I like doing movie reviews on this thing. Anyone noticed?

So I finally got around to seeing the remake of the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still. First of all, I would like to say that despite any of my subsequent criticisms, it is still a well-made movie which I believe is worth seeing.

While the original was based around the ideas of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear weaponry, the foundation of the remake is a response to today's environmental concerns. Essentially (and sorry for any spoilers), an alien comes to Earth to initiate a sort of "Final Response" mechanism which will eradicate human life in order to save Earth and its other inhabitants. Like many movies created in North America, it has general religious undertones. The 1951 version had the alien take on the disguise of Mr. Carpenter (and did everything but directly call him Jesus), and the new version directly compares the event to Moses and the Flood by having the aliens collect Earthly species before eradication.

Many parts of the movie are highly innovative, using creative scientific techniques to explain phenomena that were holes in the classic. Why is the alien look human? How does he speak English? Almost everything is perfectly explained, which is a brilliant effect that many sci-fi movies lack.

Keanu Reeves is in his element, which in other words means his character (Klaatu, the alien) doesn't have to show any human emotion or understanding of human intricacies whatsoever. While I'm not any expert on acting, I believe the other actors did an interesting job, and while other reviews highly criticize the actor playing the stepson of Helen (Jennifer Connelly), I think kids really can be that stupid sometimes.

So, the movie addresses excessive human violence and the automatic response of humanity to kill anything it doesn't know about, as well as the tendenyc of humans to lay waste to the Earth around us. The aliens are pretty much fed up with it, and the movie's plot revolves around our scientific heroine attempting to convince him that we're not all that bad.

***WARNING: IF YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT SPOILERS, READ NO FURTHER***

So, the end of the movie consists of Klaatu finally being convinced that there is a good side to humanity (which was an ending everybody saw coming since the movie started), and he stops the apocalypse at a price to human's way of life, and as the substance consuming robot-bug swarm stops its path of destruction, all electronic devices on Earth stop working. Even if we put the absolute predictability of the whole movie aside, this is my big beef with the ending. Considering all the scientific explanations at the beginning, you couldn't come up with anything better than "no more electronics"? It feels sort of anti-climactic that way.

Besides, anyone else see a fundamental problem with that? We never think about it, because no one knows and no one pays attention in physics class, but we have created electronics through a manipulation of fundamental properties of the universe, specifically electromagnetic properties. You can't just turn that off, it doesn't work that way. If this being was powerful enough to defy cosmic law, he could just fix everything immediately, and suddenly there's no movie.

But there was a fascinating quote that the movie presented as a key argument for Klaatu to stop his apocalypse (spoken by none other than John Cleese himself), and I leave you with this:

"...it's only on the brink [of destruction] that people find the will to change, only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment, don't take it from us. We're close to an answer."