The Science Behind Keanu Reeve's Latest Movie

The latest movie featuring Keanu Reeves, as well as Will Smith's son, Jaden Smith, called “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” has been the most eco-friendly effort made by the people at 20th Century Fox studios. They even plan to send the movie in space from a dish antenna in Florida, towards Alpha Centauri, as the first full-length motion picture to be subjected to a treatment of this kind. But during a movie promotion event, Mr. Reeves was asked by California Institute of Technology students about his opinion on the science facts of his film.

“How could an alien being grow so fast without violating standard mass- and energy-conservation laws?” asked a student. “Who says I’m going to abide by your laws?” the actor replied with a hint of humor, adding that “I ate my Wheaties,” as The NY Times cites. Mostly, experts appreciate the movie as fairly correct in scientific facts. This is a result of the work of a scientific advisor, astrobiologist Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

 

“In the old days nobody did care about that,” stated Dr. Shostak. “One percent of the audience would notice that something was scientifically bonkers, but they’d already bought their ticket. But now there’s the Web and there’s blogs,” he explained. The title is actually a remake of a 1951 classic movie, which tells the story of a human-shaped alien who comes to warn us to stop destroying our planet and the other species, regardless of what we wish to do to ourselves. Besides the updated visual effects, the movie also features a series of environmental issues, both on the screen and behind.

 

"In re-imagining this picture, we had an opportunity to capture a real kind of angst that people are living with today, a very present concern that the way we are living may have disastrous consequences for the planet," shared Reeves, as quoted by Space. "I feel like this movie is responding to those anxieties. It's holding a mirror up to our relationship with nature and asking us to look at our impact on the planet, for the survival of our species and others." The studios also tried to use more recycled materials for making the picture, which they called their first “green” movie.