The day the earth stood still (2008)

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Movie
German title The day the earth stood still
Original title The Day the Earth Stood Still
The day the earth stood still.svg
Country of production United States , Canada
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Scott Derrickson
script David Scarpa
production Erwin Stoff
Paul Harris Boardman
music Tyler Bates
camera David Tattersall
cut Wayne Wahrmann
occupation
synchronization

The Day the Earth Stood Still : (AKA The Day the Earth Stood Still is a) American science fiction film directed by Scott Derrickson from the year 2008 . It is a remake of the film of the same name, The Day on which the Earth Stood Still from 1951 . Both films are based on the story " Farewell to the Lord " (original title: Farewell to the Master ) by Harry Bates .

As an unofficial sequel, The Day on which the Earth Stood 2 - Attack of the Robots (US original title The Day The Earth Stopped ) was brought to the German market in 2011 , in which C. Thomas Howell both directed and played the leading role.

action

In 1928, a climber who set up camp in the evening during a snow storm suddenly saw a bright light in the sky, which was quickly approaching his whereabouts. On a plateau he sees a brightly shining, rotating sphere about two meters in size . When he touched her, he was hit and passed out. When he wakes up, the ball is gone and a circular mark can be seen on his hand. Only later in the film does it become clear that extraterrestrials obtained human DNA in this way .

The astrobiologist Dr. Helen Benson is torn from her everyday life in the present when a special government unit picks her up from her home and takes her to a military base. An object is moving towards earth at a tenth the speed of light , a catastrophe is obviously imminent. But it doesn't hit an asteroid , instead a giant ball lands in New York's Central Park , from which the alien Klaatu (with the face of a mountaineer from the 20th century) and a giant android , called "genetically organized robotics" by the military Technologie ”, or GoRT for short, get out. A nervous soldier of the advancing military units suddenly shoots Klaatu. To save his life, he is taken to the military base infirmary for an operation . Its human body, which has the DNA of three life forms, peels out from its strange outer tissue and a placenta structure. He is a representative of several extraterrestrial cultures whose intent is to "save the earth". Helen Benson believes this primarily refers to people.

Klaatu, who wants to speak to the United Nations on the matter , is being held in a US military base. Defense Secretary Jackson wants to find out his intentions with the help of a truth serum . The scientists present refuse, however, only Helen Benson agrees to inject him with such a preparation . However, you manage to inject him with a harmless water solution unnoticed by the other people. Klaatu is then connected to a polygraph and repeats his mission there.

With the help of Helen Benson, Klaatu manages to escape from the military complex. He meets with Wu, another of his kind, who has lived among people for 70 years and has made the experience that on the one hand mankind treats each other and the earth in a destructive way, but on the other hand also has positive and lovable qualities. Here Helen Benson learns Klaatu's true mission: It's about saving the earth, but not about saving people. On the contrary, Klaatu is supposed to free the earth from humans, since these destroy the earth and themselves, which means the annihilation of humanity. The decision of the alien species to destroy humanity, however, seems inevitable. Only the planet threatened by humans should be able to survive - because of its rare ability to make complex life possible.

Helen Benson, who accompanies Klaatu with her rebellious stepson Jacob on the run from the police and special forces, is now trying to convince Klaatu with the help of Nobel Prize winner Barnhardt that humanity can change and that it is worth saving. In conversations with Klaatu, Barnhardt learns that Klaatu's species only changed when their sun threatened to explode in his planetary system - his species was also on the brink of the abyss as it is now humanity. But first the mission of the aliens will be pursued. Other spheres on the entire planet bring the fauna to safety in a kind of Noah's Ark . Secretary of Defense Jackson must now recognize that the planet is to be saved from humans and that she has no chance of preventing this.

The GoRT robot has meanwhile been taken to an underground laboratory. All attempts to break open even its shell fail. Instead, it suddenly turns into a myriad of self-reproducing nanorobots , the nanites , which behave like swarms of insects and break out of the laboratory. The nanorobots sweep across the country and begin to devour people as well as man-made objects and materials.

Jacob Benson has a great antipathy for Klaatu. On television, he saw a fake government report claiming that Klaatu was an escaped convict. He then reveals his whereabouts to the police. Jacob is separated from his stepmother when government helicopters appear at their hideout and Helen Benson is brought back to the Secretary of Defense against her will. However, wandering around in the forest, he meets Klaatu again. When he saved him from falling from a bridge, Jacob's image of the alien changes. Klaatu, Jacob and Helen Benson make a phone call to meet at Jacob's father's grave, where stepmother and stepson are reconciled, and Klaatu realizes that people can indeed change "when they are on the brink of an abyss", that they would have to "pay a high price" for doing so.

Klaatu goes to Central Park to stop the destructive swarms of nanobots. But first he saves Helen and Jacob Benson, whose death is imminent, as nanites are already in their bodies, by taking the intruders into his own body. Just in time it reaches the sphere , which then emits a huge electromagnetic impulse , which makes all electrical and electronic devices on earth unusable, and thus also the nanites, before it leaves earth. This makes it clear what Klaatu meant by “high price”. With the deactivation of the nanobots, the extinction of humanity is initially averted and it was given a second chance to better deal with the planet earth that was given to it. However, people were also shown that there are forces in the universe that they are watching very closely and that can come back at any time to destroy people if they do not change.

background

Production and publication

The film was shot in the USA , Canada and Australia . The shooting lasted from December 12, 2007 to March 21, 2008. On December 10, 2008, the film premiered in several countries at the same time, including Switzerland . The next day he could be seen in Germany and Austria . Another day later - on Jennifer Connelly's 38th birthday - he called in the USA. The film was an estimated budget of 80 million US dollars available. Already on the opening weekend, almost 30.5 million US dollars were grossed in at the US box office, with a total of almost 79.4 million US dollars. Worldwide box office earnings were over $ 230.8 million.

Jennifer Connelly was Scott Derrickson's first choice to cast Helen Benson, while producer Erwin Stoff said that Keanu Reeves was his only choice. When John Cleese cast the role of Professor Barnhardt , those responsible feared a wrong choice, as this would primarily be associated with comedic roles. Cleese, on the other hand, found his assigned dramatic role, with a touch of subtle humor, easier to play than another role of a manic old man. After all, the film crew had to admit they enjoyed filming with Cleese.

In the finale of the films “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “ Cloverfield ”, the protagonists seek shelter under the same bridge in Central Park .

For advertising purposes were u. a. Advertising posters localized in Cologne with the words "The day on which Cologne stood still" hung up.

Large parts of the film are kept in the colors green and blue in order to take up the primary colors of nature.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases of the film include the original 1951 film adaptation, but do not include any additional bonus material.

Comparison of the original and remake

Scott Derrickson is an admirer of the work of Robert Wise , who directed the 1951 film . He was therefore planning a remake of this film since 1993 .

To a large extent, the original film version and the new film version are the same. For example, in both versions, Jacob's father is killed in a theater of war. Furthermore, the design of the android GoRT is comparable to the first film version from 1951, however Scott Derrickson opted for a biological version as opposed to the original mechanical version, because he believed that advanced alien life would develop biological rather than mechanical technologies.

The remake differs in other points from the first film from 1951. While Klaatu in the first film version is an alien with a human body, in the remake Klaatu is an alien in a human body. In the original, Helen is instructed by Klaatu to use the words "Klaatu Barada Nikto" - which George Lucas used in " Return of the Jedi " for three characters in Jabba's palace and which was later used again in the film " Army of Darkness " To judge GoRT to stop it, in the remake Klaatu speaks these words himself, even in two different scenes. The spaceship that Klaatu uses in the original was exchanged for a more mysterious, glowing sphere in the remake at the request of Scott Derrickson . In the 1951 film adaptation, GoRT is assigned a height of 8 feet , in the 2008 release it is 28 feet. Not the US capital Washington, DC , but the “secret world capital” of humanity ” New York City is confronted with an alien landing.

synchronization

The German synchronization emerged after a synchronous book by Tobias Meister under the dialogue director of Jan. Odle by the synchronous company Berliner Synchron Wenzel Lüdecke .

actor German speaker role
Keanu Reeves Benjamin Völz Klaatu
Jennifer Connelly Claudia Urbschat-Mingues Helen Benson
David Lewis Johannes Berenz Plainclothes agent
Robert Knepper Gerald Paradise Colonel
Roger R. Cross Tilo Schmitz General Quinn
JC MacKenzie Wolfgang Wagner Grossman
Jaden Smith Eric Stefanov Jacob Benson
Kyle Chandler Uwe Büschken John Driscoll
Jon Hamm Thomas Nero Wolff Michael Granier
James Hong Dr. Chuanjie Huang Mr. Wu
David Richmond-Peck Olaf Reichmann Polygraph operator
John Cleese Thomas Danneberg Professor Barnhardt
Kathy Bates Regina Lemnitz Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson
Mousa Kraish Jan Odle Yusef
Uli Krohm Doctor at the autopsy
Boris Tessmann male nurse

In the German version is bracing set to music entitled poisoned in his sleep of Thomas D .

reception

criticism

David Kleingers criticized the film in his review for Spiegel Online : “ Scott Derrickson's reinterpretation is not a juicy, let alone provocative spectacle, but rather the cinematic equivalent of the boring speculoos: 'Dust dry, devoid of taste, carelessly garnished with pre-cut special effects and served by the perplexed stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. ' The 'cautionary appeal of the original' gives way to 'a vague Zen swirl and a friendly declaration of intent to simply be a little nicer to animals, plants and fellow human beings in the future'. "

In his review for Tagesspiegel , Sebastian Handke saw the main problem with the film in the fact that, in contrast to the original, it wanted to be a disaster film: “But for that you would have to give this material epic breadth. The day ... but seems like the film should have been cut to a length of 100 minutes. The plot unfolds hastily and often illogically, so the main characters don't really find each other - and the apocalyptic mood doesn't even emerge ”. But in the end, the film is "by no means the disaster that fans of the original feared".

The film magazine Cinema wrote in its conclusion: "Scott Derrickson packs his biblically booming end-time theater full of action and computer tricks, which does not make the messianic kitsch any more bearable: the word on Sunday in excess."

The Lexicon of International Films writes: “The film, which juggles with christological attributes, fails to credibly update the criticism of human grievances that the original formulated against the backdrop of the Cold War. No more than a tolerably entertaining revision of the bill, whose pacifist message is undermined, since the warning for peace is coupled with a punitive destruction scenario. "

Comparison of the original and remake

Georg Mannsperger saw the remake of the science fiction film from 1951 as an “approach to a contemporary reinterpretation of an existing material”. Thus "it represents a representative excerpt from the current zeitgeist, as was the case with the 1951 film". In the 1950s, the “paranoia of communist infiltration” as well as American society, which “sees itself unjustifiably exposed to the persecution of the American military”, as well as the “utopian vision of an externally enforced global peace process as an evolutionary process of further development ” in the face of the Cold War , became more common Humanity "is thematized. Almost 60 years later, the "fear of the ecological destruction of the earth" is moved to the center of the action. "The extraterrestrial power that came in the original film adaptation to protect the civilizations of other inhabited planets from the warlike excesses of a humanity armed with atomic forces advancing into space is in the remake [...] of saving the planet earth itself and the In addition to this, in his opinion, successful, contemporary reinterpretation, Mannsperger is of the opinion that the “remake would certainly have offered the potential to give the all too smooth, benevolent figure of the original a more angular, more multi-dimensional Figure facing ". However, since the film “lets itself be carried away to an idealistic resolution” and “blows off the already started destruction of civilization”, “the previously quite effectively built ambivalence of the extraterrestrial visitor [...] is counteracted”. Mannsperger saw positively that the two interpretations are "looking for the few common elements rather than the numerous further developments" and praises the fact that the remake is "able to present a less conservative image of society than the original" by portraying a female US Secretary of Defense, with Helen Benson a recognized astro-biologist instead of a housewife and mother and the Afro-American boy Jacob.

Awards

Director Scott Derrickson won the 2007 MovieGuide Awards in the “Best Film for Mature Audiences” category. In 2008, William R. Dean and David Husby were nominated for the Satellite Awards in the "Best Sound Editing" category, while Jeffrey A. Okun received a nomination in the "Best Visual Effects" category. In 2009, the film was nominated for a Golden Raspberry in the category " Worst remake or cheapest copy ". Also in 2009 Jeffrey A. Okun, R. Christopher White , Thomas Boland and Ben Thompson were nominated for the rebirth of Klaatus at the VES Awards in the category "Best Single Visual Effect of the Year". Finally, the film received a nomination at the Saturn Awards 2009 in the category "Best Science Fiction Film", while Jaden Smith won the Saturn Award for "Best Performance by a Younger Actor". The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: The Day the Earth Stood Still  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Internet Movie Database : Background information
  2. ↑ Internet Movie Database : Filming Locations
  3. ↑ a b c d Internet Movie Database : Budget and Box Office Results
  4. ↑ a b c Internet Movie Database : Start Dates
  5. ↑ a b c Comparative film review of the original and the remake ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Georg Mannsperger  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / knol.google.com
  6. ↑ DVD credits
  7. ↑ a b 2012-02-25 in the German synchronous index
  8. ↑ Apocalypse with a stupid alien , review on Spiegel Online , David Kleingers, December 9, 2008, accessed on December 13, 2008
  9. ↑ We are the plague of the planet , review in Tagesspiegel , Sebastian Handke, December 11, 2008, accessed on April 13, 2015
  10. ↑ The Day the Earth Stood Still , Review in Cinema , accessed March 29, 2009
  11. ↑ The day the earth stood still. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  12. ↑ a b c d e Internet Movie Database : Nominations and Awards