Well, that was a waste.
I took the Godson to see The Day The Earth Stood Still and we were both disappointed. I understood everything, I do not think he did at all, except the part where people are bad and need to be destroyed. So, you know....spoliers ahead.
It started nicely with a WTF moment in the high altitudes of the Indian subcontinent, and then segued into technobabble with an incoming alien object.
I was almost impressed with the chief scientist standing there saying "Yo, this is moving at a significant fraction of lightspeed...right at NEW YORK CITY." How long to we have? Oh, 90 minutes? Then you just saw it. (You see, objects traveling at near speed c are right behind the light they are emitting. When you see it, the object is coming up right behind it, so it shows up very, very fast. Plus, any radiating visual light would be seen as shorter wave radiation, I believe, so I wonder what gamme ray telescope was used to track the object...)
Anyway, so this thing of unknown mass is decelerating to match orbits with Earth and it will impact on New York. Fine. Let's all fly to the impact point. Wait, what? Do what now? What the hell for? Do you want to die in the blast, to make sure you are one of the first?
Several long minutes of background score, flashing lights, Keanu finally gets shot, Gort appears, NICE GORT! YAY GORT! Oh, not much of Gort after all. Let us drag the wounded Klaatu back to base and see if we have a surgeon.
NIce. An organic suit. Pity there's an embryonic Keanu Reeves underneath. Oh, wait, he's full grown. I bet he's all tender. Can we open his skull now and look inside? Oh, drat, we'll use Microsoft Surface for that.
More time and background score. Boring, boring, interrogate, Klaatu has unreasonable powers, escape into the human world. Jennifer Connoly helps him around, they go to McDonalds! Order a McRib! if he orders a McRib meal and supersizes it...oh NOES! They have discontinued the McRib!DAMN YOU MCDONALDS! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! Now Klaatu won't see any need to keep us around because the one perfect food has gone extinct. Doubtless he will sermonize on the extinction of the McRibinals and how we have failed as stewards of this blue marble Earth.
Oh, he's talking to...WHOA! Its Lo Pan! Klaatu has screwed up now, cuz Lo Pan will zap him with Chinese dragon eyeball lightning. "HAHAH! Klaatu, Klaatu! You have come a long way to find me, but it is too late! There are two girls with green eyes!"
Disillusioned with Lo Pan, we wander off into the forest where the principal abduction of Earth's ecosystem takes place. Every biome that can be rendered has organisms stolen by Klaatu's spheres and then transported offworld for later repopulation.
Gort is caged underground. More Gort! I like how his one Cylon eye is staring, rather menacingly, at the White House aide as he enters the room.
John Cleese is Professor Barnhardt? BRILLIANT!
Gort escapes as a cloud of hungry nanomites. Foolish humans use rockets, artillery, and M1 guns to try and stop it, no effect. Duh. The Gortean nanocloud, thus invigorated with working mass, races to consume more of anything.
Meanwhile, Klaatu has a change of heart. Why? See the movie and find out. I won't spoil that part. They have to get back to the sphere in New York! Gort is eating everything, even trucks and factories!
Interesting choice to hide from the nanocloud...that's the same culvert the kids used at the end of Cloverfield. I guess it is safe enough from even nuclear blasts...if you are a 4 gig SD card. Klaatu then touches the sphere, and in a flash of light, an EMP pulse thrashes the grid and Gort, and the Earf, Stands Still. Roll credits.
Analysis: The humans were stupid in every point during the film. Hopefully the stupid have been weeded out by Gort and mroe sane minds can take over. Who in their right mind would rush to the impact point of an incoming ballistic?
In any case, an inadvertent shift in political demographics has occurred....Gort has consumed the population and infrastructure of very populous Blue States...the government is going to be owned by Republicans for a very, very long time.
Which is probably ok, becuase we've been knocked back about fifty years in technological development, so I'd say it would take about that long to struggle back where we are now, and then a bonus, all these nanobots for the taking to reverse engineer and duplicate, then we can build our own Gort.
Classic alien mistake. When engaging the humans in combat, kill and eat/enslave them all. if you let them back up, you will regret it at every turn. These Klaatu types and their highly evolved selves will be no match for an enraged humanity with bigger guns...they will wish they perished in the expansion of their home sun.
We'll mess up our planet if we feel like it.