Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
20th Century Fox
d. Scott Derrickson; pr. Paul Harris Boardman, Gregory Goodman, Erwin Stoff; scr. David Scarpa; ph. David Tattersall; m. Tyler Bates; ed. Wayne Wahrman; cast. Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connolly, John Cleese, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Hamm, Kyle Chandler, James Hong (103 mins)
In the faith-based Christian press director Scott Derrickson is being hailed, on the basis of two films – The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Day the Earth Stood Still – as “one of the most powerful Christians in Hollywood.”
That may be, but on the basis of The Day the Earth Stood Still, he is also one of the most insipid, attempting to saturate what was a rationalist allegory in the original 1951 movie with half-baked, moronic Christian myth deployed with such scant attention to intelligence or subtlety as to be insulting and cloying. In Derrickson’s hands, The Day the Earth Stood Still emerges a banal, boringly mediocre Hollywood B-movie writ large, full of faux urgency and impending catastrophe instead of genuine drama.
In the film, an alien visitor Klaatu (played by Keanu Reeves) comes to Earth. He reveals to a scientist (Jennifer Connolly) that he wants to save the Earth. However, he wants to save the Earth from humankind, who are destroying the plant in the process of destroying themselves. Connolly tries to get him to change his mind and save the species by insisting that humanity has the power to mend its ways. In this, she is aided by a scientist, winner of the noble prize for “biological altruism” (a bogus category seemingly concocted for the film in a nod to intelligent design theory), who says to Reeves that it is on the brink of destruction that a species will change. That it is former Monty Python member John Cleese who delivers this eschatological “insight” only goes to suggest that the specious philosophy behind this Christian belief saturated drivel is worthy only of Monty Python: the result is unintentionally risible when not insulting to the point of stupefaction.
In a 1920s prologue in which a ball of light descends from the heavens to Earth, Reeves puts his hand into the light and is transformed, re-emerging with marks on his hands that resemble religious stigmata. In the present day, alien Reeves is re-born onto the planet its erstwhile judge. The message here is clear – Christ has returned to judge humanity, not for its sins apparently, but for its failure to take care of the planet, one of the few planets in the universe capable of sustaining life and therefore precious to the omnipotent aliens (angels in this half thought through Christian allegory).
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a slimly disguised fantasy of the second coming of Christ within the trappings of a science fiction B-movie which in merely updating the themes of the original film with regards to the treatment of the military loses the context of the original 1951 version and merely seems clichéd and ridiculous.
Interview: director Scott Derrickson
While the film establishes an environmental theme – humanity judged for misuse of the environment: an inconvenient truth of a sin – director Derrickson has admitted that he didn’t care for the theme: “(w)hen I was making the movie, I just basically wanted to not think about any of the specific politics – certainly not the politics of environmentalism.” In short, Derrickson uses this device merely as a cover for his real intention – the creation of an eschatological fantasy of what he describes as “God at work in the world” – and doesn’t even bother to give his audience an intelligent examination of the issues at hand. He doesn’t care for an intelligent discussion of the issues, only for a propaganda vehicle for his supposedly subtle Christian intentions. Christians, conditioned to be spoon-fed an ideology rather than think about it, may accept this intention but others will rightly be insulted by this condescending attitude to genuine issues affecting humanity’s future.
What emerges instead is a compendium of eschatological myth: a presentation, encoded in Christian belief, of the Day of Judgment, the second coming of Christ and the salvation, once again, of humankind. Eschatology itself is a bogus and dangerous pseudo-science that exposes Christianity as nothing but a glorified death-cult and this fantasy merely Christianizes a genre that began with the Cold War paranoia that made the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still an insightful look at humanity’s capacity for destruction but which makes this remake an empty-headed vehicle of self-congratulatory religiosity, a hodge-podge of Biblical beliefs and environmentalist sympathy.
Interview: star Keanu Reeves
The clash of science and faith was something Derrickson had essayed earlier, to more intriguing ends in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a film which ultimately validated a faith in the more irrational and delusional aspects of the Christian faith – demonic possession. Here, the representative scientist Connolly is in awe of a seemingly supernatural phenomenon she cannot understand or explain and must appeal to in order to save humanity from destruction. Science is here powerless as the film’s Jesus figure delivers judgment, a theme which balances the theme of scientific pride being responsible for the Day of Judgment in another eschatological fantasy remake, I am Legend. Connolly’s belief in Klaatu / Christ saves humanity from obliteration on what is Judgement Day, reconciling science with faith.
By avoiding all consideration of sin in favour of an environmental theme that the director doesn’t even take seriously, by his own admission no less, this modern version of The Day the Earth Stood Still takes the rationalist Cold War Christ allegory of the original film and re-deploys it as Christian eschatological fantasy: a trend increasingly popular in the new Millenium and last seen in the Christian reclamation of rationalist myth that was the Will Smith version of I am Legend. It remains to be seen if this trend towards eschatological fantasy – found also in such as The Reaping and the remake of The Omen – will comprise a genuinely Christian sub-genre but on the basis of The Day the Earth Stood Still it is certainly trying.
However, there are no real issues here, nothing of substance beyond an irrational faith which treats rationalist allegory as the Gospel truth. In short, it is not only impossible to take this version of The Day the Earth Stood Still seriously on its own terms but impossible to discern any entertainment value in it, bogged down as it is by a sense of impending doom, blatant product placement and an infuriating child.
This is Christian opportunism at its most blatant and a sad demonstration of Hollywood superficiality, failing even as entertainment. However, the 2009 release of Knowing offers a far superior example of the complexities of eschatological fantasy within the sci-fi summer blockbuster mentality.
