The Day the Earth Stood Still Blu Ray
April 30, 2009
The Day the Earth Stood Still Blu Ray Review
The remake of the 1951 classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, gets a fresh Hollywood make up with some nice special effects and updated story. The 1951 version is considered one of the best science fiction films to grace the silver screen. So, it would take a herculean effort to outshine the original film. The remake is helmed by a relatively unknown director named Scott Derrickson. While the film doesn’t totally destroy the original, it does not live up to the reputation. There are several detractions that make the film unworthy of the original movie.
Keanu Reeves plays the alien visitor Klaatu. He comes to Earth to determine whether we as species deserve to live as the dominant species. He first lands in Central Park where he is immediately shot by one of the soldier. A big robot steps out from the space orb to defend Klaatu. Realizing the mistake, the officials rush Klaatu to the hospital where he is promptly saved. When he is healed, he is put through interrogation by the Secretary of Defense, Kathy Bates. Klaatu insists on being taken to United Nation to speak to all the leaders of the World. However, he is denied the request and promptly treated as hostile. This is where Dr. Helen Benson steps in to intervene and do the right thing.
The story doesn’t deviate too much from the original version except for the environmental message vs. the war from the original. This is where I begin to lose interest. Not another “we screwed up the environment” movie. The Hollywood seems to think it is a spokesman for the environment and its cause. I have no problem with that except they seem to hammering it every chance it gets. Regardless, it’s really derivative effort. Another annoying aspect of the movie was the Jaden Smith’s character. It served no purpose in my opinion and could have been written out. His character was so annoying that I was finding myself wishing him some bodily harm. Keanu Reeves delivers an adequate performance where he doesn’t have to act too much. He has done better movies. This is not one of them.
What do you think about this movie? Please leave your thoughts below.
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (3-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray] List Price: Sale Price: $15.49 You save: $14.50 (48%) Average Rating: 
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The day the earth stood still
It is a very good product. Movie quality is perfect. There are 3 discs in this luxury pack. (1) Current feature movie – with dts-HD (2) Digitalized version for Portable media players (3) 1951 original black and white movie in Bluray with dts-HD. Great experience. Recommended to all.
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Utter rubbish… (Spoiler alert)
There have been more than enough reviews that outline the lame ecofreak plot to this movie, but what I haven’t seen are commentaries on the sheer logical fallacies that are mind bending in the level of their disconnection from one moment to the next. Here are just a very few of the unending string…
A mysterious object is hurtling towards earth, and is calculated to hit Manhattan, so the government gathers up the best scientists it can to figure out a way to divert this object that is due to hit in 70 some odd minutes and whisks them off to…. Manhattan, right where this object is due to hit.
After lowering GORT, (the 50′ tall masculine humanoid robot,) into a deep hole, (missile silo, I guess,) the attempt to drill into it, (for some reason,) is thwarted when it shatters a diamond drill bit. We’re told that another attempt can’t be made for days until the bit is “robotically” repaired. Alas, speed is of the essence after the Klaatu escapes, and so they send in a guy with… a handy spare diamond drill bit.
The utterly dispassionate Klaatu, determined that mankind must be wiped off the earth, kills a cop who is threatening him with a pistol by crushing him between two cars, flinging one into another just by touching the first, then rushes over and using magic gel and his fantastic alien abilities, revives the cop to full health.
Caught in the path of the raging metal super locusts that devour everything in their path, Klaatu hauls the lady scientist and her brat kid to safety under… a short four lane highway bridge. By his statement, he is apparently somehow able to keep the little buggers out of that area, but is unable to protect himself from attack in his final dash to his spaceship, (though they don’t swarm under that little bridge to eat up the idiotic scientist and her brat kid after he’s left them behind,) where his touch to the ship sends and EMP that shuts them all down, (as well as every machine on earth,) and he disappears.
The movie was a non-stop string of things that just made no sense like these throughout.
As near as I can tell, this screen play was written by a group of ecofreaks while totally roasted on pot because the story ran pretty much like trying to have a conversation with someone in that condition who thinks they’re being “deep” in their philosophizing.
Don’t buy it, (unless you want the 1951 original and can’t find it elsewhere,), don’t rent it, don’t purchase the PPV, but instead, if you truly can’t live without seeing it, wait for it to come out on regular cable. Otherwise you’ll be kicking yourself for wasting your money, no matter how little you might spend on it.
On the plus side, you will burn calories with the extensive eye rolling you’ll be doing throughout with all aspects, plot, acting, special effects, logical disconnects, music, etc.
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The Day the Earth Stood Still
The first movie was way better then this one.I have told friends not to buy
it.I’ll let watch my DVD.Save your dollars.
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Don’t waste your money
A truly terrible movie. This movie had no plot, but merely showed a series of barely related events strung together. The protaganist decides to destroy humanity, but then he changes his mind after he has already set in motion the process of destruction. So he has to stop the process. But all that amounts to is that he has to get back to his spacecraft by driving through a checkpoint. Wow. Underwhelming.
The casting was absurd — Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense? Are you kidding me? So we get to look at her ugly and offensive personage in a role that she can obviously never fit. And the son of the woman was also miscast. So the viewer has to constantly contend with the miscastings while trying to suspend belief for the sake of trying to enjoy a story. This was a horribly disappointing movie for a fan of either science fiction or Keanu Reeves.
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The Day the Movies Died
I kept waiting for the Earth to stand still for day, like in the original when the alien immobilizes all the technology for a day, and it never happened! So, there really wasn’t a “day” when everything stands still in this movie, but to me that’s the least of it’s problems.
Warning, spoilers ahead!
In this remake (more like a re-imagining) of the venerable 50’s sci-fi classic, an alien character so wooden that he made me long for an Al Gore lecture arrives on Earth to tell the United Nations that we are all going to be irradicated so that the planet can be saved.
Why tell us at all then? Did this organization of alien civilizations just want us to know why we are all going to die before they kill us? No chance to change here; you threaten the planet and you’re dead! It’s obvious to me that these alien civilizations had already advanced thousands of years beyond us technology while preserving their own planets, so why not just give us a few clues and help us out a bit?
Nope, these aliens — who have already arrived in their technology advanced eco-utopias — just look at humanity as an object of contempt and decide they want us elimnated before another planet killing day goes by. They are supposedly our moral superiors, yet they would commit genocide without any qualms whatsoever.
Thankfully, the sleepwalking “Al Gore from space” sees the love of a mother for a child and decides to give us an alternative to annihilation (one I suppose he never would have thought of after observing humanity for seventy years). He decides we have to change our lifestyle. Never heard that one before!
Rather than being turned to dust, we get to lose all our electricity and machines. We get to go back to those wonderful times before the industrial revolution where the average life span was somewhere in the forties and half of all our children died as we were trying to raise them, and most of us worked from sun up ’till sundown on the farm. But at least the planet was safe!
This movie at least gives us a future with no more movies, and if all they’re going to be are propaganda pieces that take their names from the classics, it can’t be all that bad.
Buy why stop here? How about a reimagined Forbidden Planet where the Krell all died from global warming? How about a remiagined Metropolis where it’s not humanity that’s being exploited; it’s the planet! How about a movie where a group of super rich Hollywood elites make a movie that does nothing more but to fill us with hopelessness and self-loathing and presents the only solution as the roll back of civilization to the dark ages? This must be how rich liberals assuage their guilt.
So, two stars from me, but one is just for Jennifer Connelly, who reminds me of a time when all I wanted in life was to snag a really attractive and smart brunette.
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WOW!!!
I may be too “old school” and still prefer the original movie, but I purchased this movie, having never seen it, and I am glad I did!! Out of this world good!!!!!!!!!!
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Worst Movie Ever
This is probably one of the top 100 worst movies of all time. Minimal plot and a horrible ending that leaves you wondering if you could have spent the hour and 40 minutes doing something else much more worth while, such as staring at a wall or counting the number of fibers in your carpet.
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must see
this is a great movie, with the EXTRAS. worth every penny.the bonus disk writes the mivie to a MO4 player, so you can watch on the GO. GREAT…
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Reeves channels Serling
After being a fan of the original, I was really looking forward to seeing how the re-make would turn out. And as I expected they should have left well enough alone. I had hoped to see more of Jon Hamm in this movie after seeing what he is capable of in Mad Men but he disappeared into the background. And Reeves… Lord. He is right up there with Jeff Goldblum in the category of actors who can’t act but nonetheless get parts where they emote and recite their lines the same time and time again. He sounded to me like someone who was attempting to immitate Rod Serling’s opening monologue from an episode of Twilight Zone. Aside from his acting and the bratty kid character the whole SAVE THE PLANET from the dreaded humans story line was insipid at best. How many more movies are we going to subjected to where humans are the culprits and villains? Get over this plot already. Maybe all the tree huggers out there will stand up and applaud these filmmakers and if it is their accolades they want, they are welcome to it.
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It could have been so much more….
This could have been a terrific movie if only the story had more to bite into. I found the final scenes – where all of the electricity goes out, were about the most profound. I’ve been a fan of Keanu Reeves but losing respect for his acting abilities. He plays pretty much the same character he always plays – serious, deep, all-knowing and unmoved. Surely he can do something more challenging with his career!
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Bit of a bad rap
While I understand why people find this movie inferior to the 1951 original, I think it has been given a bit of a bad rap. Sure, the plot is as full of holes as a swiss cheese, but when I watch a sci-fi action movie I’m not really looking for deep analysis of the human condition. This movie gets right on with the action and doesn’t stop till the end of the film. It’s not a good script, but things happen and keep on happening. Don’t watch it to elevate your mind or gain new insights; watch it to see some amazing special effects, good camera work and non-stop action. On those terms, it’s a three-star movie.
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Gort is bigger and badder than ever.
I don’t care for remakes much, but I enjoy some science fantasy so had to check this out. I was pleasantly surprised, partly because I didn’t expect the remake to be a copy of the original.
I enjoyed both Reeves and Connelly’s performances. I think a reviewer here asked why aliens are always speaking in such passive grammar. Perhaps because it is to make them look alien? Go the other way in behavior, grammar and inflection and all you get is Robin Williams playing Mork!
Anyway, Jaden Smith played an interesting role that we don’t really appreciate until later when we see the precipice the character arrives at. I thought the Secretary of Defense and Nobel professor characters were poorly written. Cardboard cutouts perhaps? Ham fisted bureaucrat and know-it-all egghead? I love Bates and Cleese and this was a disappointment.
But there were some imaginative and some fun bits in this: the arrival of Klaatu in the lab at the beginning, the scene with James Hong, the aha moment when we see the purpose of the orbs (the Sec. of Def. spelling it out later almost ruined it though), the comment about the source of “intel” regarding the orbs.
And Gort was… no other way to say it without spoilers… pretty cool.
The movie has flaws, big logic/plot holes and the ending is too abrupt. I just think this has enough to make it fun. Whatever the intentions of author and director were, there is no way this comes off as thoughtful as the classic. But why does it have to?
And I think they missed some other opportunities. For example I do not understand how they could not include a little theremin music – just as a fun homage to the original.
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I ALMOST FELL ASLEEP WATCHING THIS :< {
What a disappointment!
I love Sci-Fi movies, have them all just about, and I really wanted to like this movie but it was terribly BORING.
The acting sucked, the storyline was boring, just didn’t grab my attention at all.
The only good thing I can say about this horror is the few special effects scenes towards the end were not bad, but overall it was a waste of money.
Although I try to keep an open mind,I should have listened to the other reviews.
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I thought it was worth renting
I never saw the original so I can’t compare it to the original. I’m a fan of Sci-fi and doomsday scenarios so the concept of the movie appeals to me.
It’s true – Keanu’s performance is familiar but at the same time I think it fits the character he’s playing – so I had no problem with it.
I went into it it with low expectations due to the reviews but I was pleasantly surprised.
For me – the story was good and the performance/effects, adequate.
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The Day the Earth Stood Still
This could have been a great remake. Everyone has pointed his or her finger at Keanu Reeves’s acting as the failure of this film. Wrong! He is supposed to be an alien sent to Earth to do a last minute assessment. Kind of the old school thumbs up or down on exterminating life on earth. His blank face, calm demeanor and indifference to human beings despite his pretty boy looks were in my opinion on the mark. No his acting while not Oscar material was not the problem with this film.
The original had all the basics this remake lacked. Solid plot, good character development, a natural pace, a great story that made sense and made you think. Hollywood ran the ads – Keanu’s face in lights with cherry picked scenes splashing the message we all got. Hollywood was doing a first rate retell of this Sci-Fi classic. However, what we got was a cheaply made — lets make a quick buck dog of a remake. The special effects were the cheesiest CG I have seen in any film with a mainstream budget. Even the original special effects were better. Don’t blame Keanu for this dog. Blame the folks who neatly packaged this cheap excuse for a film in pursuit of a quick buck and cheated the public out of their hard earned paychecks. Worst of all they cheated the Sci-Fi groupies out of what should have been an incredible film. Lets all hope some one comes along and does justice to this iconic film with the remake it deserves.
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