The Day the Earth Stood Still - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
- Start date
I finally saw the film today, on IMAX, and found it to be decidedly average.
I can't agree that it was either very dark or very gritty. Aesthetically, it was very uninteresting, and certainly not "gritty" in the definition of the term that has come to be used to describe television in the vein of "The Shield" or "The Wire" or "Battlestar Galactica," but it was not technically incompetent, either. I imagine the studio was very pleased, but there's very little I can comment on here either positively or negatively. Just...average.
Narratively, I think it's a stretch to call the film "dark," too. The darkness of the alien threat is totally undermined by the wanton sentimentality of the finale. Klaatu decides to save Earth because of...a mother caring for a child? It's weak, rushed, and all too "Hollywood" for my tastes.
It's not that I lament the alien's motivations changing from the 1951 version of the film. The notion that aliens want to prevent us from taking our violent ways past our planet's borders no longer makes sense given the incredible lapse in human space travel since Apollo 11. The notion that the aliens wish to protect all viable biospheres because they are rare makes more sense. Uninformed snipes about Battlestar Galactica aside, I don't really follow the "rare Earth" scenario as a matter of probability, but since we know so little about the alien's capabilities, I can suspend disbelief there.
But speaking of the alien's capabilities, apparently Klaatu can do...whatever the plot requires him to be able to do (or not be able to do). The phone needs to work, so he touches it and it works. The police man needs to be saved, so Klaatu touches him and he is saved. On the other hand, Klaatu needs to get in the polygraph room (why do movies obsess with polygraphs when they are sos notoriously unreliable, anyway?), so he goes there without resistance. And then, he needs to escape the base, so suddenly he can get the interrogator to tell him whatever he needs, disable all the guards, and walk out undetected.
Klaatu isn't the only one who operates at the speed of plot, either. The kid, Jacob (whose name I had to look up, he really just is "the kid"), needs to get out of the car and see the sphere take off, so he does (I can understand some naiveté on his part, being young, but trying to run home while he's stuck in the middle of the forest/nowhere...even a kid should realize the futility; of course, later on and elsewhere, when his mother is abducted, he admits he doesn't know where he is, because the plot needs Klaatu to go with him). The plot tells us the police can't recognize Klaatu, even though there's a huge manhunt after him, but some bystanders can recognize him, because the plot needs the (lone) police man to show up in order to demonstrate Klaatu's powers. The government helicopters must be so efficient as to reach the scientist's house in a matter of seconds, and be so stealthy so as to snatch Jennifer Connelly when they're right over head, but slow enough so as to allow Klaatu to destroy them (why don't they just shoot him in the head, since bullets worked so well before, I wonder?).
And then there's the hubris of the government characters, which I assume to be a snipe at the Bush administration, although the fact that of these thick headed fools, the civilians (Kathy Bates' Secretary of Defense and John Hamm's character, whose title I can't remember) are shown to ultimately be cowards (Hamm tries to flee when Gort destroys the base, while the military man is brave and selfless; the military is coldly efficient in their attempts to take out Gort and the sphere, Bates is shown to be a wreck near the end of the film because of this) while the military figures are brave and selfless suggests the more usual conservative undercurrent. The thing is, I don't believe for a second that even the Bush Administration would be so stupid to do the things the government does in this film. There's a whole list of stupidity, really:
--The President and Vice President are nowhere to be found, and hardly even communicate with the Secretary of Defense.
--The plan is to shoot the alien spacecraft down. The alien spacecraft disables Earth's weapons in order to preserve itself (it doesn't even destroy Earth's weapons). The alien and robot emerge, only offering any kind of attack after being attacked by one of the soldiers in the crowd, and even when the alien is shot the robot is told to stand its ground. The Secretary of Defense's final conclusion: the aliens are here solely for reasons of aggression. And since the U.S. government has been reduced to one figurehead in the narrative, there's not another voice to argue this.
--The government tries missiles against Gort, they are totally ineffective. They try a diamond edged drill against Gort, and it is ineffective. And what do they keep doing? Provoking the damned thing with attempt after attempt that is sure to fail.
--And we're supposed to believe anybody in the media (or the public) gives a rat's ass about ONE supposedly escaped convict (whose name isn't even released) in the face of the alien attack?
--Jennifer Connelly is really the only person qualified to administer unnamed torture medicine to Klaatu? Especially in light of Bush's torture policies, I'm completely unconvinced this would be the case, especially on a military base in a time of grave crisis.
And don't have me begin on Reeves' performance. Michael Rennie was not a great actor, but if he had one great performance, it was as Klaatu in the original film. Reeves is entirely deadpan the entire film, and when he's supposed to have an emotional realization at the end, it doesn't work, because he's been without emotion the entire film (and continues to be without emotion during the key finale!).
I'd hazard that critics and audiences are rejecting this film because it is not very good, especially considering the superior films in release right now and the economic downturn, not because it is too "dark and gritty" (which might explain audience reaction, considering what traditionally does well at the box office, but shouldn't be a good judge of critical response, especially film critics [as opposed to television critics]).
I can't agree that it was either very dark or very gritty. Aesthetically, it was very uninteresting, and certainly not "gritty" in the definition of the term that has come to be used to describe television in the vein of "The Shield" or "The Wire" or "Battlestar Galactica," but it was not technically incompetent, either. I imagine the studio was very pleased, but there's very little I can comment on here either positively or negatively. Just...average.
Narratively, I think it's a stretch to call the film "dark," too. The darkness of the alien threat is totally undermined by the wanton sentimentality of the finale. Klaatu decides to save Earth because of...a mother caring for a child? It's weak, rushed, and all too "Hollywood" for my tastes.
It's not that I lament the alien's motivations changing from the 1951 version of the film. The notion that aliens want to prevent us from taking our violent ways past our planet's borders no longer makes sense given the incredible lapse in human space travel since Apollo 11. The notion that the aliens wish to protect all viable biospheres because they are rare makes more sense. Uninformed snipes about Battlestar Galactica aside, I don't really follow the "rare Earth" scenario as a matter of probability, but since we know so little about the alien's capabilities, I can suspend disbelief there.
But speaking of the alien's capabilities, apparently Klaatu can do...whatever the plot requires him to be able to do (or not be able to do). The phone needs to work, so he touches it and it works. The police man needs to be saved, so Klaatu touches him and he is saved. On the other hand, Klaatu needs to get in the polygraph room (why do movies obsess with polygraphs when they are sos notoriously unreliable, anyway?), so he goes there without resistance. And then, he needs to escape the base, so suddenly he can get the interrogator to tell him whatever he needs, disable all the guards, and walk out undetected.
Klaatu isn't the only one who operates at the speed of plot, either. The kid, Jacob (whose name I had to look up, he really just is "the kid"), needs to get out of the car and see the sphere take off, so he does (I can understand some naiveté on his part, being young, but trying to run home while he's stuck in the middle of the forest/nowhere...even a kid should realize the futility; of course, later on and elsewhere, when his mother is abducted, he admits he doesn't know where he is, because the plot needs Klaatu to go with him). The plot tells us the police can't recognize Klaatu, even though there's a huge manhunt after him, but some bystanders can recognize him, because the plot needs the (lone) police man to show up in order to demonstrate Klaatu's powers. The government helicopters must be so efficient as to reach the scientist's house in a matter of seconds, and be so stealthy so as to snatch Jennifer Connelly when they're right over head, but slow enough so as to allow Klaatu to destroy them (why don't they just shoot him in the head, since bullets worked so well before, I wonder?).
And then there's the hubris of the government characters, which I assume to be a snipe at the Bush administration, although the fact that of these thick headed fools, the civilians (Kathy Bates' Secretary of Defense and John Hamm's character, whose title I can't remember) are shown to ultimately be cowards (Hamm tries to flee when Gort destroys the base, while the military man is brave and selfless; the military is coldly efficient in their attempts to take out Gort and the sphere, Bates is shown to be a wreck near the end of the film because of this) while the military figures are brave and selfless suggests the more usual conservative undercurrent. The thing is, I don't believe for a second that even the Bush Administration would be so stupid to do the things the government does in this film. There's a whole list of stupidity, really:
--The President and Vice President are nowhere to be found, and hardly even communicate with the Secretary of Defense.
--The plan is to shoot the alien spacecraft down. The alien spacecraft disables Earth's weapons in order to preserve itself (it doesn't even destroy Earth's weapons). The alien and robot emerge, only offering any kind of attack after being attacked by one of the soldiers in the crowd, and even when the alien is shot the robot is told to stand its ground. The Secretary of Defense's final conclusion: the aliens are here solely for reasons of aggression. And since the U.S. government has been reduced to one figurehead in the narrative, there's not another voice to argue this.
--The government tries missiles against Gort, they are totally ineffective. They try a diamond edged drill against Gort, and it is ineffective. And what do they keep doing? Provoking the damned thing with attempt after attempt that is sure to fail.
--And we're supposed to believe anybody in the media (or the public) gives a rat's ass about ONE supposedly escaped convict (whose name isn't even released) in the face of the alien attack?
--Jennifer Connelly is really the only person qualified to administer unnamed torture medicine to Klaatu? Especially in light of Bush's torture policies, I'm completely unconvinced this would be the case, especially on a military base in a time of grave crisis.
And don't have me begin on Reeves' performance. Michael Rennie was not a great actor, but if he had one great performance, it was as Klaatu in the original film. Reeves is entirely deadpan the entire film, and when he's supposed to have an emotional realization at the end, it doesn't work, because he's been without emotion the entire film (and continues to be without emotion during the key finale!).
I'd hazard that critics and audiences are rejecting this film because it is not very good, especially considering the superior films in release right now and the economic downturn, not because it is too "dark and gritty" (which might explain audience reaction, considering what traditionally does well at the box office, but shouldn't be a good judge of critical response, especially film critics [as opposed to television critics]).
"Saving" Earth? That's not the impression I got from that finale.
More appropriate would be...saving the human race. It appears I fell into the same trap that the characters in the film fall into and used "save the Earth" to mean "save humanity." Which IS what Klaatu does: intervene with the metal bugs and stop them from destroying the entirety of human civilization.
Whether it be the metal bugs, or the actions of the aliens themselves at the end, the final result would be the same. The aliens *did not* save humanity, they just chose a more roundabout way of wiping it out.
Totally disagree, then. Klaatu restating the scientist's words that "humanity is on a precipice" and then stopping the bugs (he literally says he is going to "stop" them) seems to make a clear narrative point to me. By destroying all technology, rather than destroying all humanity, Klaatu is giving them another chance.
I wouldn't call it another chance. I'd call it a death sentence.
Realistically, it would certainly cause chaos. It would probably result in all the broken technology being trashed and MORE destruction of the biosphere to replace it all. But the film isn't concerned with such realities, from what I saw.
It would be like arguing that humanity is doomed at the end of Independence Day. After all, isn't a ton of radioactive space debris raining down on the already devastated planet? But that's not the point the film is trying to make.
It would be like arguing that humanity is doomed at the end of Independence Day. After all, isn't a ton of radioactive space debris raining down on the already devastated planet? But that's not the point the film is trying to make.
If the film would leave the possibility *of* the lost technology being replaced and rebuilt, I wouldn't consider that as bad of a thing. At least then there would be hope.
Exactly! And most of the major cities were wiped out as well.
I don't get your argument that the crippling of the technology is simply a "more round about way" to destroy humanity. Yes, the way we live our everyday lives are becoming more and more dependant on technology, but I find the notion slightly insulting that humanity will go as its tech goes. We are at the "top of the food chain" because we can adapt. We will struggle, but I think we will prevail and survive in the end.
While the EM and the resulting effects were probably just considered "side effects" of disabling the bugs in the story, I felt that it kind of weakened the whole thing. The idea was that humanity was on the precipice of making good decisions. But instead of the aliens leaving and we are given a chance to change our ways, the aliens leave and we are forced into a position where we have to change. Kind of killed the whole idea, in my opinion.
While the EM and the resulting effects were probably just considered "side effects" of disabling the bugs in the story, I felt that it kind of weakened the whole thing. The idea was that humanity was on the precipice of making good decisions. But instead of the aliens leaving and we are given a chance to change our ways, the aliens leave and we are forced into a position where we have to change. Kind of killed the whole idea, in my opinion.
Jennifer Connelly and Jayden Smith did not play mother and child, but stepmother and stepson. It seems obtuse not to notice. Also, the boy is a brat, not a sweet little kid the audience gets icky over. There was reason in rewriting those characters in this way. The reconciliation, not the sentimentality, was the final step in Klaatu's conversion, which began in the scene with James Hong. That scene was a huge departure from the original. Again, it was obtuse not to have noticed it. Again, there was a reason for rewriting the movie that way.
The only sensible complaint is that the Hong scene telegraphed Klaatu's change of heart. Claiming that the emotional conversion didn't ring true, when it should be perfectly obvious that the remake was deliberately minimizing the sentimentality, is a way of complaining about not getting an emotionally satisfying experience, i.e., not feeling the sentiment along with Klaatu.
The one military man who is portrayed as brave was the one who was also portrayed as foolishly aggressive. The point about the civilian who turned out to be a coward---that was not John Hamm, but Kyle Chandler, an actor commonly cast as a noble figure---was the contrast with his ruthlessness in condemning to death a young soldier just moments before.
The usual version of "dark and gritty" would center upon building sympathy for the Kyle Chandler character of course. The movie comment upon such scenes is naturally offensive to people who feel, somehow, that mature drama addresses the need for ruthlessness. If one insists on defining "dark and gritty" or "morally ambiguous" or such cliches as implicit praise for such drama, well, yes, the remake is no more of those things than the original was.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of ideas and attitudes expressed in the remake that are not flattering to amour propre, which seems to me to capture what genuine meaning such cliches as "dark and gritty" or "morally ambiguous" might have. The notion that the US government might be fundamentally incompetent is plainly one. Those with more conservative political judgments would find it unacceptable. I don't.
The helicopters did not shoot Klaatu because it was never the plan to shoot Klaatu---the shooting at the beginning of the film was not planned.
There was no question that the government would find someone to inject Klaatu. The whole point was the surprising way that Jennifer Connelly's character volunteered. In my view, she didn't quite sell the scene. Worse, the mechanics of her successfully switching drugs was the sequence marred by implausible but convenient plotting! But Jennifer Connelly is stacked, while Keanu Reeves is an unmarried man in his forties.
It is not implausible that Klaatu would wait a short time to size up the situation and first act when there were fewer people around. The convenient plotting in the escape is the way he was taken from a crowded hospital room to a much more isolated area with fewer people. (But then, the original posited the flying saucer being guarded only by a wooden fence!) Even that couldn't have been too implausible since most people didn't wonder why the military would do that.
The destruction of technology, temporary or not, total or not, would lead to massive loss of life, but it would not destroy humanity. The question of whether humanity would change its ways and rebuild what's called a sustainable technology is left open. The ending is ambiguous, which is unpopular. Still, it was specifically stated in the dialogue that people would only change on the brink of disaster. So the ending does not contradict the rest of the movie. That is a viewpoint, which I guess we'll have to call "light and smooth" since it's completely unlike the good "dark and gritty" so popular right now, that might be unpleasant.
The only sensible complaint is that the Hong scene telegraphed Klaatu's change of heart. Claiming that the emotional conversion didn't ring true, when it should be perfectly obvious that the remake was deliberately minimizing the sentimentality, is a way of complaining about not getting an emotionally satisfying experience, i.e., not feeling the sentiment along with Klaatu.
The one military man who is portrayed as brave was the one who was also portrayed as foolishly aggressive. The point about the civilian who turned out to be a coward---that was not John Hamm, but Kyle Chandler, an actor commonly cast as a noble figure---was the contrast with his ruthlessness in condemning to death a young soldier just moments before.
The usual version of "dark and gritty" would center upon building sympathy for the Kyle Chandler character of course. The movie comment upon such scenes is naturally offensive to people who feel, somehow, that mature drama addresses the need for ruthlessness. If one insists on defining "dark and gritty" or "morally ambiguous" or such cliches as implicit praise for such drama, well, yes, the remake is no more of those things than the original was.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of ideas and attitudes expressed in the remake that are not flattering to amour propre, which seems to me to capture what genuine meaning such cliches as "dark and gritty" or "morally ambiguous" might have. The notion that the US government might be fundamentally incompetent is plainly one. Those with more conservative political judgments would find it unacceptable. I don't.
The helicopters did not shoot Klaatu because it was never the plan to shoot Klaatu---the shooting at the beginning of the film was not planned.
There was no question that the government would find someone to inject Klaatu. The whole point was the surprising way that Jennifer Connelly's character volunteered. In my view, she didn't quite sell the scene. Worse, the mechanics of her successfully switching drugs was the sequence marred by implausible but convenient plotting! But Jennifer Connelly is stacked, while Keanu Reeves is an unmarried man in his forties.
It is not implausible that Klaatu would wait a short time to size up the situation and first act when there were fewer people around. The convenient plotting in the escape is the way he was taken from a crowded hospital room to a much more isolated area with fewer people. (But then, the original posited the flying saucer being guarded only by a wooden fence!) Even that couldn't have been too implausible since most people didn't wonder why the military would do that.
The destruction of technology, temporary or not, total or not, would lead to massive loss of life, but it would not destroy humanity. The question of whether humanity would change its ways and rebuild what's called a sustainable technology is left open. The ending is ambiguous, which is unpopular. Still, it was specifically stated in the dialogue that people would only change on the brink of disaster. So the ending does not contradict the rest of the movie. That is a viewpoint, which I guess we'll have to call "light and smooth" since it's completely unlike the good "dark and gritty" so popular right now, that might be unpleasant.
The thing is, a lot of humanity's population RELIES on technology to survive. Especially those guys in cities require energy just to get water UP into their buildings, and power to transport vast amounts of food into their cities and keep it fresh. Or to get to their rooms above the fourth or fifth floor. And to get around. And look at all the people in hospitals, or who rely on medicines that need refrigeration for preservation, or some complex scientific equipment to produce.
I'd estimate that we'd lose half our population to starvation and disease within a year or two without our power grid.
This is the kind of thing that the writers probably didn't even think of.
I'd estimate that we'd lose half our population to starvation and disease within a year or two without our power grid.
This is the kind of thing that the writers probably didn't even think of.
^ Agreed. And I know this is the third time I've said this, but...anyone with questions about that ending and what would arise from it, should read the Emberverse novels. 
Last edited:
Correct. And the people in the movie might just try to rebuild the same old thing and still get whacked. The movie's ending is, as we apparently must say, "light and smooth." When Klaatu says there is a price to pay, and John Cleese talks about being on the edge (or whatever the wording was,) though, I think the writer David Scarpa is telling us.
The fact that Connelly is the stepmother and Smith the stepson has little consequence in the final film, which is why I didn't make a point of it. I am not so obtuse.
And the boy being a brat wasn't held throughout the film. His aggression was shown to be the consequence of him missing his father. As he confesses to Klaatu, he didn't really mean those things. In the end, as he hugs Connelly in the graveyard, he finally accepts her as his (step)mother and fulfills the role of the dutiful and cute kid.
The scene begins the set-up for Klaatu to have a change of heart by the end of the film (and, in fact, is one of the more interesting and effective scenes in the film--which I'll chalk up to Hong, who is a surprisingly convincing actor in both comedic and dramatic parts), but Klaatu's journey doesn't work for me, due to mediocre writing, but more devastating in this case, bad performances. Even Connelly is not particularly convincing at times. I suspect poor work on the director's part.
Thus, when it comes down to Klaatu's decision to save the humans, it reads as an unearned emotional moment--sentimentality, as I described it previously.
The foolish aggression is systemic of every government or military official in the movie--only the scientists offer an opposing perspective, and they are quickly silenced. Thus, by repeating the clichés of cowardly civilian administrators and brave military soldiers, the film is hardly different than that other 20th Century Fox property, 24.
It was my mistake to confuse the two actors, and my fault for perusing IMDB to jog memories of the characters names with too much haste.
The film features incompetence at the speed of plot. Kathy Bates runs the show because it is easier than accurately representing governmental bureaucracy. Plus, it has the added bonus of displacing blame from the President. Like we've been led to believe about Iraq, he literally doesn't know anything about the alien situation (the SOD advises him ONCE in the film). Slate did a piece on how this reduction of Presidential agency has lately cropped up in Hollywood here.
If a government interrogator is near, why is Connelly allowed near Klaatu (or the drugs) at all? Kathy Bates is consistently untrustworthy of civilian scientists, yet entrusts Connelly with this key task (and doesn't even bother questioning her when Klaatu escapes).
Klaatu goes unnoticed when picked up by law enforcement, who have been (supposedly) aggressively notified to find Klaatu by the federal government. But people notice him (both the media and its viewers finding the time to care about an escaped convict in the face of global panic over alien invasion), a number of them calling the police hotline (which, conveniently, still works, even in the face of rioting in all the major cities).
The helicopters can snatch Connelly with unbelievably stealth competence (repeating the Hollywood trope of the stealthy helicopter), but must be incompetent so as to allow Klaatu time to destroy them before they can fire.
And so on, and so forth.
Earlier they had not planned on shooting Klaatu, but that changed by this point in the film. The helicopters target Klaatu and are about to kill him when Klaatu destroys them with his powers. The fact that they take so long to target Klaatu, allowing him time to use his powers, is one of many contrivances in this scene.
A fair enough assessment of the scene.
You're right that is is quite silly that Klaatu is taken to a room with only an unarmed interrogator, even if they think he's been incapacitated by the classified drugs. Considering the way he aged rapidly, you would expect them to take more precautions. But it is, at least, consistent with the total government incompetence in the movie.
Still, Klaatu's powers are so incredible (he manages to incapacitate all the guards on the base in one motion), that having people around him when he acts should make little difference. But I can accept that he preferred acting in an isolated area, since he was still human.
Your premise (if I'm reading your premise correctly) that critics dislike ambiguous endings doesn't hold water. Film studios don't like ambiguous endings, because they firmly believe it hurts grosses.
The ending rings false for me because I don't accept Klaatu's motivation to save the human race from extinction. Thematically, it makes sense, but I can't buy Klaatu's impetus. Moreover, the film seemed uncomfortable with its own ambiguity. It barely lingers on the Earth once Klaatu sets off the EMP. The film prefers to bask in the salvation of Earth, easily symbolized through the sun coming through the Secretary of Defense's blinds (and elsewhere) and then quickly cut to credits.
I have to disagree that the boy being a brat is not important. The reconciliation between stepson and stepmother was the pivotal emotional conversion, not Klaatu's. John Cleese's professor explicitly said that Connelly's scientist would change the aliens mind by being. Klaatu never wanted to annihilate humanity, and his decision was not an emotional one. The importance of the simple, personal relationship has its own kind of sentimentality, but that element, along with the Jesus motif, was taken from the original.
The helicopter scene bothers you. I thought they got Connelly in error, instead of Klaatu, which is what left Klaatu enough time to subvert the guidance systems. Your interpretation, that they wanted to rescue Connelly (why?) then kill Klaatu (again why?) if correct would indeed be poor plotting. I don't think any interpretation makes the drugging sequence plausible, and it bothered me far more than the helicopter scene.
But having the President and Vice-President hide out for their personal safety and ducking responsibility strikes me as a deliberate slam at Bush and Cheney personally, for their behavior on 9/11. Further, the only cowardly civilian is the Kyle Chandler character (getting the actor's name wrong was no big error, I was just saying) and the only brave soldier was the one commander---the nervous nincompoop who shot Klaatu in the beginning or the poor schlub in the hazmat suit are not White Hat icons of military bravery. Even more to the point, the military efficiently accomplishes----absolutely nothing in this movie. I can't help but feel that puts it in a different category than 24.
It is true the movie is afraid of its own ending.
According to boxofficemojo, the movie has earned over one hundred million dollars abroad. I suspect that the uncongenial themes in the movie have lowered US domestic box office. I haven't reviewed the reviews, but I really think most of them aim for a balance between puffing the studios without insulting the readers by trashing their taste. Genuine critical judgment is mostly reserved for the internet, where it doesn't cost money.
The helicopter scene bothers you. I thought they got Connelly in error, instead of Klaatu, which is what left Klaatu enough time to subvert the guidance systems. Your interpretation, that they wanted to rescue Connelly (why?) then kill Klaatu (again why?) if correct would indeed be poor plotting. I don't think any interpretation makes the drugging sequence plausible, and it bothered me far more than the helicopter scene.
But having the President and Vice-President hide out for their personal safety and ducking responsibility strikes me as a deliberate slam at Bush and Cheney personally, for their behavior on 9/11. Further, the only cowardly civilian is the Kyle Chandler character (getting the actor's name wrong was no big error, I was just saying) and the only brave soldier was the one commander---the nervous nincompoop who shot Klaatu in the beginning or the poor schlub in the hazmat suit are not White Hat icons of military bravery. Even more to the point, the military efficiently accomplishes----absolutely nothing in this movie. I can't help but feel that puts it in a different category than 24.
It is true the movie is afraid of its own ending.
According to boxofficemojo, the movie has earned over one hundred million dollars abroad. I suspect that the uncongenial themes in the movie have lowered US domestic box office. I haven't reviewed the reviews, but I really think most of them aim for a balance between puffing the studios without insulting the readers by trashing their taste. Genuine critical judgment is mostly reserved for the internet, where it doesn't cost money.
We're in agreement over more things than in disagreement then. I fear my remarks may have been to overly trash the film, anyway. Although I do have qualms, big ones, I still graded it average. I stand by that assessment. 
Although, speaking on 24, you'd be surprised how often the military is ineffective in that series--always, of course, as a plot contrivance.
Although, speaking on 24, you'd be surprised how often the military is ineffective in that series--always, of course, as a plot contrivance.
If you can't stand Keanu Reeves, this movie is a loser. I also put enough weight on the thematic honesty to offset remaining problems with the plotting. (Again, I think the big disparity in US and foreign box office shows the rough handling of the the government and other "light and smooth" elements were offputting to the US audiences.)
What I suspect is that many people are viewing some aspects of the remake negatively that, if they realized it, they didn't really care for in the original. It's just that the original has official classic status and the nostalgia factor favoring it. When Michael Rennie's Jesus---er, Klaatu---worships US democracy at the Lincoln Memorial, the original indulges its own wanton sentimentality. The remake is better except that Patricia Neal's secretary still seems smarter than Jennifer Connelly's astrobiologist.
And the original's score is much, much, much better! The new score deliberately avoids trying to compete!
What I suspect is that many people are viewing some aspects of the remake negatively that, if they realized it, they didn't really care for in the original. It's just that the original has official classic status and the nostalgia factor favoring it. When Michael Rennie's Jesus---er, Klaatu---worships US democracy at the Lincoln Memorial, the original indulges its own wanton sentimentality. The remake is better except that Patricia Neal's secretary still seems smarter than Jennifer Connelly's astrobiologist.
And the original's score is much, much, much better! The new score deliberately avoids trying to compete!