YMMV / The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

• Anvilicious: "Stop destroying your planet with primitive technology or we will stop all your technology after almost destroying your planet with our advanced technology. And that's only because Humans Are Special Bastards."
• Designated Hero: Klaatu. We're supposed to see him as The Hero even when he has come to destroy humanity. To be fair, he changes his mind at the end of the movie. His smug rebuttal to humans calling the world "[our] planet" also makes him sound like a sneering Imperialist.
• Designated Villain: Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson, one of only a couple of characters who display any common sense and intelligence at all in the film.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Klaatu agrees to spare the Earth and humanity, but only after he generates an EMP so powerful that it stops all technology on Earth (e.g. electricity, gas, coal, etc.). Given how technologically-dependent our whole society has become, it's guaranteed mankind will plunge into a very dark age. While the entire world population won't be eliminated, around half of it is doomed to die to starvation and conflict, as modern agriculture and trade is heavily dependent on technology.
• Fridge Logic: So, the aliens have had a spy with us since 1920, long enough to bond with us, but he doesn't bother telling alien!Keanu of our capacity to mourn our dead and to love our (step) children even though that's precisely the data that ultimately causes us to be spared.
  • Aliens come into planet, first choice, though they don't have any visible weapons of any kind is shoot shoot shoot!
• Fridge Horror: If you thought humanity would just go on and survive relatively unharmed by the events of the ending without any electricity and gas, think again, as this article explains. Many millions, if not billions, of people will die. People on the operating table would wake up in due time, find they're still opened, and die. Aircraft would spiral out of the sky, while people stuck at sea would die within weeks. Mass starvations and famines would occur without the technology to mass-produce food and send it across the globe, while preventable diseases and common moderate to serious injuries would mean certain death without modern medicine to save patients. Without any fuel or means to control them, Nuclear power plants, Traditional oil, gas and coal-fired power stations, and chemical plants would explode the world over, poisoning the landscape. Anyone caught in areas where the dead nanomachines litter the ground now risks being cut to ribbons by billions of what amount to miniature razor blades the moment the wind blows. The article goes on to posit what might happen if the surviving humans were to find a way to get around not having access to electricity; the day everything stood still would be incorporated into new religions, and across every continent, humans would grow to both fear and hate the ones who came from the sky and took everything from them. Provided humanity finds a way to recreate the Industrial Revolution and bring back steam power, electricity may eventually be regained through the use of turbines and Faraday cages; eventually, if some semblance of normality is gained, any future alien expeditions may find Earth to be far from a paradise, but with great swathes of its surface a poisoned, irradiated hellscape bristling with weapons of all kinds and a bloodied, but not disarmed dominant species waiting, potentially with the means to get the upper hand...
• Inferred Holocaust: Maybe. The period of time without electricity isn't specified. See its entry on the trope page.
• Nightmare Fuel: A scientist is trapped next to the Gort as metal locusts are eating him away.
  • Overlapping with serious Paranoia Fuel, the scene where the military leader is inside the tower they have built around Gort and as he's talking to his subordinates...Gort's single cyclops eye tracks him pacing back and forth. It is utterly chilling. The man himself actually stops, looks directly at Gort, and notices it's tracking his movements even though it has remained completely motionless the entire time. It's one of the most effective Nothing Is Scarier moments ever, oddly enough inside in a movie that's mostly a straightforward sci-fi film.
  • There's also Keanu's absolutely bone-chilling delivery of this Wham Line:
  Kathy Bates: Why are you interested in our planet?
  Klaatu: ...your planet?
• Questionable Casting: Brilliant scientist John Cleese saves the human race. No, really.
• The Scrappy: Jacob, for behaving like a Bratty Half-Pint towards Helen even when she's attempting to convince Klaatu of humanity's inherent goodness.
• Strawman Has a Point: Various characters from the government and military are depicted as being callous, paranoid, and inhumane when they immediately imprison the injured alien visitor and attempt to interrogate him about what he's doing on Earth. Even though the viewers are supposed to be disgusted with their behavior, there's one minor problem; Klaatu is indeed planning to destroy the entire human race, taking all of a day and a couple interviews to verify it as the right course. The "inhumane" government officials were completely correct to treat him as a threat.
• Tear Jerker: Jacob's futile request for Klaatu to bring back his father, and Jacob and Helen's reconciliation afterward. It's so tearjerkery it makes Klaatu decide not to destroy humanity.
  • Apparently, the thing that makes humanity worth sparing is our capacity for emotional schmaltz.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Keanu Reeves really puts effort into his performance and many agree that he captures Klaatu's inhuman nature perfectly. Reportedly he loved the original and wanted to treat it with as much seriousness and respect as possible. In fact the only reason the famous Klaatu Barada Nikto is said at all in the film (and even then it's barely noticeable) is because Reeves insisted on saying it; the filmmakers didn't want it said at all or even alluded to.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Humanity. We're supposed to appreciate we're heading down a road that would result in Gaia's Lament, and we need an appropriate wake-up call. However, when up against the disportionate madness of Klaatu, and his cognitive dissonance bordering on unwillingness, to accept Earth is indeed the planet humans call "home", do you sympathize with people for instead not building weapons and technology that can expel what is essentially a race of exoplanet ecoterrorists.

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