First of all, The Day the Earth Stood Still.  The Earth must have because nobody went to this piece of poo. I've seen some empty theaters in my life but usually because I was on stage. Why any producer would be desperate enough to remake this classic and then screw it up so badly is beyond me. Here's a hint about science-fiction: First you need some fiction and then, what's that other thing? Oh, right... science! This steaming lump had neither unless you can believe that an alien race had been watching the planet Earth for thousands of years and then landed as if they were the Griswolds showing up at Wally World without a clue of where they were or what was going on. 

They had a plan, of course. Their plan was to gather up all the animals whose names began with the letter "S" and then blow the shit out of everything else. Some plan. So they rounded up some snakes, squids, scorpions and skeeters, then turned some nanogoo loose to destroy stadiums and semitrailers (maybe because they started with "S" but didn't look breedable.) 

Oh, another suggestion: The ending. Have one. In this stinker, everybody just goes back to Zeta Reticuli or wherever they came from. They didn't say. They didn't even say goodbye. I walked out of the theater wondering what the hell any of what I had just seen meant. I later found out that it meant the producers lost their pants at the box-office. Justice was served.

Another ruined franchise was James Bond. Quantum of Solace lacked everything one goes to a James Bond movie to see. It certainly lacked John Cleese as Q because he was over at The Day the Earth Stood Still as a very confused-looking Professor Barnhart. Without gadgets and naked babes, James Bond has nothing to do but hurt himself which Daniel Craig actually did during the filming. Good. I'm sure his pain was no match for mine when my eyeballs started to bleed halfway through the movie.

So I decided to forearm myself before venturing out again to the popcorn repository. I actually read The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DeCamillo before even considering going to see how Disney would butcher it. You remember Disney? That's the studio that takes classics with actual plotlines and morals and turns them into animated family fare featuring "The Disney Girl." She's always the same girl: Belle, Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine, Ariel or whatever name they come up with. Same eyes, same expressions, same animator (around Disney he's probably called Glen Keane or maybe just "the girl guy." Keane... Keane... oh, yeah! His father is Bil Keane who does that sappy Family Circus strip about, well, little Glen.) Disney took Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and gave it the Disney "They all lived happily ever after" ending even though Andersen's little mermaid goes nuts, attempts to murder the handsome prince after he dumps her for a babe with actual feet, then commits suicide. I can't imagine what they'll do with The Tale of Desperaux, a story about a little girl who is abused and beaten until her head is deformed then traded into slavery by her father for a handful of cigarettes and conned into a murder plot by a mental-case rat. That should make a wonderful movie once all those details are shitcanned and they all live happily ever after. I can't wait... to miss it. But if you see someone run into the theater lobby, buy a large bucket of popcorn with real butter, than duck back out the door without buying a ticket... that's me heading over to Blockbusters to rent a flick.