Day The Earth Stood Still Remake - Worse Than I Imagined?

Day The Earth Stood Still Remake UPDATE 2: Despite the email below from Fox, I cannot see how commenting on a review of a script and mentioning items from that review without directly quoting a screenplay is a copyright violation. Therefore I’m putting my article back online.

UPDATE 1: I’ve been contacted by Fox Studios’ legal department with the following email:

“To Whom It May Concern:

We have recently learned that SCREENRANT.com (hereinafter “You” or “Your”) posted a review purportedly from the Twentieth Century Fox feature film screenplay titled “The Day The Earth Stood Still” on your website at [this page]. Your review contains elements protected by copyright and, as such, we must request that you remove the review from the website and cease and desist from all other activities associated with this material.”

Now personally, I don’t know how commenting here on a review of a script on another website entails copyright infringement, but I’m also not going to get in a legal battle with a studio. At the time I’m writing this, the review is still up at Aintitcool.com at the link at the end of this post.

A couple of weeks ago I commented on how my expectations for the new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still couldn’t get any worse. Well it turns out I was wrong: it’s even worse than I thought.

Over at Ain’t It Cool News they seem to have a new contributor and apparently he’s gotten his hands on a copy of the script for the unnecessary remake.

IF this report is accurate man oh man oh MAN does it sound awful.

According to the report (and there are BIG spoilers below, so be warned!):

- There is no “Gort” in the movie, instead there’s a robot that walks on all fours called “Totem.” [Correction: There IS Gort in the movie and he is humanoid in appearance.]

- Klatuu is not the first visitor here from his planet. There’s already been an old man here for 80 years monitoring us.(Logic problems galore with this one, pointed out at AICN.)

- They destroyed their planet through global warming and pollution so have come here to destroy us before we do that to other worlds.

- The source states that the famous phrase “Klatuu Barada Nicto” is never uttered.

- No scenes between Bobby and Klaatu at the Lincoln Memorial, the Arlington Cemetery, and the visit to the space ship. This actually makes sense, in a bad way, considering the theme of the movie. Perhaps they could visit coal mines or Ed Begley Jr’s home?

I’ve only scratched the surface with those points.

Having said all of the above, a couple of things bug me about the report:

1. The guy gets bent out of shape at the Connolly character being a single mom: the character in the first film was a single mom as well.

2. He adamantly states that the famous quote will not be used in the movie, while in the recent interview with MTV, Keanu Reeves stated that it was uttered in the movie. I mentioned this in my previous post about the film.

End of removed section per request of 20th Century Fox.

If the report is accurate, like I said, this thing is going to be even worse than I thought. If it’s not, I still think environmentalism is still a cheesy concept for a remake of this classic film.

Click on over to AICN for the whole thing and then come back here for a civilized conversation about this.