Here’s an unpleasant thought – what if they decide the original was too subtle?
Dude! If you do not totally get rid of your nuke ler bombs, This Gort Dude, Evil Robot from the future will so totally kick your ass!
Alas, I fear that’s a given.
Wait…
I thought Klaatu was a guy who, in the future, starts a band called the “Wild Stallions” that ends up bringing on a new age of peace and understanding…
Why does he need Gort? To force us to buy his records?
Maybe they could go back to the original ending where
Gort is the Master
But I’m not holding my breath.
I’m guessing Gort will end up looking like a Terminator exo-skeleton sort of thing.
Which * would * be a bit scarier than the Gort in the original.
The original movie is somewhat perplexing in that there’s a huge crowd around the spaceship when Gort appears for the first time. The crowd, which has already cheerfully accepted a gigantic spaceship and a silver-clad alien, completely loses its shit when Gort, an 8 foot high, featureless robot, appears. They panic and run away.
Yeah, Gort is big but he’s not particularly menacing (until he starts doing that freaky tank disappearing thing). So there’s a bit of a disconnect in that scene.
You reckon they’re remaking it because they thought it was too obvious, and Keanu Reeves is the perfect actor to craft the multilayered performance the topic deserves?
My prediction: this time, the Earth will be standing still to watch several minutes’ worth of explosions.
In the original story’s illustrations (from back when it first appeared in the magazine), Gort looked like a big naked guy (except for a covering around his waist that hid any possible Robot Naughty Bits). The movie Gort was, I think, an improvement.
By the way, the craft Klaatu came in, in Bates’ Farewell to the Master, wasn’t a flying saucer, but ovoid. Do that today and people will be thinking of Mork from Ork, or something. A LOT of the early film spacecraft weren’t flying saucers in the original stories, but were changed to that in the early fifties because people had come to expect it. Read Campbell’s “Who Goes There?”, and the ship is described as looking like a submarine. But both versions of The Thing turned it into a saucer. The same for This Island Earth – it’s egg-shped in Raymond F. Jones’ story, but became the familiar saucer for the flick. Pop culture expectations and the movies fed each other in “shaping” flying saucers in the popular mind.
These days I expect the producers to “explore the potential” of the movie and change things. Like, Gort will be G/0r.t or something like that and will have several bodies that the intelligence program can be downloaded into. One of them, no doubt small and harmless looking, will be destroyed by the military and then the badass killbot body will be deployed.
Klaatu will seem more unusual and not be so comfortable with Earthly mannerisms, putting salt in coffee or the like, and the scientist he enlists for aid in spreading the message will be a disillusioned secluded genius who at first doesn’t even care that humanity could be destroyed but comes around to make his first public statement since his radical theories were appropriated by the U.S. government and used to create WMDs.
And the babe will fall for either the scientist or his son.
Another remake idea:
Alien society has already decided to destroy the Earth, and send an asteroid hurtling towards us.
Klaatu lands merely to pronounce the verdict. Ends up sticking around to try out the hot dogs.
Klaatu falls in love with Earth-babe.
Klaatu decides humans are worth saving after all, and with Gort’s help, tries to blow the asteroid up/deflect it, and does so with a mere 5 seconds to spare (and ends up sacrificing himself in the process).
Maybe they’ll go back to Bates’ original name for the robot: Gnut.
I can see Reeves convincingly saying the word Gnut.
Sir Rhosis
Sounds like an improved version of Teenagers from Outer Space
Scrub Gort! Scrub!
Keanu Reeves was in Mommie Dearest?!
The problem with casting Keanu Reeves has its roots in the past. Michael Rennie was cast as Klatuu because the producers wanted an actor who was unfamiliar to movie-goers, so that he would be more readily accepted as a man from space. Spencer Tracy was considered for the part but ultimately rejected. It was felt that Tracy walking out of the saucer would not be as mysterious to audiences as the more unknown and slightly odd-looking Rennie.
As evidenced by this thread, even though Reeves has made many films since his “Bill and Ted” days, it’s hard not to imagine him saying, “Dude, this Earth of yours will so be reduced to a burned-out cinder and whoa, that will be knarly.”
The trailer is out.
This is the kind of role where he’s not supposed to.
Trailer looks good. But I’ve long been convinced that the people who cut the trailers are the most talented people in Hollywood.
Looks like they’re going with the ovoid, then. Looks cool.
I also read that Gort has been replaced by some kind of a totem.
…and actually should not be remade!
sigh