This would have been up earlier, but there was a whole big computer issue with James sending his sound files from Comic-Con, and then he got grumpy and there was shouting and swearing and someone had to take a time out. Anyway, during the panel discussion for The Day The Earth Stood Still, director Scott Derrickson was asked about how he was going to handle Gort, the giant robot who accompanies the alien Klaatu to Earth and acts as his protector.
The moderator suggested that there had been rumours that Gort wouldn't feature in the remake, but given that he was such a key element of the 1951 film it hadn't even occurred to us that he might not make the new cut. Plus, he's on one of the posters. Derrickson confirmed that, yes, he will be back and that we can expect the look to be very similar to the original incarnation.
"It wouldn’t be The Day The Earth Stood Still without Gort," said Derrickson. "We went through processes early on, before we started shooting, of exploring how you update Gort for a modern audience. We went through various versions of different artwork, how big should he be? Should he be human? Should he not be human? Literally, hundreds of images of possibilities. We ended up coming back to something that’s not far from the original, because I began to see that there’s a simple brilliance in how the human form is chosen by this alien entity for this instrument of enforcement that is Gort. We’re still working on him. WETA is the company that is doing all the visual effects on this movie. They’re amazing guys and obviously very creative, but we’re still in the process of trying to get the details down. But at the moment it’s looking pretty impressive."
That Derickson's chosen to stay close to the Gort of old speaks well for the movie. Gort is an icon of sci-fi cinema, so to mess with him just for the sake of change would be both needless and daft. With Comic-Con footage for this film looking very promising (read James' reaction here) we're very keen to see how this one turns out.