Robert Wise’s 1951 sci-ficlassic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” represented a straightforward story portraying complex and thoroughly developed ideas, but the remake directed by Scott Derrickson is a puffed up tale that concentrates on extraterrestrial creatures rather than on the relationship between them and humans, whose nature is depicted in quite a distorted manner.

The new movie unavoidably brings up to date the nuclear caution of the original production and transforms it into a warning with regard to our greedy way of dealing with Earth. Keanu Reeves’ Klaatu makes an entrance by announcing that he speaks in the name of a group of societies that are planet-friendly and that want humans to change their attitude toward the environment.

When Klaatu notices the fact that no one cares about his alien-ish speech, he decides to turn to a second plan that involves eradicating the infection itself without striving to draw people’s attention.

However, he swiftly realizes that things are far from being as dark as he had previously thought, since spending a couple of hours with Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith) helps him understand that the human race is not that bad.

“There’s another side to you. I feel it now,” Klaatu says in an attempt to illuminate us regarding the sentiments of an outsider, who apparently is capable of having feelings.

One can easily sense some inaccuracies in these particular fragments of the plot, because we are initially told that aliens have been making trips to Earth for ages and that they have had spies living among humans. Nevertheless, they seem to know nothing about us and are impressed when they observe the connections between a mother and her child, as well as the intensity of their feelings. They should have done more research if you ask me, or at least eliminate the amazement from the storyline.

Helen Benson is a well-known astrobiologist at Princeton University who is recruited by authorities to study Klaatu’s conduct, whom her eight-year-old stepson dislikes at first, believing that he might turn out to be just another stepdad.

The lack of forethought of Klaatu and other extraterrestrial creatures is perhaps highlighted in order to make room for the visual-effects the film depends on in order to reveal destruction and dismay as civilization’s only weapon.

John Cleese makes a cameo as Professor Barnhardt, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in the evolutionary basis of altruism (yes, you have not misread).

Keanu Reeves’ version of Klaatu is nothing like the original. While it lacks the odd humanity in the initial character, it serves as a judge of human kind, as well as an unpaid executioner whose main guiding principle is duty itself.