Further to the thought here the other day, where it was contemplated that our ancient intergalactic brothers may come to our rescue in our growing War On Nature (she started it, she's been dumping searing lava and "gee, what do you think that is?" tidal waves on us from the moment we came down from the trees), yet another pro-Nature, anti-human propaganda movie has arrived. This time, it appears, Nature is teaming up with The Alien Threat to give us some payback.
Nature is big, very scary, and will stomp our faces back to the caves unless we submit to it. Well, that's what I got from the trailer of the re-make for The Day The Earth Stood Still.
But Nature is weak, and ripe for conquering, so weak in fact, it now needs Keanu Reeves to come to it's rescue. Earth needs aliens to deal with us.
And just as we're getting close to making some long overdue improvements to the last few wilderness areas on the planet.
In the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, earth is invaded because humans were starting to workshop the idea, "We should really get some of these nukes into space, don't you think?"
The aliens came to earth because some kind of intergalactic Security Council decided that while we confined our violence to our own planet, then whatever, let the standing monkeys brutalise each other however they like, but when we wanted to strap a nuke to a rocket headed for high orbit and beyond, well, they weren't going to put up with that. Bring on the unstoppable killer robot until we all calmed the fuck down.
This time, Nature is under threat and needs an intergalactic personal security guard, with muscle. The invasion and destruction begins because We need to be dealt with.
It will continue a prominent theme in Wall-E : that the Earth is better off without us. Sort of like Iraq is better off without Saddam.
Nature is, of course, the ultimate enemy. It always has been. Every origin myth of history features Wrathful Nature in the leading role. Floods wipe out humanity, locust plagues destroy food supplies, mountains explode and rivers boil. Nature is the perfect enemy for movies. Particularly now they can CGI water so big stormy waves really do look scary.
The Eco-Horror movie is not a new genre, but it's shaping up as a popular one in the next few years, at least for film-makers. Whether audiences have already seen enough scenes of famous city-and-landmark destruction will determine how many similarly themed movies can be wrung from the Single line pitch : Earth Has Had Enough, And Now It's Fighting Back.
And as for, "If the earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives."
I think they stole that from George Carlin.
UPDATE : The director of the TDTESS remake rejects the description 'Eco-Horror' :
I think that this film in some ways is an attempt to address a number of issues that are amongst the most pressing issues for the human race. The original, being a Cold War film, was addressing what was clearly the greatest threat for the human race at that time, mutual nuclear destruction, and that’s not the most pressing threat that we face now. It’s also man vs. man. We are destroying each other as well. Our country’s at war right now. There is certainly the issue being addressed in the movie of our treatment of one another on the planet. I think it’s a movie about human nature as much as anything else and how human nature is acting itself out in the world right now.
