if the effect was just short term, and the laws if physics would soon be >back to normal, was Klaatu too dense to see that what he had just done >--wiped out the heart of the eastern United States-- would undoubtedly lead >the humans to subordinate EVERYTHING ELSE, including the environment, to >developing the technology that might fend of another such unprovoked (as far >as the humans know) attack and to eventually enable humanity to search the >heavens for the perpetrators in order to prevent another such attack by >wiping them out? > >In other words, is Klaatu entirely clueless that the likely consequences of >his intervention would be PRECISELY the opposite of those presumably >intended by him? > >* * * > >The classic science fiction movies of the 1950's really made their mark a >few years later, as TV stations experimenting with post-prime-time >programming broadcast them and they found a ready audience among >radicalizing young people. They found an audience because they were socially >relevant --the anti-communist hysteria, for example, mirrored in the >attitude towards Klaatu in the 1951 "The Day the Earth Stood Still," in >"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and in a different way by the monsters from >the ID of "Forbidden Planet." > >There were, of course, many other "lesser" movies, mostly produced as >low-budget "B" movies (filler for Saturday afternoon "double features"). > >The truth is that in the 50's and much of the 60's, there was no room in the >very limited mainstream media of those days for a frontal attack on the >government or U.S. society. So seemingly quite distant settings became the >vehicles not exactly for dissident views, but mostly for posing questions in >a dissident way or whose answers pointed in a dissident direction. > >How much of it was due to the zeitgeist and how much due to conscious and >even self-conscious choice by filmmakers is an open question. George A. >Romero, Night of the Living Dead "auteur," denies that the execution of Ben >in that movie, the lead anti-zombie character, who is Black, by an >anti-zombie white cracker posse, was at all a reference to the "racial >tensions" of the late 60's, and that a Black actor was cast in the lead >simply because he was the best actor they could get on an extremely limited >budget. > >But the plain fact is that the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King took >place shortly before Romero and his friends started shooting, and still >traumatized the nation towards the end of the year when the movie was >released. And as a High School senior who managed to catch the film when it >was fleetingly shown in Miami one weekend, I had no doubt what its message >was. Shot in stark, black and white tones reminiscent of Vietnam news >footage, it would be decades before I learned Romero also always claimed >they did it in black and white because they couldn't afford color. > >Whatever. > >I could cite other incidents of those years to make my point. > >I think it was the summer of 1964, I got to go to the Miami premiere of a >Hard Day's Night by winning a radio contest, which asked listeners to call >in with the line the alien said to the woman in the Day the Earth Stood >still to tell the robot not to destroy the earth. "Platu Mirada Nick Toe" is >what I heard, (not the "Klaatu barada nicto" that seems to be the more >precise transcription) but it was close enough and I won the prize -- >tickets to the premiere and a copy of the album. > >WHY did I as a 13-year-old remember the phrase from some 1951 B-movie that >I'd seen on late-night TV? Because even then I was starting to radicalize, I >think, and the movie spoke, not just to my concerns, but to those of a >generation. Not the generation for which it was made, but the one that came >after. > >That is, I think, the *fundamental* problem with this remake, and not just >this one. This production was billed as a "re-imagining" of the movie in the >present day, i.e., the waning phase of Bush's second term. But they did not >have the courage to raise the real hot-button issues of THIS day and age. > >Early in the new movie, Klaatu is subjected to interrogation. But it is >brief, and after the interrogator refuses to even acknowledge Klaatu's >EXTREMELY flat statement to the effect that "you should let me go," Klaatu >uses his magical powers to bust loose and move on to the chase sequences >that replace the missing heart of this movie. > >To make the 1951 movie for today, Klaatu would need to be electro-shocked, >beaten and water-boarded. And the character would have to have some good, >rational motivation for putting up with it, without exercising his >super-powers, and then eventually deciding to make use of them. Instead, the >movie chooses to take up the use of --presumably-- a "truth serum" in the >interrogation. No guts, none whatsoever. > >But perhaps even taking on torture would not have worked, because the point >of the Day the Earth Stood Still in the 50's and early 60's is that it >evoked the madness of the arms race and "Mutually Assured Destruction," the >commies-under-the-bed hysteria which had begun to wane but was still being >crammed down the throats of high school students in courses with names like >"Americanism versus Communism." And you could not find any criticism of >those things in the "mainstream" media which is the only media 99% of us had >access to. > >TODAY it may not be mainstream, but a criticism, nay, denunciation of U.S. >torture policy and the U.S. role in the world in general is easily >accessible to virtually all high schoolers in the U.S. via the Internet. >Back then, I remember scouring libraries and bookstores in Miami looking for >Bernard B. Fall's book, "The Two Vietnams" and treasuring the "Where is >Vietnam?" collection of poems that I'd found at the "beatnik" bookstore in >Coconut Grove. > >But in an age when "An inconvenient Truth" can win Oscars and the book >version top the New York Times best-seller list for weeks, what point is >there to a movie like this? Sure the 1951 original pulled its punches, but >at least they were punches. But you can't make that movie today. To me, one >of the strongest, perhaps the strongest scene in the 1951 original is where >we scan the faces of the various kinds of people present at this world >assemblage pulled together by the film's Einstein character, and we come >across a Black man's face. Yes, they pulled that punch. The man was wearing >a clerical collar. But in a film set in DC, then as now heavily Black, which >had not yet strayed across a Black face, not even mopping a floor, that the >wisest of the wise would INCLUDE a Black person in the assembly to listen to >Klaatu's message was a powerful statement. > >The new version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" fails because it is a >fake and a fraud. A phony. > >In 1951, some filmmakers had the courage to at least RAISE important issues >that were censored out of public discourse. No matter how indirectly these >were raised, nor how many punches they pulled, they did something socially >significant. TODAY gutless wonders like studio execs and Keanu Reeves (who >not only "starred" but played a significant role in shaping the script and >story line) don't even dare raise the issue of torture and raise >environmental concerns only to make their movie seem "relevant" and "edgy" >while having such contempt for their audience that the "environmental" >champion in their movie proposes to destroy the planet in order to "save" it >-- and makes a fairly good start of it before changing his mind. But EVEN IF >they had not completely messed it up the movie still would not have worked. >It was the broader social context and atmosphere that made those films of >the 50's great. > >It is not enough to "re-imagine" for today by changing the issue from war to >the environment and the alien's action from a stunning yet basically >harmless parlor trick by way of warning to genocide. What they did in the >50's was to *create* something new -- which is the last thing media >conglomerates have a stomach for. > >Joaquín > > >________________________________________________ >YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. >Send list submissions to: [email protected]_ >(mailto:[email protected]) > >**************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, >Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. >(http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000025) > >_______________________________________________ >Marxism-Thaxis mailing list >[email protected] >To change your options or unsubscribe go to: >http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
