Dec 21 2008
The Day the Earth Stood Still
I went to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, a scifi movie about the destruction, or near destruction, of the Earth. If you haven’t seen it and you are planning on seeing it, you might not want to read this. I will try to not give away anything important, but basically the theme of the movie is that humans are slowly killing the earth with all our technology and waste, carbon dioxide, etc. The aliens have come to save the Earth itself, not the humans. As Keanu Reeves put it, “If the Earth dies, humans die. If humans die, the Earth survives”. I think playing an emotionless alien was the perfect role for Keanu Reeves. Obviously, expressing emotion, or simply having a soul, is not his strong point. Therefore, playing a role in which he was supposed to be void of a soul was great for him. I think he did well as an alien (his name was Klaatu). The acting was pretty good overall I guess, although there were a few actors that were weak. A lot of the military figures were pretty bad actors (I don’t know their specific names). There were a few blatant plot holes but I do not feel like going into all of them. An ironic part of the movie is when Klaatu, the alien messenger, says that there are only a few planets that can support life like Earth, so in order to save this life-bearing planet, they must wipe out all life on the planet. I did not really understand their thinking behind that. I also thought it was stupid that after Klaatu and the aliens come determined to wipe out mankind, all it takes to change their minds is the lead woman, Helen, to tell them that humans can change. She tells Klaatu that humans will change, and, just like that, he is on her side and he stops the extermination of the human race. At least now we can rest assured that if aliens ever come to wipe us out, we can just tell them not to and they will leave. Thank goodness. All in all, I would give the movie about 2.5 stars. It was very visually appealing. There were great special effects. However, the movie was just a little slow at times and there were a few plot holes that were difficult to circumvent. It is worth seeing though, since there do not seem to be many great movies out, although “Seven Pounds” starring Will Smith got some good reviews. Thanks for reading and continue to check in.
