After 50 years the sci-fi pic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ is getting an update – but can director Derrickson do justice to the cult classic? Movies.ie takes a look at the film’s latest trailer.
After over 50 years, the sci-fi cult classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ is set for a remake with director Scott Derrickson at the helm. Updating the 1951 sci-fi classic’s Cold War and religious themes, Keanu Reeves stars as Klaatu, a mysterious man from another world who warns Earth’s humans that unless they change their gluttonous and harmful ways and pay more attention to the planet’s needs, aliens will swoop down and destroy them for good…
Movies.ie takes a look at the latest film trailer to see what hints we can discern about one our most anticipated winter movies.
KEANU REEVES – THE PERFECT ALIEN?
Ok – we admit it – when we heard Reeves was cast in a remake of one of our favourite movies, we were sceptical to say the least but, if the trailer is anything to go by, Reeves is actually a pretty good replacement for original Klaatu Michael Rennie. In what we’ve seen thus far, Klaatu sits in an interrogation room, hooked up to a lie-detector as a government official quizzes him on his purpose. Reeves manage to maintain a cold rigid alien quality about his body language. Whether this is simply his acting range, we’re not sure, but here (finally) it’s working for Neo!
MAN V NATURE:
Reeves has openly explained that Klaatu’s message to Earth was very different from the one in the original, that he was bringing with him a warning to stop destroying the environment. Here it looks like the environment is finally taking its revenge…
HELEN BENSON
Jennifer Connnelly plays Helen Benson, a microbiologist working at Princeton University. In the original film, Klaatu finds the character of Helen after he escapes from custody. Here, she goes to him in what the director describes as an ‘expanded role from the original film’.
THE SECOND COMING?
The original was a not-so-subtle allegory for Christ (the alien’s human name is Carpenter, he calls for peace, he is resurrected at the end, etc.). Is Derrickson’s version as overt? Well according to the director : “I don’t think you can really escape that metaphor. I think the Christ-myth stories make great stories, whether it’s ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Braveheart,’ they all are tapping into some kind of deep myth in our DNA, and by myth I don’t necessarily mean false. I mean something that has mythological power and that’s definitely part of the story and part of what attracts me to it. My approach to that was to not discard that, but to be not quite as direct as the original.”
GORT!
The closing shot in the trailer is a hero shot, although strangely not of Keanu Reeve’s character Klaatu, but of his trusty robot Gort. The look of the character, which deliberately recalls his look in the 1951 original, should be enough to get any fan excited.
Check out the full trailer for the film below:
The Day the Earth Stood Still is in Irish cinemas December 12th.