It’s visually interesting and cool in a studied way, but the usual morals are boring and untrue, also predictable and flawed. Even annoying.
The idea is interesting: if Earth dies, humans die, but if humans die first, the Earth can survive. Right, that’s reasonable up to this point, but who gets to decide?
More in details:
In 1928 our Keanu sees a big icy-sphere and is knocked out when he touches it. He wakes up with a scar on his hand.
2008: a lot of scientists are secretly gathered together at a military base. They are told that an object is flying fast on a collision course with Earth, and that it’ll hit and destroy Manhattan in little more than a hour (then why gathering them all if there’s nothing they can do?). At the end of the countdown nothing happens because the object suddenly slowed down and sort of landed. It’s a much larger sphere, and an alien comes out and immediately one of the many military gathered there shoots him, just like that. Just to give him the right idea of what humans are right away, I guess.
Similar but smaller spheres have appeared all over the world. A big cyclope-robot disables all their devices and does something to the alien before turning inactive. Now that it’s still and doing nothing, they take the alien to the doctors to save him, and it turns out that inside it another being is being formed. The alien is assuming a human form (Keanu Reeves), a real human body, that’s why they collected that man’s dna in 1928.
He’s called Klatu and says that he represents a group of alien civilizations and that he wants to talk to all the world leaders. The secretary of defence refuses, insisting that he explains first why he came to ‘our’ planet, and he replies that this world is not ours. She wants to take him to another location but he says that no, he wants to get out since he did nothing wrong, and she says that the robot attacked them - which is a lie, so: great way to start first contact: first you shoot him then you lie to him and keep him prisoner. Wow, great start.
Doctor Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) pretends to help her but instead she wants to help him escape. They ask him more questions and he’s like: I suggest you let me go, then he dresses up and simply walks out. When he feels ill he has people call Helen and he tells her that he’s Earth’s friend - and she doesn’t notice the peculiarity of his words: Earth’s friend yes, humanity’s friend no.
She has something that can cure all his injuries : what is it? I don’t know.
The military try to destroy the robot, without a real reason other that it’s there and they’re a bunch of scare kids? A bit dumb too because it reacts to threats and weapons, so it activates and destroys the planes.
Helen must take care of Jacob, the son of the man she married. His mother died and when his father died too he stayed with her; he’s just a little child so I guess it’s reasonable that he’s an unbearable brat, still one wished they had dealt with the matter sooner so to avoid all the annoying brat-scenes.
Klatu says he came to save Earth, and he meets with a Chinese man: he’s an alien too but he came here 60 years before. He says that humans are a destructive race and they’ll never change, but that after all these years he has affections and wants to stay here to die with the others.
Klatu starts the procedure, and the smaller spheres all around the globe start collecting animals, two by two, just like Noah’s ark, and then they leave, and only the largest remains.
Klatu says that he’s here to save Earth from humans because we’re destroying it, and Helen finally understands and starts saying that we can change, the usual stuff, what could she say: yeah, you’re right, kill us all?
When a cop finds them, Klatu kills him and then revives him, saying that he only wanted to remove an obstacle not to hurt him - well, I’m sorry but his explanation is nonsense because he’s planning to kill us all so to revive him only so that he could die again is nonsense.
Klatu says that he had asked to talk to all world leaders to discuss the matter and that humans refused. Helen says that he hasn’t talked to the right people - well, he has talked to the people who make decisions that affect us all - and she takes him to talk to a good scientist (John Cleese) who has indeed interesting observation (like: every race changes when it’s in danger, at the last moment, like Klatu’s own race did) but to me the fact remains that he’s just one man and if nobody important listens to him the world will not change.
The tv news show that there are riots everywhere, because apparently people think of every emergency as a chance to be bad guilt-free.
While they were talking, Jacob called the number that appeared on the news telling them where they are, because he sees Klatu as the enemy to be destroyed.
Helicopters arrive, they can’t take Klatu but they take Helen away. The secretary tells her that they have everything under control: yeah right, is it the most important thing for a politian, being able to act and lie?
Since they couldn’t destroy it, they took the robot away and tried to study it, and now it dissolves into many many little things that destroy everything they come in contact with. The secretary sees no way out now, I guess, because she lets Helen go - because it’s a movie and even politicians have a conscience. Klatu is moved when he sees Helen and Jacob cry together for the man they lost: Jacob thought she didn’t want him but was stuck with him, thought he had nobody, but she loves him and thinks of him as her son. Klatu says that he now understands that there’s something more in humans (oh really, he says that because he saw that a child is sad after losing his father? big brain, the other alien knew all this too you know, he had a whole family here) and Helen can’t lose this chance to break thru to him and starts saying that humans can change, that now he knows that humans can change (does he know it? how? what could give him this idea?).
Now Klatu has changed his mind and tries to stop the procedure. Those little things enter Jacob and Helen’s bodies, killing them from inside - now, in a scene before we saw a swarm of those things passing through and a whole big truck and his driver disappeared as they went past, but now those things have slowly entered their bodies, starting slowly slowly, giving Klatu all the time he can ask for to do something if he wants to, how kind, well not very kind to the truck-driver but movies don’t care about characters who don’t even have a name right?
When they see that Jacob is dying she asks Klatu to save him, and when it’s clear that she’s dying too she still asks him to save Jacob, like any loving mother would do, and Klatu saves them both, and then he starts walking towards the sphere, and he can barely see anything, so many of those things are flying around.
When he finally manages to reach it and touch it, everything stops. They got the message, I guess.
The sphere goes away, and Earth is left without any kind of power or working machinery. There is no electricity, trains and ships are still, even wristwatches don’t go anymore. Everything is still.
And that’s the end.
ITA ultimatum alla Terra
Jacob-Jaden Smith
Secretary of defense-Kathy Bates
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