Many of us look back at our childhood with envy. We miss the feeling of being cared-for while still maintaining the freedom to experience new adventures, powerful emotions, ever growing strength and the naïve optimism that the future was something to look forward to. Very few things survive those innocent days into adulthood with the ability to resurrect our sense of wonder-they either suffer from our loss of innocence or our increased sophistication.
I can still feel the rollercoaster ride I took when, as a six-year-old boy I sat perched on the edge of my seat in a darkened room watching “The Day the Earth Stood Still” with my dad. The plot kept me guessing to the end because it didn’t fit the simple‘good guys wear white and always win’ scenario I’d become accustomed to. Bernard Herrman's haunting and unique score even inspired me to build my own crude thereamin synthesizer! Gort scared me out of my wits, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Klaatu was truly, as the Chicago Tribune TV guide would describe him, a “suave visitor from another planet”. He was better than me; wiser, more in control and much more cool! His spaceship and the technology were beyond any instrumentality I’d ever imagined. He simply spoke to his technology and it did his bidding. Gort was God the Father, always watching, judging and dealing out swift and merciless punishment. Gort’s ultimate weapon was light. Klaatu’s weapon was reason, yet he evoked suspicion and fear. Klaatu was Gort’s equal in authority, but his judgement was tempered by his desire to save the very humanity that rejected his plan for their salvation. The Day the Earth Stood Still was like the Bible, only much more relevant! As it turned out, screenwriter Edmund North deliberately weaved many Biblical references into the movie, except for the ultimate one. The studio ‘requested’ that the power of life and death not be given to Gort, but instead be reserved for “the Almighty Spirit”.
Nearly fifty years later, I still seize on every opportunity to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. I’ll admit that I notice the credibility gaps and some of the less than stellar performances in the movie, but I still get to relive a little of that rollercoaster ride I took when I was six. I rarely enjoy the remakes of my childhood entertainment; either I’ve outgrown their simplicity, or they can’t match my own imagination. The Day the Earth Stood Still was one of the few remakes I was looking forward to, simply because I hoped another generation could enjoy the ‘ride’ that I took and get a chance to experience a mainstream film with a complex plot, reason, emotion and suspense created by an intelligent plot and great acting. From the previews I’ve seen, I’m skeptical the remake coming out in December will provide that ride.
Time will tell, but the snippets I’ve seen so far appear to be devoid of the touching humanity that marked the original. Like ‘The War of the Worlds’ remake it looks dark and brooding, with suspense and subtlety replaced by special effects and a lecture. When I didn’t recognize any of the elements from the original movie in the sequel’s clips, I began to wonder if this would be less of a remake and more of a continuation-that would be disappointing, but possibly interesting. I began to hope that perhaps this edition would include more of the Harry Bates’original short story from which the movie was loosely derived, ‘Farewell to the Master’. I was intrigued with the thought that perhaps this modern version would have a more ominous ending involving the relationship between the races of the other planets and their police force of robots enslaving them. Could they be warning us to avoid the arrangement in which they relinquished their freedom for security? Could this be a metaphor for the real threat of our time just as nuclear disaster was the real demon lurking in the 1950’s? There were so many great possibilities to explore in a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still that I found myself actually hoping for precious time to pass quickly and bring me to it’s December opening date.
Then I heard Klaatu’s catchphrase uttered by Keanu Reeves. These words weren’t instructions to a super robot in a mysterious language-no, they were very concise and clear: “You live.... (and) the earth dies. If you die, the earth survives.”
A spoiler to end all spoilers. My childhood defiled, like Ralphie’s in ‘A Christmas Story’, by a “crummy commercial”! Instead of exploring any of the intriguing possibilities that could have made this one of the great remakes of all time, I’m afraid, very afraid, that I’m about to get hit over the head by Al Gore. I hope I’m wrong, but it sure looks like mankind is about to get their collective butts kicked for not going green fast enough for Keanu. Tomorrow night we’re to be treated to an extended preview on Fox Television. I rarely hope to discover that one of my predictions is wrong, but in this case I really hope I’m wrong-
-but I’m not wrong very often…just ask my wife.
