Keanu barada nikto?

[thatcrazycajun]

With thanks to shelleybear  for the tip: As apparently 20th Century-Fox doesn't believe it was done right the first time—thereby placing the studio at odds with most of the civilized world—it has decided to remake the late Robert Wise's 1951 SF masterpiece, The Day The Earth Stood Still. And its producers have cast Keanu Reeves in the pivotal role of Klaatu, the space alien whose arrival (and human appearance) causes all kinds of trouble in postwar Washington, DC. Scott Derrickson is the name of the director who thinks he can outdo the man who gave us the original as well as The Sound of Music and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and David Scarpa is the writer. The drop date is December 12, just in time for the holidays (of course). A trailer for it is being shown with the new Will Smith flick Hancock, and MTV has a copy online here.

This has all the earmarks of a bunch of Murdochian suits smelling a chance to cash in on a pre-existing, established and popular "brand." Like most such remakes, it has those three little words studio marketing types just love to hear: "pre-sold audience." I may end up seeing it just to see how badly they've frakked it up, but only for that reason. In the meantime, go rent a copy of the original (assuming you haven't seen it already, which I know if you're on my friends list is extremely unlikely) and see why this was a remake that was clearly necessary only in the demented minds of Fox greedheads.

"If you stop going to bad movies, they'll stop making bad movies! If the movie used to be a TV show, just don't go. After Roman numeral II, give it a rest. If it's a remake of a classic, rent the classic!... If the movie stinks, just...don't...go!" —Jay Sherman (voice of Jon Lovitz), in The Critic

Comments

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

Well, Derrickson's record is a bit of a mixed bag, eh? Sound of Music is practically perfect, but ST:TMP was much too long and pretentious.

And why should Disney get all the remake fun and profit? Just because they had Lindsay Lohan to do all those '60s movies (before she became such a drug on the entertainment biz)...

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Stipulated that Wise might have lost a step or two by the time he made ST:TMP, but in his earlier days he was a genius. When he got it right, he by-God got it right.

And your choice of words for Ms. Lohan ("a drug on the entertainment biz"), while probably inadvertent, could not have been more apt. Snicker.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Wise's directors cut of ST:TMP?
Personally I like it better then any of the later ones except "...Wrath of Khan" and "...Voyage Home".
If you consider what it was about, it stuck closest to the original "mission statement" "To Boldly go where no man has gone before!"

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

As one who read the original short story that TDTESS was based on (Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates) and was somewhat impressed (in my childhood) with how it stayed mostly on track with the story (unlike most Hollywood sci-fi dreck) I don't know if I should be alarmed or curious. I can think of all kinds of ways that they can really muck it up.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

to paraphrase Tina Turne, "We Don't Need Another Klaatu!"

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

c'mon, this is Fox we're talking about. Faux News? Of course, what the dittoheads ain't figured out is that most of the movie-going populace ain't old enough to have seen that nowadays. Not first-run, anyways. Pre-sold audience? Feh. I imagine the idea of Keanu doing SF will be more of a draw than the original. Remember, we fen are, sadly, a minority....

OTOH? Not all remakes or TV follow-ons suck. Hello, Serenity?? Ocean's Eleven? Even a few of the Trek flicks? Heck, half of Shakespeare was a remake.

Gripping hand, Sturgeon's Law does apply....

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

On the ... fourth? ... hand, that lack of memory may be precisely what's counted upon, if the plan is to tone down or alter the political aspects of the original. Maybe Klaatu (and his anti-war message) are meant to be portrayed as idiotic?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, I could see Murdoch committing that kind of Orwellianism... bastard....

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

And besides, the original is all old and stuff, it's, like, not even in color....

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Tell that to George Clooney (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/)....

(And if you have not seen Good Night and Good Luck, GO SEE IT. *Fabulous*. The funny part? The beta viewers often remarked that it was a great film, but the actor playing Joe McCarthy was over the top. "Ma'am, that was no actor. That was stock footage." (In other words, the Real McCarthy.))

Miscast #1

[oldfolkieathome.livejournal.com]

If they were to cast Mr. Reeves as Gort rather than Klaatu (stipulating Gort as portrayed in the original), it would be far more in keeping with his "run the acting talent gamut from A to B" abilities without straining his skills or our credulity.