December is somehow on its way to becoming the season for destroying the planet. Last year Will Smith was the last man on earth in I Am Legend, and on December 12 this year Keanu Reeves plays an alien come to earth to warn us to stop destroying it in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie is a remake of one of the classic 50s sci-fi movies, but from the looks of the new trailer, available here, it definitely won't be schlocky or silly, or contain a single tinfoil space suit.
Now the movie's director, Scott Derrickson, has sat down with MTV Movies to talk about some of his intent behind what you see in the trailer. Unsurprisingly, he's updated the original movie's Cold War message-- stop killing each other through nuclear arms races!-- to reflect a more modern fear-- stop killing each other through global warming! Derrickson said, "There is certainly the issue being addressed in the movie of our treatment of one another on the planet. I think it’s a movie about human nature as much as anything else and how human nature is acting itself out in the world right now.”
Derrickson also scored by casting the most alien-like actor working today to play the extraterrestrial messenger Klaatu: Keanu Reeves. And he knows it too, though he says it in a somewhat nicer way. "There’s no question that you believe Keanu’s performance. He really thinks through every moment and every beat with tremendous rigor. And he is very clear, I think, about what works for him and his physicality." Derrickson continues, "What he’s doing is something that’s not quite so upfront and center or distracting, but it still really gives you a feel of alien-ness and keeps you aware of the fact that this being you’re walking through this movie with is not a human being.”So, he means that Keanu is acting like Keanu does in every other movie?
It seems downright impossible to me that Keanu Reeves could somehow become the next big holiday blockbuster star, but stranger things have happened. And it really does seem like he's come upon the role he was meant to play-- a super-serious alien who doesn't quite know how to act like the rest of us. And hey, when Christmas time rolls around, who doesn't want to spend some time with Keanu Reeves and a destroyed earth?
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I'll bet the Rockefellers and Al Gore helped juice the storyline with the 'global warming' propaganda. The temperatures on Mars and Juipiter have also been increasing as of late, but you won't find it's because little green men in gas-guzzling SUVs, it's because the sun's output is higher. Everything in popular culture these days revolves around the elitist way of thinking regarding global warming: you, the working and middle classes must do with less so that we, the ruling classes can have more. That's all it boils down to, and anyone who tells you otherwise either works for the elite or is what Lenin called a 'useful idiot.'
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July 7th, 2008 at 00:15
The Director should be more excited about having such talents as Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates if he is worried about acting :)