This torpid, disappointing rehash provides yet more evidence, if we needed any, that when it comes to movie classics, unless you are blessed with a revolutionary new vision of the subject matter and above-average smarts, it is always best to leave well enough alone. In his 1951 original, Robert Wise deftly blended a timely Cold War cautionary tale with a crisp, well-conceived science fiction story. He did so on a modest budget, with virtually no effects, and yet at the same time managed to introduce some gentle, even intimate humanity. In Michael Rennie, the original alien emissary Klaatu, he had an understated actor who knew instinctively how to turn silence into gravity (no pun intended). In Patricia Neal, he had an actress who could convey pain and longing with a shadowed glance. That version redefined cinematic science fiction, and set the gold standard for future productions.
Director Scott Derrickson, best known for Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), makes a heavy-handed attempt at an eco-friendly update. From a business standpoint, it is a smart move. He is wisely seeking to cash in on the current global captivation with environmentalism, and on an equally trendy upsurge in anti-U.S. Government paranoia. That, truth be told, is not a bad conceit. In the right hands, it could have gone somewhere.
The problem is Derrickson just doesn’t have enough skill at the helm to make it work. The story staggers along like a drunk weaving toward the door of a bar—full of focus and motivation, but lacking in balance, peripheral vision, and any sense of proportion. In scriptwriter David Scarpa, Derrickson has, unfortunately, found a soul-mate. At every tipping point, where sharp, clear dialogue could save an at-risk scene from the leaden doom of entropic pacing, Scarpa delivers perfectly designed banalities—adding just enough heft to sink the moment.
Ironically, Reeves has the right face, body, and vocal tone for Klaatu. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in James Cameron’s The Terminator, Reeves has been handed the perfect job for his particular skill set—that of a robot-like alien who speaks in a terse monotone, and is incapable of emotion. However, unlike Schwarzenegger, Reeves does not have Cameron calling the shots. That’s his loss. Well, ours too, I suppose.
Jennifer Connelly, a dependable if unremarkable actress, is left with the thankless task of portraying weepy heroine Dr. Helen Benson. Her job, indeed her Mission: Impossible, is to play off Reeves’s dead-eyed Klaatu. This is the film equivalent of playing ping pong with yourself. Kathy Bates shines as Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson. Bates is an immensely versatile actress. She brings a welcome mixture of Hillary Clinton’s toughness and Madeleine Albright’s strength of character to what could have been a throwaway role. John Cleese is in top form in a near cameo as Nobel Prize winning Professor Jacob Barnhardt, an avuncular polymath who, it turns out, won his gold plaque for Biological Altruism. Yes, it is an actual discipline. I checked. Cleese tackles the character with nary a whiff of Pythonish humor and manages to pull it off. It is Professor Barnhardt’s love for Bach that somewhat inadvertently triggers the first inklings of doubt in the alien emissary’s cold interstellar heart. This is good news for Baroque apologists the world over. Barnhardt and Klaatu, in a little homage-within-a-homage to Wise’s film, even chum-up to complete a chalkboard equation. It is, however, Jaden Smith, ten year old son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who steals the show. His insolent, rebellious yet wounded Jacob is the highlight of the movie.
The original film had one of the finest of the 1950’s “out there” scores. It was composed by Bernard (known as Benny) Herrmann, who wrote the music for most of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Herrmann’s score used the now largely forgotten theremin, a non-tactile electronic “instrument,” or electrophone, that used the proximity of the player’s hands to a pair of metal antennae to generate changes in amplified pitch. The result was an ethereal and otherworldly sound; something truly unique. This new version of the film has a fine but much more traditional score by Tyler Bates, who will be handling the soundtrack for next year’s Watchmen. The orchestration is professional, and the sound has that indefinable big budget polish. But it lacks the spirit of the original.
The theremin is now more of a time machine than an instrument. Hearing it transports listeners back to the early fifties—when science fiction was young, and new, and—at least to the viewers of the day—endlessly exotic.
Underneath all of this surface rigamarole lie the real problems; the unanswerable story glitches. Let us call these the science fiction issues.
Klaatu has presumably flown billions upon billions upon billions of miles to reach Earth. He has gone to great pains to adopt human form. His stated purpose upon arrival is to meet with the leaders of our civilization at the United Nations. It is never said, but we take from this that he will issue an ultimatum to the peoples of the Earth: Mend your ways or perish. He is guarded by the unstoppable biomechanical sentinel Gort. He is himself endowed with not inconsiderable defensive powers. Yet after being shot in the movie’s First Contact moment, and receiving an unfavorable report from an imbecilic alien deep mole, he scraps that entire plan, passes judgment on humankind and immediately sets in motion the nanoswarms that will engulf and consume the planet. The logic behind this course of action is as impenetrable as Reeves’s granite-carved countenance.
That deep mole, ably portrayed by veteran character actor James Hong, informs Klaatu that the human race is too self-destructive to be saved. Yet he chooses to stay behind and die rather than leave with Klaatu. Why? Because, he says, there is something more to humanity, something he cannot explain. It is nevertheless something that makes him “proud” to have lived here with us for the last seventy years. This outrageous paradox cannot be reconciled. It was painful to hear in the theater and is even more painful to think about.
Humankind presents an unacceptable risk to the survival of the Earth, which, we are told, is one of the few planets anywhere in the universe that can support complex life. So, to rid the Earth of its human scourge, Klaatu’s plan is to envelope the globe in a sterilizing cloud of voracious nanobugs, which will consume everything—including all that precious complex life. After the surface of the planet is utterly razed, Klaatu will repopulate it, without mankind in the mix, using thousands, perhaps millions, of mini-spheres, each one holding specimens of our indigenous species. Now, just so we’re all on the same page: Klaatu and his “group of civilizations” which are “all around us” can travel impossibly vast distances at inconceivable speeds, are capable of building indestructible red-eyed robots that can instantly dissolve into trillions of tiny mechanical insects, but aren’t smart enough to simply engineer a virus that will kill just mankind off, thereby preventing the destruction of an entire innocent biosphere? They can’t send down a few hundred thousand Gorts to fly around and massacre us? Speaking of that, they can’t station a few hundred thousand Gorts here with the specific mandate to stop us from further polluting the planet? They can’t even be bothered to establish a large alien city here and simply run the planet for us until we grow up?
Ludicrous.
Putting all that aside, at the end, Klaatu flies away without ever sharing the awful truth with anyone but Dr. Benson and Professor Barnhardt. So far as the rest of the world can tell, he shows up, is shot, releases a swarm of very hungry little bugs, mysteriously turns them into glittering metal snowflakes that fall quite beautifully in Central Park, and then leaves. End of story. Oh, and he makes everything shut down right before he flies away. Is this meant to be lasting? Is it some permanent kind of EMP? If not, then we reset in a few hours and go back to our lives. If so, civilization crashes, billions die, and the survivors revert to bone-gnawing barbarism. This is the central premise of S.M. Sterling’s popular Emberverse novels—and is generally acknowledged to be, well, non-scientific in basis. When Klaatu decides to halt the planet-cleansing process, he tells Dr. Benson that to do so will exact a terrible price on humanity. Yet we are never told what precisely that price is or might be. Is it the power failure? If so, we need a lot more in the way of set-up.
So, in the final analysis, it is all or nothing with Klaatu and his bunch. There is no middle ground. Either you pass muster and live, or don’t and—bang—you’re out. Dead. Fini. Kaput. These aliens have learned a lot over the millennia—interstellar travel, smart metals, energy beams, nanotechnology, advanced medical sciences. The one thing they’ve missed out on, incredibly, is moderation.
Bottom line: Deep SF fans need to see this on the big screen, even though it is not very good. Why? I can’t explain it—that’s just the way it is. Everyone else should wait for the DVD rental.
Closing thought: Pray these guys don’t get their hands on Them!
