Dear Hollywood, kindly cut the shit. The Day The Earth Stood Still remake.
Jun 25th, 2008 by Bryan White
I’ve been trying to play it cool about remakes but the recent mention of the Plan 9 From Outer Space remake and now this, The Day The Earth Stood Still is being remade with Keanu Reeves. I’m going to take the high road and not bag on Keanu as it is sometimes fashionable to do because, quite frankly, I think he took enough of that shit back when The Matrix and its shameful sequels came out.
No, my beef is with Hollywood and its hangup on genre remakes. They piss and moan about sagging ticket sales and put so much time and money into fighting piracy but they’re still not giving people much reason to actually make a night of it and go out to see their movies. You know what? I’ve seen The Day The Earth Stood Still and I’ll tell you what, I love it. It’s a hamfisted fable about Cold War America, atomic weapons and a robot in a steel diaper. A very large part of its charm is the setting and the circumstances. Back in 1951, there was a lot of saber rattling from both sides of the Iron Curtain. That’s not really happening these days so how do you take a story like The Day The Earth Stood Still and make it something relevant that is more than just a special effects heavy alien invasion movie?
I’ll tell you how, given current Hollywood standards. You don’t. Click on the image for a better look at the poster.
Keanu Verata Nikto?
Ha! You beat me to it. I was thinking of a clever way to put Keanu into this phrase, but you sunk that putt before me. Damn you. Damn you I say!
I loved the original. Who doesn’t? Is nothing sacred anymore? What, are we going to hear they are remaking Blade Runner next? Silly. Just plain silly.
Although there a guilty pleasure center in my brain is anxious to see this remake. Too bad Keanu is starring in it. Yes yes…like you I know he has dealt with much bashing in his time (Whoa!)…but still, I can’t believe Hollywood couldn’t find a more suitable star than him to carry this picture. We love you as Neo Keanu…there can be only one (Neo, not Highlander), but please tell me you’ve spent some of those millions on more acting lessons. Hey, at least they didn’t cast Ben Affleck.
*crossing fingers*
They’re just going to keep remaking stuff, period. I guess I find this slightly less disgusting than starting a remake of [REC] before it was even out of the theaters.
I’m not the average US viewer, but there’s so little stuff coming out of Hollywood that I find interesting that I really wouldn’t begin to know what to advise them to do if they want to get me back in the theater more often. I still go once in a while, but frankly my home theater is nicer and I generally have something I’d rather watch, too.
I’m waiting for a Story of Ricky remake with Shia LaBouche. C’mon Hollywood. Don’t let me down. That might be so craptastic I’d pay to see it. Get Uwe Boll and Charles E. Cullen to direct it together.
Here’s the thing with genre remakes: the same people who bitch about them incessantly still turn out in droves to see them just so they can fill the internet with hyperbolic “teh worst movie evar” comments. Hollywood doesn’t spend money unless it is making money, just like any other business, and a remake markets itself because angry internet fanboys and girls generate a mushroom cloud of hype every time a new remake is announced.
I avoid seeing these in the theater, buying the DVDs, or paying for a rental. At least this way my conscience is clear: I know that I have not contributed financially to the industry dry-humping the corpse of one of my favorite films…which brings me to my next point…
The remake machine is irritating, but in no way is it stopping any of us from enjoying the original film. Go ahead, bring on your stupid remakes. I’ll respond by popping the source material into my DVD player, inviting some friends over, and having the same good time I always do.
A lot of the time the people watching the remakes have never seen the original film- sometimes they’re not even aware that it is a remake.
When the War of the Worlds movie with Tom Cruise came out, I can recall one painful conversation I had with a waitress who brought up the movie for some reason and said “I can’t wait to see it, I hear it’s about aliens or something!”. She’d never even heard of War of the Worlds in any other context, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about it. It was painful to me because I’m an odd kind of film snob and War of the Worlds has such a great story behind it- or maybe it just made me feel old. And I’m not really even that old.
It doesn’t bother me if people go to the theater and enjoy these remakes or any other film, though. I enjoy plenty of crappy movies. It’d would be nice if Hollywood would stop being so lazy, but most of the time people don’t come out in droves to see the original stuff.
I can’t say I disagree with you, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that roughly 95% of the populace are disinformed, blissfully ignorant jacktards. I enjoy tons of crappy movies, but I enjoy them because they’re crappy…not in spite of it. Hollywood is the throne of creative bankruptcy, and I’m OK with that. Someone has to keep the dolts occupied.