ON THIS PAGE: THE FILM, THE CAST AND THE FILMMAKERS

In THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, a contemporary reinvention of the 1951 science fiction classic, renowned scientist Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) finds herself face to face with an alien called Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), who travels across the universe to warn of an impending global crisis.
When forces beyond Helen's control treat the extraterrestrial as a hostile and deny his request to address the world's leaders, she and her estranged stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith) quickly discover the deadly ramifications of Klaatu's claim that he is "a friend to the Earth."
Now Helen must find a way to convince the entity who was sent to destroy us that mankind is worth saving - but it may be too late.
The process has begun.
Mankind has long been fascinated by the possibility of life beyond Earth.  Science fiction literature and films have served to not only entertain, but to address our questions, hopes and fears about extraterrestrial life.  Such speculation has captivated our collective imagination and inspired the development of new technology to explore the farthest reaches of our universe and the very real possibility that we are not alone.
One of the most original and innovative films of the genre is the 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still," a truly groundbreaking movie that has influenced generations of sci-fi enthusiasts, authors and filmmakers.  Directed by legendary filmmaker Robert Wise, the film tells the story of a benevolent, human-looking alien called Klaatu, who lands his spaceship in Washington D.C. with the goal of meeting with the leaders of Earth to warn that the violence that man is committing against man actually threatens the survival of other civilizations in the universe.  With the help of Gort, his giant robotic bodyguard, Klaatu eludes the authorities who attempt to capture him and immerses himself in human culture to gain a better understanding of a species that seems committed to conflict and destruction.  He befriends a widow and her son, and through the prism of their friendship he learns much about humanity - and ultimately challenges mankind to be its best version of itself.
The film was revolutionary, not only in its then-cutting edge conceptualization of aliens, spaceships and robots, but in its audacious variation on a familiar allegory for the escalating tensions of the early Cold War era.  "The entire canon of science fiction in America in the Fifties was constructed in such a way as to reinforce Western fears of the Eastern Bloc," notes producer Erwin Stoff.  "The 'other' to be feared was always a metaphor for Communism.  What was remarkable about 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' was that it placed the onus of responsibility on everyone equally.  The 'other' to fear was ourselves - the nature of man and the terrible violence that humanity is capable of."
Another aspect of the film that sets it apart is the perspective from which it unfolds.  "One of the really unique things about the story is that it's told from the alien's point of view," Stoff observes.  "We've seen a lot of movies about aliens, but rarely do we see ourselves as the aliens."
The idea of remaking "The Day the Earth Stood Still" first struck Stoff, who has managed Reeves for over 20 years, in the wake of their success on the 1994 blockbuster "Speed."  During a meeting with at Twentieth Century Fox studios, Stoff noticed a poster for the classic film hanging on the wall.  "I said, 'Forget about the project I came here to talk to you about.  What we should do is develop 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' with Keanu playing Klaatu,'" he remembers.  "It seemed like a great idea, but for one reason or another, it didn't happen.  Then, as destiny would have it, a draft showed up on my doorstep twelve years later."
As re-conceived by screenwriter David Scarpa and director Scott Derrickson, the premise for the 2008 version of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is rooted not in man's violence against man, but in mankind's destruction of the Earth's environment.  "I'm a tremendous fan of the original film," Derrickson says.  "It was so interesting and original and progressive for its time - in the visual effects, in the way it commented on the Cold War tensions of that era, in the idea of seeing humanity from an outsider's perspective.  It's a truly great film, but most modern audiences haven't seen it.  I feel like people deserve to know this story, and this was a fantastic opportunity to retell it in a way that addresses the issues and conflicts that are affecting us now."
"There is nothing the original film says about the nature of mankind that isn't every bit as timely and relevant to this generation of movie audiences," Stoff believes.  "It's the specifics of the way we now have the capability to destroy ourselves that have changed.  The evidence that we are doing potentially irreparable harm to the environment is pretty irrefutable.  The challenges that we face today are no less daunting, and if we fail at them, no less lethal, than the ones that we faced before the end of the Cold War."
"In re-imagining this picture, we had an opportunity to capture a real kind of angst that people are living with today, a very present concern that the way we are living may have disastrous consequences for the planet," says Reeves.  "I feel like this movie is responding to those anxieties.  It's holding a mirror up to our relationship with nature and asking us to look at our impact on the planet, for the survival of our species and others."
For Derrickson, the project is the unforeseen culmination of a close encounter he enjoyed with Robert Wise as a film student, when he made a short film that was accepted to a festival in Indiana where the legendary director was being honored.  At a private dinner with Wise arranged by the festival's program director, Derrickson asked the two-time Oscar® winner if he had any advice for him as a young filmmaker.  "He told me that if I was interested in genre films, then I should make my first film a horror film, because a horror film will really show what you can do as a director," Derrickson says.  "I kept that in mind, and it was one of the reasons why I made [the successful horror film] 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' as my first film.  But I had no idea that I would be sitting here one day talking about re-imagining his great film 'The Day the Earth Stood Still.'"
"A lot of my enthusiasm for getting involved with this project and wanting Keanu to be part of it was the fact that I had seen 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' and was completely knocked out by Scott as a director," Stoff says.  "There is a thriller element to this film, a real sense of danger about Klaatu.  You're not sure what he's going to do next, or how far he's going to take things.  Scott is a masterful storyteller in terms of creating that kind of tension and mystery and danger."
As the representative of a group of alien civilizations that have suffered their own painful evolution in the wake of cataclysmic climate change, Klaatu travels to Earth with the intention of exterminating what he and his peers view as an imminent threat to a planet that is too uniquely abundant to be compromised.  "The situation has reached a crisis point where the life of the planet itself is at stake because the humans are killing it," Reeves says. "Klaatu comes to Earth to assess whether or not human beings are capable of changing their behavior, or if 'the problem' needs to be eliminated."
It is Klaatu's intention to speak to the world's leaders at the United Nations before taking any drastic action, but when he is denied that opportunity, it simply reinforces his perception of human beings as inherently barbaric and resistant to change.  "Klaatu comes to Earth with a pretty negative view of humanity," says Derrickson.  "He has certain ideas about our destructiveness and our reluctance to change, and his impressions of us based on his initial experiences here don't do anything to change that opinion."
Despite his preconceived notions about mankind, Klaatu approaches his mission with an eerie detachment.  "There was a take that Keanu did one day that really freaked me out," says Oscar-winner Kathy Bates ("Misery"), who portrays the U.S. secretary of defense.  "I don't know what happened, but his eyes just went black.  It was a magical moment and I saw it up close and personal.  For those few moments, he transformed himself into this other creature that wasn't human at all.  I'll never forget it."
"I tried to bring objectivity to the character and the way he observes everything around him," Reeves says.  "There is a kind of compression to Klaatu.  He is an alien entity contained in a human body, and when he is looking out of that body, he is just looking out.  But over the course of the film, he is gradually affected by the people around him and, he experiences what it means to be human, and to have hope."
"It was a very interesting process for me as a director to watch Keanu portray Klaatu," Derrickson reveals.  "We had talked about the physicality of the character, but Keanu worked that out mostly on his own.  When we were shooting, I could see some things that he was doing differently in scenes that take place later in the story than the way he behaved earlier in the film.  But it really wasn't until I started cutting the movie together that I realized what a thoughtful, seamless transition occurs in his performance.  He captured the experience of becoming humanized and recognizing, in all of his alien superiority, what it is about humanity that is remarkable.  To do that without being overwrought or overly dramatic is very difficult, and Keanu did it with an amazing amount of nuance."
It was this unparalleled ability to meet the singular challenges involved in playing Klaatu that Stoff recognized in Reeves and sparked his enduring interest in remaking THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL with him.  "I know Keanu as an actor so incredibly well, and honestly, I knew there was nobody else who could play Klaatu," Stoff attests.  "I knew how right it was for him.  It is the perfect union of actor and role.  Keanu has a unique ability as an actor to simultaneously evoke a quality of cynicism and optimism.  And those are two very important aspects of the character."
Reeves worked closely with Stoff, Derrickson and Scarpa to develop and deepen Klaatu's transformation through the relationships he forges with a mother and son in crisis.  "Keanu brought a lot to this film, not only in his performance, but from very early on," Derrickson says.  "He spent weeks sitting in a room with David and me, working through every scene of the script, line by line.  He was very disciplined, not just about his character, but about the movie as a whole."
"I had a great experience working on the script with Scott and David and the producers," Reeves reports.  "It was a real collaborative effort and a lot of thinking was put into What are we trying to say?  How do we want to say it?  I like that within this big action adventure about an alien coming to Earth, we created these intimate relationships that have a real authenticity and impact on the story."
"It's when Klaatu begins to connect more intimately and personally with people that he starts to see the better side of humanity," says Derrickson.  "At the same time, because he is contained in a human body, he begins to experience human emotions.  So through the course of the story, Klaatu learns more about us than he had initially counted on."
Klaatu's experience on Earth and his judgment of mankind is greatly impacted by Dr. Helen Benson, an astrobiologist who is drafted onto a hastily assembled team of scientists and engineers tasked with responding to the alien's arrival.  "As an astrobiologist, Helen studies the characteristics of life that you might find in other worlds," says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountainview, California, and an astrobiology advisor on the film.  "That doesn't necessarily mean the kinds of aliens that will stand there and talk to you.  Astrobiologists study the kinds of very small, single cell organisms that live in extreme environments here on Earth to gain insight into the kinds of critters we might find living in inhospitable conditions under the sands of Mars or on the moons of Jupiter."
"Because what Helen does for a living is so specialized, we wanted somebody who understands the field to help us bring as much authenticity to her role as possible," Derrickson says of Shostak's participation on the film.  "Seth not only informed her character, but he read through the entire script and made corrections as necessary so that the concepts behind the movie make scientific and rational sense."
Helen is the first human being to make physical contact with Klaatu when he emerges from his spacecraft.  "I wanted Helen to be the audience's way into the movie," Derrickson explains.  "She really struggles with some of the ethical choices that she has to make in the course of the story.  As a scientist, she feels a responsibility to this situation that goes well beyond what a normal person might feel, because she has thought long and hard about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.  But I don't think she ever counted on making contact with an extraterrestrial being that is as sentient and communicative as Klaatu."
When United States secretary of defense Regina Jackson overrides scientific protocol and declares Klaatu to be the classified property of the U.S. government, and orders that he is to be sequestered, sedated and interrogated at a maximum security military installation, Helen faces a crisis of conscience. But her sympathies for Klaatu prove stronger than her fears about his true intentions.  "There is something about Helen's compassion and the hope in her heart that he is drawn to," Reeves says.  "Through her efforts to help Klaatu escape and show him that humans are capable of change, he learns a great deal about the species that he came to Earth to judge."
"To me, the character of Helen in this film feels quite different from the character played by Patricia Neal in the original," Jennifer Connelly says.  "She has a vocation that involves her more directly with Klaatu, and she plays a more crucial role in the story and in his experience of humanity."
The filmmakers had no doubt that the Oscar-winning actress would bring her unparalleled dramatic veracity to her role.  "We needed an actress who radiates the kind of intelligence and compassion that is essential to the character of Helen, and Jennifer was perfect in this regard," says Stoff.
  "Jennifer is fundamentally incapable of playing a false moment," Derrickson says.  "She just can't do it.  She is hardwired as an actress to be truthful, and that is why I wanted her in this movie."
Connelly's colleagues use the same terms to describe her and her work ethic as they do Reeves' - thoughtful, disciplined, hard-working and collaborative.  "The heart and soul and spirit she shares with us as Helen Benson - you'd have to be dead not to be moved by her," says Reeves.  He then adds with a laugh, "Klaatu doesn't stand a chance."
As Helen attempts to cope with the massive global catastrophe that is set in motion by Klaatu, the alien witnesses a much more intimate familial drama being played out between the scientist and her rebellious eleven year old stepson Jacob.  The death of Helen's husband - Jacob's father - has left them both bereft, adrift and consumed by grief.  Each serves as a painful reminder to the other of the man they lost, and Helen's attempts to comfort the angry young boy only seem to push him farther away. 
Their strained mother-son dynamic serves as a microcosm for the larger crisis that is unfolding around them.  "The turbulence in their relationship has come to a crisis point.  Something has to shift," Connelly says.
Klaatu serves as an unlikely catalyst for Helen and Jacob to heal the seemingly irreparable rift between them.  "The relationship between Klaatu and Helen's son Bobby in the original was arguably the heart of that film and was the single-most influential factor on the way Klaatu saw our world," says Derrickson.  "We wanted to preserve that aspect of the story, and yet update the dynamics between Klaatu, Helen and Jacob in way that reflects the complexities of contemporary relationships."
In the 2008 version of the story, Jacob wants nothing to do with his mother's strange new acquaintance.  Unaware that Klaatu is an alien being, Jacob is suspicious of and threatened by a man he sees as Helen's potential replacement for his dad.  "Jacob is not always a nice character," says Jaden Smith.  "He doesn't understand a lot of his feelings, or what this guy is doing hanging around his mom.  Jacob is kind of the opposite of me, which is why it was so hard to play him."
"One of the great things about updating this story was that it opened up the casting possibilities for Jacob," Stoff says.  "We weren't bound to any particular ethnicity.  We felt that Jaden, in addition to being really talented, is very much a child of 2008 - in the same way that Billy Gray as Bobby was the epitome of a contemporary 1950s kid."
According to Derrickson, "Jaden has great acting instincts.  Unlike most child actors, he has an ability to lose himself in a scene and do things that are unexpected. He makes choices that go beyond what the lines indicate or the direction he's been given, and he can surprise you with real truthfulness in a moment.  He just kind of feels it.  So he brings a lot of creativity to the process."
Smith proved his mettle to Reeves as they worked with Derrickson to build a tenuous bond between boy and alien as Jacob slowly lets his guard down and Klaatu finds himself moved by the child's innocence and pain.  "He had some hard scenes with some painful emotional places to get to, and he really rose to the challenge," Reeves says.  (The young actor and karate enthusiast first met Reeves while hanging out with his mother, actress Jada Pinkett Smith on the set of the 'Matrix' sequels.)
When Klaatu reveals his true nature through an otherworldly show of force against a state trooper, he doesn't scare Jacob nearly as much as the thought of being left alone - and since his father died, he has become convinced that it's only a matter of time before Helen "leaves" him too.  Meanwhile, Helen sees so much of Jacob's father in the boy, it's almost too much for her to bear. 
"Scott and Jaden and I spent a lot of time talking about the conflict between Helen and Jacob," Connelly points out.  "How are they not taking responsibility?  How do they work it out?  How do they make that transition?  It was a difficult balance to hit, but Jaden is so interesting and talented, he created a character that you want to root for.  And I think their relationship really grounds the film."  READ MORE

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
SCOTT DERRICKSON (Director) is the critically acclaimed director of the hit horror film "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," which he also co-wrote with his long-time writing partner Paul Harris Boardman.  Two other feature films written by the duo, "Devil's Knot" and "Paradise Lost," are currently in development with Derrickson attached to direct.
Derrickson and Boardman have also penned screenplays for "Hellraiser: Inferno," which Derrickson went on to direct; "Urban Legends: Final Cut," "Kingdom Come" for Sony Screen Gems; an untitled thriller for Universal Pictures, with Scott attached to direct; and a reworking of the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" for Universal.
Previously, Derrickson worked with Wim Wenders on creating the story for the German director's film "The Land of Plenty."
Derrickson's other screenwriting credits (with Boardman) include "Mindbender," "The Mystic," and the adaptation of the novel "Beware the Night" for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
Derrickson graduated from Biola University in 1990 with a degree in Humanities, a second degree in Communications, and a minor in theological studies.   In 1996, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a Masters Degree in Film Production.

DAVID SCARPA (Screenwriter) penned the screenplay for director Rod Lurie's prison drama "The Last Castle," starring Robert Redford, James Gandolfini and Mark Ruffalo.


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