Hancock was one of the big summer blockbusters of 2008, and took home over $600 million worldwide on the strength of the charismatic Will Smith. But critics were lukewarm about it, saying that it seemed flimsy and unfocused, as though there were too many writers taking the film in too many directions. It didn't know if it wanted to be a rollicking comedy, a straight comic-book film, or an emotional drama. I argued that Hancock knew precisely what it wanted to be (satire of the standard comic book film). It played it straight and despite my skepticism about it, managed to be smart and entertaining. When there are actually too many people steering any particular film in too many directions, the result is never a distinct sequential split of genres. It ends up something along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

It can't be too emotional, because there isn't enough time to really develop relationships in a brainless action movie. It can't be a straight action movie, because too much time is spent on its environmentalist slogans. And it can't be a valid environmentalist slogan, because it has the intelligence of a brainless action movie.

The emotional grounding in The Day the Earth Stood Still comes via the strenuous relationship between Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her son Jacob (Jaden Smith). Jacob's father has recently passed away and he is feeling abandoned, left behind to be raised by someone he doesn't feel connected to. This would have worked as a solid foundation, as Connelly is brilliant as always in providing depth to her character that the script neglects to. But the young Smith lacks the savvy in experience to weather such an annoyingly written role. Jacob comes across as more of a brat than someone of sympathy. I can't help but think that the film would have been better off without this mother-son dynamic forced on it.

The environmentalist grounding could have worked if executed with ideas, rather than the feelings associated with the idea of environmentalism. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) comes to Earth to make a judgment of human society. Is it responsible enough to exist on this planet without destroying it? (Earth is one of the very few planets in the known universe that is capable of sustaining life after all.) He decides after some quick hostility towards him that we are in fact too destructive, so what does he do? He destroys the world.

What? What kind of sense does that make? The damage Klaatu and his giant robot friend enact is far worse than anything we could possibly do to the planet. Why not just scare us a bit, and give us a way to clean things up? Help us help Earth. That seems like a more productive strategy.

No! Let's fuck it all up instead!

“But we can change,” the film protests. “Just give us a chance.”

Whether or not we convince him at all, or if so in time, I'll leave it for you to find out. It doesn't really matter anyway.

What The Day the Earth Stood Still doesn't realize, is that environmentalist sentiment stems from the ultimate ambition of saving humanity, not the planet. Any intelligent person can tell you that Earth will be just fine, even (especially) after we've effectively eradicated human beings from it. There's nothing that we can do to the Earth that it can't handle, given the fact that it has an infinite amount of time to do so. Chances are, it won't even miss us when we're gone.

I could've forgiven it the lack of this most basic foresight, had it just worked as a fun action movie. The elements are in place for a successful one. Scott Derrickson (the surprising Hellraier: Inferno, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is a capable director and I have faith that he could have made an especially effective popcorn flick, if The Day the Earth Stood Still was allowed to exist in that form. But the action scenes are limited to just a few short snippets. The only things we see destroyed (to my recollection) are a truck, a football stadium, and a road sign – the last of which is oddly the most impressive-looking of the three. The action seems tacked on like an afterthought, diverting the movie from its true purpose.

There are those people, I'm sure, who will cut into The Day the Earth Stood Still for being another pointless remake of a classic example of cinema, but I don't see Robert Wise's original as sacred material. It was created out of the fear and uncertainty of nuclear war and with the knowledge that we currently have, it (if done correctly) would probably benefit from a facelift in look and theory in order to appeal to current audiences and be relevant in modern time.

This picture doesn't need to rely on its own potential cinematic blasphemy in order to be an abomination, however. It is lousy all by itself.