Remember that book I reviewed, The World Without Us, which is about, you know, what would happen to the world without us? (basically, other species would do quite well in general, though plastic pollution will remain for a really, really long time) Now, that idea’s hitting the big screen with The Day the Earth Stood Still — starring Keanu Reeves. Apparently, it’s a remake, but I’d never heard of the film before.
“Be good to the Earth or Keanu Reeves will kill you!” writes Jerome Woody humorously in Grist. The premise of the film seems to be that an alien species has come to destroy human life in order to save the planet, since Earth’s one of the only few planets that’ll support complex living beings. “We can’t risk the survival of this planet for the sake of one species,” says whoever Keanu’s character is.
I’m not into action films, but I’m so watching this in theaters –
The original is an interesting 1950s allegory on the dangers of xenophobia and intolerance. It’s worth netflixing (and it’s likely available at the Santa Monica library).
Comment by Don Hosek — November 26, 2008 @ 9:44 pm
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the flying saucer in the original film. Agents from the newly created CIA were present on the set. Frank Lloyd Wright was a student of Gurdjieff. The story was rumored to have been inspired by Gurdjieff’s book All & Everything, which is about an alien’s return to Earth in UFO, and the stories her tells his grandson about human condition along the way. The film was a dire warning about nuclear weapons.
Comment by Remy Chevalier — November 28, 2008 @ 11:38 am
So I hear from all my older friends now that this original is “a classic” and that I’m v. out of it for never having heard of it –
Comment by Siel — December 3, 2008 @ 5:58 pm