Released Year: 2008
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Casted by:
Keanu Reeves as Klaatu
Jennifer Connelly as Helen Benson
Jaden Smith as Jacob Benson
John Cleese as Professor Karl Barnhardt
Jon Hamm as Dr. Michael Granier
Kathy Bates as Regina Jackson
Story:
In 1928, a solitary mountaineer encounters a glowing sphere. He loses consciousness and when he wakes, the sphere has gone and there is a scar on his hand where a sample of his DNA has been taken.
In the present day, a rapidly moving object is detected beyond Jupiter's orbit and forecast to impact Manhattan. The United States government hastily assembles a group of scientists, including Dr. Helen Benson, to formulate a survival plan. The object is measured to be moving at 30,000 kilometers per second - enough to destroy nearly all life on Earth - but as it nears the planet, the object slows down just before impact and is revealed to be a large spherical spaceship, which lands gently in Central Park. The sphere is quickly surrounded by police and a heavily armed, hostile, and rather chaotic US military force.
An alien emerges and Helen moves forward to greet it, but amidst the confusion, a soldier shoots the alien. A gigantic robot then appears that temporarily disables everything in the vicinity. The alien voices the command "Klaatu barada nikto" to shut down the robot's defensive response.
A military surgeon discovers that the alien body is actually a bioengineered space suit, composed of placenta-like material covering a human-like being. The being quickly ages into Klaatu, who looks like the mountaineer from the opening scene of the film. Klaatu informs Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson that he is a representative of a group of alien civilizations, sent to talk to the leaders of Earth at a United Nations conference in the city. Jackson instead orders that Klaatu be sent to a secure location for interrogation. Klaatu manages to escape and Helen and her stepson Jacob give him a ride out of the area. The trio are pursued and harassed by the authorities for the rest of the film.
The presence of the sphere, and others like it around the world, causes a widespread panic. The military launch a drone attack on the sphere, but are thwarted by the robot. They cautiously enclose the robot and transport it to Virginia.
Klaatu meets with another alien, Mr. Wu, who has lived on Earth for 70 years. Wu tells Klaatu that he has found the human race to be destructive and unwilling to change, which matches Klaatu's experience. Klaatu decides that the planet, with its rare ability to sustain complex life, must be cleansed of humans to ensure that it can survive. Klaatu orders smaller spheres to collect specimens of animal species, to preserve them off the planet. Helen quizzes Klaatu about his statement that he has come to save the Earth and discovers that he means to save the Earth from destruction by humankind.
Meanwhile, the robot, named "GORT" by the military, is being examined in an underground facility. The robot transforms into a swarm of winged, insect-like, nano-machines that self-replicate as they consume everything in their path. The swarm starts to erase all trace of the human race.
Hoping to persuade Klaatu to change his mind about humanity, Helen takes him to the home of Nobel Prize-winning Professor Barnhardt. They discuss how Klaatu's own race went through a drastic evolution to survive their own star's demise. Klaatu is impressed by the beauty of the music by Bach playing in the background. Klaatu finally realizes that he has misjudged humanity when he sees Helen comforting Jacob at his father's grave. They head for the sphere in Central Park to try to stop the swarm.
Klaatu warns that even if he manages to stop the swarm, there will be a price to the human way of life. The swarm arrives and Jacob and Helen become infected by the nano-machines. Helen tells Klaatu to save Jacob and Klaatu draws the nano machines into his body, reviving Jacob. Klaatu then walks through the swarm to the sphere, touching it moments before his body is consumed. The sphere deactivates the swarm, saving humanity, but at the expense of electrical activity on Earth which is apparently all shut down. The giant sphere leaves the Earth.
L² Scored: 4.5/10
L² Comment:
This is not the first time i watched this remake film of 1951 same name movie, but still it managed to bored me out and makes me almost fell asleep again... I did not watch the 1951 movie and of course not the fiction "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates; so i'm not in the place to comment how much it follows the original, all i know is, i need to drank coffee to finish this movie.
Technical wise definitely better than the previous movie i suppose, Reeves seems like a piece of wood to me, totally expressionless~ yawn. Connelly in the meanwhile not really outstanding too if compare to little Jaden Smith :) But overall the movie is very so so, guess most probably I won't watch it for the third time anymore...
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