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Here's a surprise. This article is not about the original version of this movie. It's about the remake.
Generally speaking I am not fond of remakes, and this remake didn't open to much support. A lot of people were annoyed at the remake, especially people who thought of the original as a classic. I was one of those people.
When it arrived in movie theaters, it got bad reviews, was hissed at by fans of the classic, and got even more disdain from people who hated Keanu Reeves and said that he was an awful actor. I will acknowledge that he has no creative range, but frankly he never did and people liked a lot of movies before anyway. After many hit movies, people seem to have gotten tired of him.
The thing that occurred to me when I finally bothered to watch this movie is that it wasn't really a remake at all.
The original told the story of an alien who comes to Earth to warn us that our warlike ways will not be tolerated. He is shot at and wounded, and he proceeds to turn off our electricity for awhile to help us to understand how completely beyond us his technology was.
In the remake, an alien comes to Earth to contact us. He similarly tries to arrange a meeting between himself and the world powers, but this time the emissary of the United States refuses even to let him out of their custody to arrange a meeting.
His purpose in coming wasn't to stop us from having wars, it was to insist that we stop destroying the planet.
That's a perfectly valid statement for him to make, because we are in fact destroying the planet. If we continue at this pace we will all become extinct. People who deny that aren't reading the science. Based on every serious study I've read, we've moved beyond the point where avoiding significant casualties in the coming decades is avoidable. Pretty much ever serious bit of data I've read on the subject indicates that we have to shape up just to avoid extinction. Even if we begin adapting very soon, it's too late to avoid massive consequences.
Having been frustrated in his attempt to reason with the world powers, he then calls in more ships and proceeds to take samples of all living species, and then begins to set about the destruction of the human race. He explains his logic very simply. "If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth lives." The Earth is one of the few planets in the universe capable of sustaining life, and his race isn't willing to watch it be destroyed, so they would prefer to just get rid of the human race.
That simply isn't the same movie as the original. It isn't even close. Honestly, I actually kind of liked this movie. I don't necessarily think its better than the original, but I'm not sure that's relevant. They are not similar.
I spent a lot of my own time trashing this production before it came out. After I watched it, I wonder if maybe part of the reason people hated it so much is that it brought up the elephant in the room, which is that we are basically murdering our children. People really hate it when you bring that up, and they find all kinds of ways to attack anybody who dares to speak of it.
I've thought this many times, and occasionally I've brought it up with a few other movie buffs online. In those dark corners of the internet, they agreed with me. They said that daring to bring up our coming extinction was the third rail of our times. Any producer who dares to bring it up too overtly is punished. Increasingly, even people who never tried to understand the science are beginning to sense it.
I actually don't expect a good reaction here either. My intent isn't to spoil anyone's morning, but I think its something that I must bring up.
In movie land, we are presented with the same story, over and over again. Something terrible emerges from the shadows and attacks. Massive weapons of war are produced and the hero slays the dragon, and everyone returns to their life. It could be terrorists, or Godzilla, or aliens from space, but again and again we tell that story to ourselves because its the way we want our dangers. We can overcome it all with lots of running, shooting, and yelling. Once the villain is dead, we can go back to our lifestyle and live with all the luxuries we want.
I think that this story which Hollywood tells us is one of the reasons why we can't deal with the reality, which is that our species is dying, and our weapons won't help us at all. We can stop at any time, but we never want to. Almost every Hollywood blockbuster made recently tells a story which tries to convince us that we need never change. I don't think it's a coincidence.
It's not that they are consciously trying to produce propaganda. It's an automatic thing really. The more people sense the coming dark age, the less they wish to think, so our entertainment becomes less intelligent every year.
I hope that my ruminations are not too dark for those who read it, but I felt that maybe just this once it needed to be said. I don't mean bringing up the science. People ignore that all the time. I mean the reality, which is that we simply don't care enough to do anything.
Incidentally, I don't believe things are hopeless. This is a solvable problem. My own sense of horror comes from the realization that we are not prepared to do what we must. We are producing more oil now then we did years ago. We are building more airports. We have enough oil stored now to get us beyond 4 degrees of warming, even if we don't start any more oil extraction platforms.
In the movies, they listen to the scientists. They might ignore one voice, but nobody would ignore it when hundreds of them say the same thing. it never occurred to me that we would have the capacity to ignore them to the extent that we have. Reality is truly stranger than fiction.