Klaatu Barada Nikto

Okay. Normally I wouldn't blog about a movie I haven't seen, but desecration is desecration, and if the reviews are true, I need to speak out.

One of the greatest movies ever made, a classic in the sci-fi genre, is The Day the Earth Stood Still, made back in 1951, with Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe as the Einstein-like scientist (he had the hair for it after all), and Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee, of course) as a resident of the boarding house. Also Hugh Marlowe, who starred in Earth Versus the Flying Saucers (special effects by the immortal Ray Harryhausen, still alive at age 88 and revered by Spielberg and Lucas as their inspiration and honored by Disney/Pixar in the name of the restaurant "Harry Hausen's" in Monsters Inc. If you're of my generation and don't know who Harryhausen is, he did the dueling skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, What more do you need to know?) and (Hugh Marlowe -- I got a bit astray there) is therefore part of the pantheon of classic SF movie stars. (I always confuse him with Richard Carlson, who starred in It Came From Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon. They had the same stiff 1950s acting style and didn't smile much, so you knew the monsters were a serious threat. Both pretty much the same Hollywood issue not-too-famous moderately handsome unsmiling serious white guy. I still have trouble telling them apart. The acting -- to stretch a phrase a bit -- doesn't distinguish either one.) Now they have remade the thing with Keanu Reaves, and instead of warning the world about nuclear weapons he's apparently upset about global warming or some such. Ah, even the aliens have gone PC. (Perhaps this explains Al Gore's famous stiffness: if not an alien himself, perhaps he's channleing either Hugh Marlowe or Richard Carlson.)

Fine. Remakes are acceptable, though there are some movies (Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, A Night at the Opera) that cannot be remade. I dare you to recast Duck Soup. Somebody some years ago remade Psycho, but it flopped. Of course. You can't remake the true greats.

I said to Tam a while back that while I was very dubious about a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, it would be okay as long as they used the immortal phrase Klaatu Barada Nikto, the alien phrase that is the most famous artifact of the movie for most fans. Based on a very lukewarm review in the Washington Post, (which may require a free registration to read), they omitted "Klaatu Barada Nikto" from this version. Okay, you might as well have made Casablanca without "Round Up the Usual Suspects" or Gone With the Wind without "Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn,". Or Night at the Opera without Groucho. Okay, or Citizen Kane without "Rosebud." Feel free to add your own as comments. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance a) without John Wayne or b) Jimmy Stewart or c) Wayne never calls anyone in the movie "pilgrim." Easy Rider without "We blew it." (Actually, that's the only thing I remember from that movie.)

So I'm not going, though I note the fact that many reviewers have noted that Keanu Reeves is well cast as an alien creature. Typecast perhaps?

Another gripe. In the 1951 version, the flying saucer lands in Washington, on the Ellipse near the White House. There are a lot of scenes of DC in 1951, not just of the monuments but of neighborhoods as well. Many of the chase scenes pass through Dupont Circle, a block from my office (admittedly, they pass by two or three times). I gather in the new version he lands in Central Park. No fair. If you want us to Take You to Our Leader, you've got to come here. What, you expect the UN to do something? Bush will be gone soon if that was the problem.

On the good side, the American Movie Classics (or whatever AMC stands for) channel has been running the original all week, and I have the DVD anyway. Besides (since on our local cable AMC is 93, while Disney is 92, so Sarah sometimes mis-clicks) Sarah told me "Look, they're running The Day The Earth Stood Still!" She still won't watch the whole (1951) movie with me, but she recognizes it now. Progress.

Klaatu Barada Nikto, y'all. Rent the video instead.

And watch the skies. I know, I know, that's from The Thing From Another World, otherwise just The Thing, but it's of the same vintage (also 1951), and hell, the Thing was played by James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke for you young whippersnappers), though you mostly see him as a shadowy shape or bursting into flames. Watch the skies anyway.

BELATED UPDATE (January 2, '09): I hadn't known about Ronald Reagan's fascination with The Day the Earth Stood Still. See details here. Neat.



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