Image: WETA / © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
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Klaatu is back and badder than before, with Gort the robot four times the size of the original and a new message for humans to shape up and save the environment…or else.
The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still closely parallels Robert Wise's 1951 science fiction film classic that was a Cold War warning shrouded in a Christ allegory. In the original screenplay by Edmund H. North, an alien ambassador named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) arrives in Washington, D.C., in his saucer-shaped spaceship (à la UFO convention of the time) with an eight-foot (2.4-meter) humanoid robot named Gort (played by the 7-foot, 7-inch Lock Martin, who was working as a doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood when discovered). Trigger-happy soldiers shoot Klaatu and whisk him away to a government facility from which he subsequently escapes and disappears into the city, blending in with common Earthlings and eventually taking up residence in the home of single mom Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) under the assumed name, Mr. Carpenter, (to reinforce the allegory lest anyone missed the biblical overtones).
Klaatu fails to gain access to the United Nations, where he had hoped to deliver a message of peace and to warn the Earthlings of their impending threat to neighboring planetary civilizations now that the deadly combination of nuclear weapons and spaceflight had been achieved. But he meets with Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), an Einsteinesque figure working on an exceedingly difficult physics problem that Klaatu helps him solve (like Jesus lecturing the rabbis in the temple). Impressed but still skeptical, the doubting Thomas professor demands proof of his interlocutor's divine power, which Klaatu delivers henceforth by causing civilization to stand still for an hour through the cessation of all electrical transmissions (except those where lives would be lost). As Barnhardt scrambles to assemble the world's greatest minds for a meeting with Klaatu, military goons once again show the darker side of humanity by gunning down Klaatu in cold blood, which he, like Jesus, had prophesized to his followers. As he lay dying in the arms of Patricia Neal's Mary Magdalene figure, he reminds her to deliver a vital message to Gort that has come down to us as one of the most famous lines in sci-fi history: "Klaatu Barada Nikto." Loosely translated: "Klaatu says don't destroy Earth just yet…and come get me and bring me back to life, because these idiot humans shot me again."
Gort gets the message and goes to the government building to empty the tomb and haul the corpse back to the spaceship, where he resurrects Klaatu. The astonished Mary Magdalene exclaims, in reference to the seemingly omnipotent Gort, "You mean, he has the power of life and death?" The original screenplay called for an affirmative answer to this ultimate "how-far-can-science-go?" question, but the Breen Censorship Board (a self-policing committee of the film industry) nixed the line, insisting, "Only God can do that." In its stead, Klaatu answers, with ecumenical sensitivity: "No, that power is reservedfor the almighty spirit." (In the Boris Karloff version of Frankenstein—Mary Shelley's classic in which scientists are punished for pushing the envelope of technology—when the monster first comes alive, Dr. Frankenstein exclaims: "Now I know what it feels like to be God." The voice track was dropped and the background music elevated. I am told that the vocal track is restored in the remastered DVD of the film.) Born again, Klaatu emerges from the ship to deliver his stern warning to the authorities in this thinly veiled defense of the recently formed U.N.:
"The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression from any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. … The test of any higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. …
At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. ... I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration."
Having delivered his message of threatened destruction and potential redemption, Klaatu's Jesus ascends (via his saucer) to the heavens.
The remake adds and subtracts from the original, and nearly always does so in constructive ways. Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly replay the main characters perfectly, but director Scott Derrickson and screenplay writer David Scarpa elevated Helen to an astrobiologist and made her the scientific link to Klaatu. Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese of Monty Python fame who nonetheless sells the character as serious) is working on his theory of "biological altruism" (read: evolutionary ethics), added as an element in the story to convince Klaatu that humans deserve a second chance to express our altruistic nature (reinforced by Bach playing on Barnhardt's stereo. "It's beautiful," Klaatu says in his transformation from destroyer to redeemer of worlds).
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14 Comments
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last sentence of this article is the phrase: "Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today—in the age of science—science fiction is our mythology."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe term 'religious myths' perhaps needs clarification. I would suggest that there are no 'religious myths'. All mythologies were once active religions. These religions became mythologies to our perspective once they ceased to be living beliefs. To take an obvious example, when Zeus was no longer actively worshipped as an existing god, then he passed into mythology. First comes the religion, then when it ceases to be an active belief, it passes into myth. So the phrase 'religious myths' telescopes two individual terms which are in reality separated by time and human circumstances.
From our perspective, the religions which exist today are 'true', and what was believed in the distant past is consigned to 'mythology'. But this is as illusory as any past empire imagining that it could cheat eternity. The beliefs of today are the mythologies of the future, as any historical perspective demonstrates, no matter how fervently 'eternal' they might be considered by their adherents.
And, no, science fiction is not necessarily our 'mythology' for the above reasons. But, as in 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' it does at times throw up an effective allegory.
As we all know, the truth is always stranger than the fiction....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1988., a "message was received from another dimension of
reality." It was, 4.6.32.15.31.27....
In 1993., the details were reviewed by senior researchers at
Princeton University, who forwarded an emphatic verification....
This is the story:
http://www.groundreport.com/Opinion/THE-NOSTRADAMUS-CODE-EXPLAINED
A rather different review from the Guardian:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2008/dec/12/the-day-the-earth-stood-still
"....4.6.32.15.31.27...."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd here I thought the Answer was,,, 42
I was very disappointed with the way the movie rapped-up, only two people got to hear why Klaatu came to destroy the earth. As far as the rest of the public are concerned the aliens came to destroy us for no reason by disabling our technologies. No lesson learnt, entirely pointless. Granted that we have Conservative leaders that would lock-up an inter-galactic emissary here to deliver a message in Gitmo, but where were the Liberal voices? Nobody stands up to say lets roll out the red carpet ? At some point you would think they would stop trying to kill him.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisP.S. was it me or did Gort look like he was at least 100ft tall?
In response to the articles assertion that a bipedal hominid is an unlikely product of independent evolution on another planet I challenge him or anyone else to come up with a more efficient design for an evolved intelligent being that is not humanoid.
Basic requirements for animals being:
(1) sensing the environment
(2) communicating
(3) location over various terrain (from vertical cliff to flat desert as with humanoids)
(4) object manipulation (from as small as a needle to as large as a refrigerator as with humanoids)
@abaniquo: The final form of our evolution is a product of the environment in which it was created, therefore is well suited to it. In other environments, a different outcome is just as likely. For example, suppose our gravity was twice Earth norm...it seems to me more likely that a multi-legged version of ourselves might've evolved to support our forms. Such a creature could still fit your criteria, and might be better at some of them than ourselves, but not be bipedal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, your inclusion of the idea of specific object manipulation is a post hoc fallacy. Just because we have need to manipulate objects in such manner doesn't mean another species might. Some sort of tentacle with small suckers might meet the same needs as hands with fingers.
I believe Mr. Schermer is using the word "myth" in the academic sense, not the popular one. In academia, for a story to be "myth" it does not need to be false. For example, the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus has achieved the status of myth in this country, even though it also happens to be true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for whether science fiction plays the role of myth, I think it can and does. George Lucas drew heavily from Joseph Campbell's study of myth in creating the Star Wars series.
Tentacles with suckers can replace hands and fingers but they are not effiecient in any appreciable gravity. Outside neutral buoyancy or zero gravity such a limb would expended several times more energy than that with some sort of skeletal system. Also suckers cannot manipulate anything as small as a needle accurately.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the gravity was twice Earth norm, instead of a multi-legged version of ourselves what you would find is stocky humanoids with restriction on height and stiffened limbs like those found on elephants and sauropods. Having six limbs instead of four would be too costly and inefficient sacrificing brain power that is needed for intelligence.
I have not seen the remake yet, but I think the movie should have been titled: AFTER THE DAY {the earth stood still]. This would make it a sequel with the requisite new characters updated for the present. This way the integrity and importance of the original film would have been maintained.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have not seen the remake yet, but I think the movie should have been titled: AFTER THE DAY {the earth stood still]. This would make it a sequel with the requisite new characters updated for the present. This way the integrity and importance of the original film would have been maintained.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAddendum to previous comment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKlatu's last words were that the other members of the universe did not care how the people of earth handled their affairs. This seems to make the remake a contradiction.
Newyorknew2: Where do you get your drugs??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA note to the Publisher:
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Pedophiles In Love With Single Moms. Can It Be?
Pedophiles are learning to love single moms. Why? because thousands of single moms are inadvertently creating happy hunting grounds for that subspecies of pedophiles who like their prey young – really young.
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Well, the single moms who put photos of their pre-school kids on their social networking homepages are certainly attracting at least one type of child-loving guy – pedophiles”
Here’s an excerpt from a report in the journal American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association, regarding pedophiles stalking pre-schoolers on the internet:
“Finding prepubescent victims directly (on the Internet) is quite rare; such offenders use the Internet in other ways. Pedophiles typically get access to preschool victims through online contact with parents”
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Who assaults children under 6 years old:
Trusted family members: 48.6%
Strangers: 3.1%
Trusted family acquaintances: 48.3%
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Jacquez asks you to please forward this article to single moms you know who have their kid’s photos online..
Contact:
crystal Jacquez, managing editor
Guys That Lie.com
415 678-8610
crystal01@guysthatlie.com
http://www.guysthatlie.com