10 Films That Made Audiences Dumber
7. The Day The Earth Stood Still
Based on a story by Harry Bates, Robert Wise’s The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of the landmark science fiction films of the 1950s. Directed by the guy who made Hellraiser: Inferno, this remake casts Keanu Reeves as an alien named Klaatu who visits Earth in a giant sphere.
The original ended with Klaatu leaving Earth after giving the world’s leaders a choice: you can join the other planets in peace or you can extend your violence into space, in which case “this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.”
Having none of that, the remake dissipates the impact of the story by having Klaatu abandon his plans when Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith persuade him that humanity is just swell. Now shut up and watch and these special effects.
As if casting Smith as Connelly’s stepson wasn’t odd enough, the movie also throws in Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defence and John Cleese (playing it straight) as a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Rumours that Uwe Boll was cast as the US President turned out to be untrue.