If first succeeds, try again

Sci-fi, horror films bring out remakes

"Klaatu barada nikto." Science-fiction buffs will recognize this as the phrase alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) teaches his earthling friend Helen (Patricia Neal) in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," meant to prevent the menacing robot Gort from breaking free and destroying the world.

Some of those fans may be standing in front of multiplexes this month, mouthing the very same words in an unlikely attempt to keep yet another seemingly unnecessary remake of a classic sci-fi film - the new reprise of Robert Wise's 1951 "Earth" starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly - from hitting theaters.

The odds are against them. In the past 10 years, there has been a veritable avalanche (or space invasion, if you will) of remakes of beloved science-fiction and horror films, including "Godzilla," "The War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine," "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and "Dawn of the Dead."

What is it, genre-wise, that makes these films ripe for revisiting? The original "Earth" film, for example, is about as perfect as popcorn movies come: beautifully made, engrossing, well-acted, with exciting effects. And no one is proposing a remake of "Casablanca" with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, or "Gone With the Wind" as envisioned by Michael Bay.

The answer has much to do with the central role of special effects in both science fiction and horror. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a classic for its time, but for many genre buffs, the effects of a nearly 60-year-old film are so decrepit as to be beneath contempt. By virtue of advances in effects alone, these films seem to cry out for remakes.

Filmmakers salivate just picturing what green-screens and computer effects could do for the relatively crude ray guns and spaceships of a film like "Earth." But their Pavlovian reflex - Whoa! Explosions! - sometimes causes the younger generation of filmmakers to undercut their allegiance to the classics they profess to worship by shooting remakes that entirely miss the point.

The original "Earth" is a pointed critique of Cold War politics. Its villains are the shoot-first, think-second US Army, whose plan for any tense situation involves tanks and pistols, and its (literally) alien perspective allows for a blunt appraisal of human political folly. "I'm not concerned," Klaatu tells a presidential adviser, "with the internal affairs of your planet."

Klaatu himself is an interplanetary Christ figure - it's no accident that the earthly name he takes is Carpenter - intent on bringing peace to Earth, and failing that, the sword. The suspicion he encounters - Is he a jewel thief? A Russian spy? - is emblematic of Cold War paranoia. Klaatu's closing remarks before departing the planet sum up a certain brand of the American liberal take on mutually assured destruction: "Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer."

While remarkable for the early 1950s, the film's special effects are crude by today's standards. Shots of the spaceship taking off look like the ascent of an Apple MacBook with a silver muffin atop its crest. Gort, the robot, may not look like he is made out of tinfoil, exactly, but his purported menace is limited by a certain awkwardness to his gait, as if there were a tiny, sweaty man anxious to burst out of his oversize body.

The 1998 American remake of "Godzilla" buries the politics beneath a snowdrift of awe-inspiring special effects. The Japanese original (not to be confused with the re-edited American version, which spliced in Raymond Burr as the token Westerner) was a polemic about the hidden effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Godzilla himself was a byproduct of the atomic bomb, borne from the sea to wreak further havoc on Japanese cities. The 1998 film, directed by Roland Emmerich, increases the destruction - New York's Madison Square Garden and Chrysler Building bite the dust - but jettisons the metaphoric import of this Godzilla. And even a strong suit can weaken over time; 10 years have made the film's once-groundbreaking FX look a bit threadbare.

In some cases, bigger can indeed be better. Steven Spielberg's 2005 remake "War of the Worlds" comes to mind as a sci-fi remake that improves on - or at least doesn't violate the memory of - a well-regarded original. But even Spielberg's wizardry sacrifices some of original director George Pal's whimsy. And the less said about the 2002 remake of Pal's "The Time Machine," the better.

The horror genre has undergone a similar amplification, with a younger generation of filmmakers accentuating the gore in classic fright films. Recent remakes of beloved horror films like "Halloween" and "Night of the Living Dead" are bigger and slicker than their ragtag predecessors. In remaking "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Dawn of the Dead," respectively, MTV-raised directors Zack Snyder and Marcus Nispel have added a gratuitous nastiness lacking in the original material. It is only the 2003 "Chainsaw," starring Jessica Biel, and not the 1974 original, that features a camera angle through the hole in a gunshot victim's head.

The horror films of the 1970s left the truly horrific to our imaginations; the contemporary versions make the horror all too explicit, with copious gunplay, severed limbs, and the like. Lost amid the offal are the originals' political nuance; Snyder seems not to have realized that the George A. Romero "Dawn" was more about rampant consumerism than rampant mutants.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still," version 2, does not mark the end of this remake trend, of course. More revamped versions of sci-fi and horror classics are on the way; Nispel has a reprise of "Friday the 13th" in the works, and new versions of "Forbidden Planet," "Poltergeist," and "The Birds" are in pre-production as well.

"The Birds" needs to be remade? Really? Everyone repeat after me: "Klaatu . . ."