The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) (part 11 of 11)

by · January 26, 2009

Jacob and Klaatu are in a military cemetery, with rows of small white tombstones. Jacob runs ahead to quickly tidy what, of course, turns out to be his dad’s grave. He then turns to Klaatu with a look of excited expectation. He figures Klaatu can resurrect him the way he did the trooper. Okay, Jacob, priorities! Your dad won’t be too grateful for being brought back from the dead if he’s eaten alive by Annihilation Nanobots ten minutes later.

Klaatu says there are some things he can’t do, and he’s sorry. Jacob begs him, so Klaatu gives him a big line about how nothing ever truly dies, because the universe wastes nothing. We are all… starstuff! Jacob, however, isn’t buying what Klaatu is selling and tells him to go away.

Caption contributed by Scooter

“C’mon, it can’t be that hard. They found most of him.”

Helen finds Jacob crying at his dad’s grave and takes him into her arms. “It’s not fair,” Jacob sobs into her shoulder. “He left me alone!” Helen tells him he’s not alone, and he didn’t leave him. “I see him in you all the time,” she says. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to bear.” This is such a touching, emotional scene that I’m really trying hard not to notice how she jumps back and forth between touching his left cheek with her left hand and touching his right check with her right hand, as the movie cuts from his coverage to her coverage. In fact, I’m not even going to mention it. I’m nice that way.

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Mark "Scooter" Wilson

Mark is a history guy, a graphics guy, a guy for whom wryly cynical assessments of popular culture are the scallion cream cheese on the toasted everything bagel of life. He spends his time teaching modern history at Brooklyn College, pondering the ancient Romans at the CUNY Graduate Center, and conjuring maps and illustrations for ungrateful bankers at various Manhattan monoliths. Readers are welcome to guess at reasons why he's nicknamed Scooter, with the proviso that all such submissions are guaranteed to be rather more interesting than the truth. Mark lives in the Midwood section of Brooklyn with a happy-go-lucky, flop-eared dog named Chiyo who is probably, at this very moment, waiting patiently for her walkies.

Multi-Part Article: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
Tag: Razzie Contenders: 2009 Edition

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  • Mamba

    “Someone please explain to me exactly how Klaatu’s powers work, because up until now they’ve seemed to require direct contact with a power source, and I don’t think light, even laser light, counts as direct contact. ”

    ok…they require direct contact with an ENERGY source, and a light beam emenating from a helicoptor counts. All his powers so far have followed that reasoning…as long as he’s in ontact with the electrocal energy (or at least near it within a foot in the case of the trooper’s car battery or the vending machine) he can manipulate and control it. That’s also how he fried the interrogator’s mind and turned him into a puppet…he was “connected” to him through the polygraph, and once he disconnected himself, contact lost and dude drops.

    • Greenhornet

      To paraphrase Ash Williams; “Old, new, Klaatu’s an SOB”.

  • That’s clearly Ukrainian, not Russian. I’m not a Ukrainian-speaker, but as far as I can tell (by analogy to Russian, which I do speak) he’s saying “I’ve lived among them for 70 years now”.

  • Greenhornet

    While reading this recap, I remembered a DC comics multi-comic story (Pre-Crisis) that showcased their heroines.
    In it, an alien calling himself “the Adjudicator” landed and announced that he was putting Earth on trial. Not just ONE Earth, but a couple more in other dimensions, too. After they thwarted his manifestations of the Four Horsemen, the alien decided “Yeah, screw them all. But I’ll keep these hot chicks for laughs”. The twist was that “The Adjudicator” had escaped from a galactic LOONIE BIN.
    A much better twist for a DTESS style story.

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