By Fred Topel | Image property of 20th Century Fox
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Here's Keanu Reeves in another sci-fi movie. If anyone had to remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, it could be in worse hands than Neo, Ted and Johnny Mnemonic.
Keanu on Earth and Sci Fi
"I love the genre and I approach it like any other film," Reeves said. "I guess that’s the short answer. Science fiction provides great storytelling opportunities and in the past I’ve just been fortunate to be part of good stories in science fiction genre films."
Reeves plays Klaatu, the alien taking human form to warn humanity to change its ways or be destroyed. "It really came to me through the obligations of the character in the story. It was in the script. That’s really where I worked from. The character has certain cues. When he’s born and the first time he starts to speak and he tries to drink a glass of water and says, 'This body is going to take some getting used to.' So it was just kind of the concept of the separation of his consciousness and his body. I just approached it like any other role. What does it want?"
This is a change from the original. "Michael Rennie was more human than human in the first piece. He was not quite an every man but he was very human. In this version Klaatu is not. He is in a human body but he is not human. He doesn’t have the same kind of human empathetic qualities. In this one I’m a little more sinister. Michael Rennie kind of brings the stick at the end. I kind of bring the stick in the beginning."
As a sci-fi fan, Reeves vouches for the remakes relevance some 57 years after the original. "It’s still the human character, the same kind of violence. The specifics of what challenges us today have changed. But the human characters remain the same. There is a little shift. This one is a little more between the mother and the alien in this version than the original. There is more about the mother and kid. It’s a whole thing. It’s a whole big thing."
The Day the Earth Stood Still is out in theaters now.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
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