Scott Derrickson directed one of the most loathsome films I have ever watched – 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose – a disingenuous anti-rationalist rant disguised as a “based on a true story” horror movie that adopted tactics used by creationists and evangelicals to suggest that faith should outweigh the law or scientific proof. To say I hated it would be a serious understatement.

I had only just stopped ranting about the abomination of Derrickson’s earlier film when I discovered that his next project was to remake my favourite classic American sf movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still (TDTESS). The original was a brave movie, preaching peace at a time when the easy money followed the path of jingoistic anti-communism and because (despite undeniable echoes of the Christ story in the film) it is resolutely rationalist. The original Klaatu (Michael Rennie) comes to Earth offering peace and advancement – a cure for cancer. The human race was to be offered a choice –and the director Robert Wise clearly had faith in our collective ability to take the right path.
In this dumbed down remake, Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) – now, for no apparent reason, a returned abductee – arrives like an avenging angel sweeping down in a display of shock and awe – and his judgement is already made. Humanity is too wasteful, too dangerous to the environment, and we must be destroyed and the planet allowed to recover without us. The mechanisms are already in place, the process has already started – which raises the obvious question as to why Klaatu and his giant robot, Gort, are here at all. If the script writers have any idea, they never let on. Perhaps his only purpose is so that we can watch Jennifer Connelly (as the plucky Dr Benson) practice her curious gurning expressions in his vicinity for half the movie. Not that this is the only unexplained plot hole. It may well be that aliens capable of traversing the universe to preserve the environment of planets like ours would judge humans harshly, but would these green aliens really destroy every ecosystem on earth by unleashing a “grey goo” to scour clean the planet’s surface before releasing the handful of specimen creatures they’ve captured back into the wild. It doesn’t seem terribly environmentally friendly. It doesn’t make sense. But at least it looks impressive.

There’s no room for reasoned debate in this movie. The meeting between Klaatu and Earth’s great minds is reduced to a flashing conversation with “Nobel laureate” Karl Thomas Barnhardt (John Cleese) in which they briefly agree about the beauty of Bach, demonstrate their failure to understand the basic principles of evolution and Klaatu informs him of his decision to wipe out humanity. The lesson Barnhardt draws from this meeting is that Benson must change the alien’s mind – thank goodness he was a Nobel laureate and a genius! Perhaps he can also provide the perfect arguments to act as tools of persuasion in this crucial task. Fear not, viewers, because complex moral arguments are not necessary.

“Change his mind,” Barnhardt urges Benson. “Not with reason but with your self.”

This neatly inverts the message of the original film. In the earlier version, Professor (Jacob) Barnhardt tells Klaatu: “It isn’t faith that makes good science, Mr. Klaatu. It’s curiosity.” Barnhardt is a man of reason who, when presented with Klaatu’s message of peace, can say that humanity’s scientists may be primitive by comparison but they grasp the logic of his pacifism. Klaatu and Barnhardt become co-conspirators in bringing the world together to hear Klaatu’s message and to find a way to change humanity.

In the original, Klaatu stops the world’s machines briefly to give a demonstration of his power, to convince humanity that he can back up his threats if they do not find a  way to exist peacefully with their neighbours. In the remake, Klaatu takes away humanity’s ability to choose by stopping all our machines permanently. Whether we like it or not, we’re going back to a pre-industrial age.

This remake replaces intelligent thought and important messages with bullshit and flashy special effects. Perhaps Derrickson and the others involved in this film simply misunderstood Robert Wise’s original film. I certainly hope so, because the alternative is that they’ve deliberately tried to twist the meaning of one of the most decent, liberal and optimistic American sf movies into something that denies the possibility of hope based on rational thought and public debate and that offers only faith as an alternative.

TDTESS is both dumb and morally bankrupt but, more than that, it’s also unforgivably dull. There’s absolutely nothing here to recommend, unless you really like watching Jennifer Connelly gurning.