Top 250: #204

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

Overview: An alien comes to Earth with his pet robot? Can the Earth be saved? More importantly, can the Earth be saved without Keannu Reaves’ help? Well Klaatu Barada Nikto, dude.

I can’t remember exactly where I bought this movie. Over a period of two days I bought something like ten movies and four discs containing a total of sixteen episodes of “One Step Beyond”, a Twi-light Zone type of show for about 20 bucks. This movie was in there somewhere. I didn’t even remember that it was on the list.

The Movie:
Excuse me, someone forgot to turn on the colour. Hello, anyone?

A UFO is circling the Earth. I hope it isn’t going around backwards else time will reverse and they’ll be stuck in a loop...unless that is what is happening!

Look ma, a glowing frisbee! Come back everyone, it’s only six inches wide!

And, as usual, the police are sent to stand around, scratching their heads and wondering what to do.

Why are the guys in the tank pulling out handguns? Don’t they have a larger gun available? Perhaps the TANK!

Oh good. Someone comes out of the ship that is technologically advanced enough to travel across the galaxy. Let’s shoot him and make him and his people angry at us. That can’t backfire.

Unless a giant, angry robot shows up.

Which it does.

Cool, it’s actually Cyclops from the X-Men in a robot suit. And he’s melting tanks!

Okay, take the bleeding alien to the hospital. Make sure to film the doctor’s reactions for next season’s Candid Camera.

The alien looks 35, but is actually 78, and his people have a life expectancy of 150 or more. When asked how this could be, the doctor replies: “He told me their medicine was that much more advanced than ours,” as he lights a cigarette and hands a second one to his colleague. I wonder if that was on purpose, or if the past fifty years have simply made that scene fascinatingly ironic.

The officer is in an office labelled “Officer of the Day”. They’re letting contest winners run the army now?

“There’s nothing strange about Washington.” LIES!

I think I’d like to see the Lincoln Memorial someday. Of course, knowing my luck, it would be the day that all giant statues came to life and started stepping on people.

“Atomic Power - Not Just For Bombs.” This message brought to you by the Three Mile Island power plant, the world’s safest power source!

That can’t be the scientific super genius - he has no facial hair! No impressive moustache, no crazy beard, nothing. He does have the crazy hair on his head, though, so that’s at least something.

Level New York City or sink the Rock of Gibralter? Those are your ideas for getting the world’s attention? I say yes to the first and meh to the second.

Scientist: “Could you perform a demonstration that the world would notice? I don’t want you to harm anything.”
Klaatu: “Why don’t you leave it to me?”
Scientist: “Because your previous suggestions involved destroying a major city and sinking a small island!”

I have seen many movies where a mysterious force stops the power around the world, or even just around a certain city. Lights go out, trains stop moving, laundry machines shut off, cars stop in the middle of the road. Usually this is shown to be a rather peaceful and harmless demonstration of power. But they never deal with the fact that planes in the air don’t glide so well. They just kind of fall. There is never any talk about the planes around the world that have plummeted to the ground in a ball of fire.

Of course, this movie does mention that the hospitals and planes in flight were spared the power outage, but most movies don’t!

“If my giant robot starts to go on a killer rampage, I need you to go talk to him. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

“Hey look, it’s the woman who was with the alien. Get her!”
“Ah, don’t bother. She’s only a woman. It’s not worth the trouble.”
The fifties were a different time.

Wait, am I supposed to be cheering for the giant, angry robot to go on a bit of a destructive rampage? Even just a little one?

Cuz I am.

I guess that’s one way to pick up a woman. Ba-da-dum.

Last time we hurt the alien just a little, his big robot started melting tanks. Now we’ve killed him. I can’t see any problem with that.

Unless a giant, angry robot shows up.

Which it does.

From IMDB: “One of the reasons that Michael Rennie was cast as Klaatu was because he...would be more readily accepted as an "alien" than a more recognizable actor.” I think that’s the same reason they hired Keanu Reeves for the remake.

Conclusion: I enjoyed this movie. I recently saw the remake starring Keanu Reaves and after seeing both, I have to say that I liked both of them. They are very much each a product of their times. In the original, the alien is from Mars (never said, but implied by the distance he said he travelled) and is part of a vast interstellar group of planets. In the remake, Klaatu is from somewhere farther off than Mars and there are far less inhabited planets. In the original, the alien wants to stop aggression and nuclear power, two major concerns in the world at the time. In the remake, the alien wants to stop the ecological destruction of the planet because there are only a select few number of planets that can support life and the galaxy can’t afford to lose one.
The original movie was much better than many of the sci-fi movies of the time. The makers obviously believed in their message and wanted to present it well. I enjoyed seeing how life was different back in the fifties - the way everyone is shown reacting to the space ship is much different than how it would be handled today. There seemed to be more of a wonder about people, even as they were suspicious and scared of the unknown. These days it seems like all we have is the suspicion and fear of the unknown.
A word about the remake: I don’t know how the majority of people have reacted to the Reevs version, but I have to say that I enjoyed it, and what’s more, I think it is one of the more faithful adaptations/remakes I have seen in a long while. It gets the essence of the original, the societal and cultural feel. The movie focussed on the worry of the day, the major topic that was on everyone’s mind. The new one does the same, building from that to the logical conclusion. They both do a good job of showing the period in which they were filmed.
Plus, it is funny to imagine Bill and Ted saying “Klaatu Barata Nikto, dude!”