Last week I had the pleasure of a couple of days off work before the weekend and planned a massive three day event of being a total nerd!
Obviously I am a nerd 24/7, but for these three days I was going to revel in it! I gathered up some classics in the Sci-fi movie genre that I hadn’t seen before to watch for the Thursday and Friday, with Saturday being given over to a long session of Dungeons and Dragons.
So, to the first of these classics of the sci-fi movie genre.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
It’s been a massive oversight for me not to have watched this film before! It’s absolutely incredible!
Obviously I’m talking about the orginal Robert Wise version, not the recent re-make with Keanu Reeves in it.
So the first thing I notice is hey, that spaceship actually looks pretty ok as it flies in! It’s not wobbling or anything! It’s in black and white, I don’t know if that helps, but it’s looked pretty realistic on film I thought, which impressed me as I’d expected something on string wobbling its way across the screen. That’ll teach me not to make assumptions.
The first thing I’m realising about this story, is the human reaction to this alien visitor. As newsreaders urge the public not to panic, stating that the government has said there’s no cause for alarm, the same government has amassed a serious little armed force up around the spaceship! Do they mean there’s no cause to panic as they’re going to blow up anything that comes out of the ship? I especially enjoyed the tanks as they were deployed from their base, they come screaming out onto the road and actually skid as they turn! It looks awesome, and ‘tanks doing skids’ is now on my list of Awesome things in movies’, like spaceships and people throwing themselves across a corridor while firing two guns.
However, I’m a tad disturbed that there’s such an overt military response to this ship’s landing. It’s not very friendly is it? We’ve got no indication that this ship is hostile, though if it was coming to invade, isn’t it more likely there’d be hundreds and they’d be blasting the crap out of us instead of landing on a baseball field?
So the ship opens up. I was watching this with my friend Nick, who pointed out that this alien race clearly prefer complex, slow and elaborate door openings! We enjoyed the idea he’d come to Earth to discover the secret of our quick and easy door openings and needed to go to B&Q for some hinges and a handle!
Then they shot him! The alien, not Nick. He produced some kind of egg whisk and he was shot! Obviously the military is in the pocket of
It’s ok, it wasn’t a fatal shot. And a large robot has now appeared from the ship! (That’s another tick on the list of ‘Awesome things in Movies’ along with the Spaceship and the Skidding Tanks)
So the robot reveals his eys, (He’s a prototype Cylon!) and then shoots out a laser and disarms all the soldiers. I particularly liked that he would shoot 3 guns in turn, but the later ones would heat up quicker so that they could all be dropped in unison.
The alien, Klaatu, reveals that his egg whisk was in fact a gift for the president so he could communicate with other worlds, but now it’s broken. Whoops! Given the initial attempt at contact with an alien, it’s probably best for these other worlds...
So they take Klaatu to hospital. They’re assuming that earth doctors will be able to quickly work out an alien anatomy? Not sure, at this point they haven’t worked out smoking is bad for them! I do enjoy older movies where everyone’s always smoking. Not like nowadays where only evil characters light up. Anyway, he’s taken to hospital where apparently he’s similar enough they can treat him. Then it’s revealed he’s in his 70’s but due to advanced healthcare appears 30 and his bullet wound is almost healed already.
Then Klaatu is approached by the government. He explains that he needs to address all the world leaders. However this is impossible, they could never agree on a neutral venue and he’s treated to a demonstration of how humanity would much rather argue and fight than listen to the message of an alien visitor. I’m getting a little depressed here as I’m cynical enough to believe this is pretty much the reaction a peacful alien would recieve here. I.e. he get’s shot and no one listens to him.
Fortunately, Klaatu is a little more determined. He escapes from the hospital and goes on the run. He finds a guest house of some sort and rents a room. I note that no references or deposit are required. Ah, simpler times!
So now Klaatu is hanging out with some humans, trying to learn about humanity more direcltly. Another resident of the house wants to go out for the day with her new boyfriend but has no-one to look after her young son. No problem, the stranger who arrived last night and speaks slightly strangely will take him out for the day! Really, simpler times!
So on his day out, Klaatu hears about war, Abraham Lincoln and the smartest man on the planet, a local professor. He visits the professor, to find he’s out, so helpfully solves a complex equation for him. Shortly some government agents come to the guest house and take Klaatu back to the professor.
Professors got some serious influence then?
Klaatu’s new plan is to tell as many scientists as he can the message intended for world leaders. They decide a demonstration is needed too, so Klaatu promises to arrange one.
He visits his ship and signals to Gort, the large robot. Gort attacks some guards and Klaatu can get in his ship. But oh no, the little kid has followed him and witnessed everything!
The next day Klaatu visits the childs mother to find out what the kid says. Then in a bizarre display, he get’s in a lift with her and is amazed when it stops. He asks what time it is and then announces they’re stuck there. Well, this is because he’d arranged for the whole worlds electricity to cease at this time. So he’s capable of that immense feat, but didn’t realise it was nearly half twelve when he got in the lift? Ah well.
It is a pretty awesome sequence with the worlds power out, even the shots of other countries and the dodgy cockney accent. But the whole world bought to a standstill. Quite amazing.
Eventually the power comes back on and Klaatu has now convinced his companion that he’s a good alien. But the military have decided that taking Klaatu alive is a luxury they can no longer afford.
Klaatu is chased, and eventually gunned down. This leaves his female companion to run off to Gort to deliver a message to him that Klaatu had told her previously. Gort has now started wiping out soldiers with his laser eye beams (that’s another tick on the list) but stops when he hears ‘Klaatu Barada Nikto’. Cut to a local jail, where one of the military guys is on the phone, telling someone that Klaatu is definitley dead, so they’ve locked him in a cell. That’s pretty harsh, if he’s dead. Fortunate though, as Gort can smash the wall of the cell and retrieve the body. Returning to the ship, Gort places Klaatu in a machine I like to call the ‘Resurrectotron’ and brings him back to life.
Now a little bit pissed off, Klaatu addresses the scientists and warns them that Earth is too violent. That’s fine when restricted to Earth, but attempts to get into space are worrying the other races. He explains that the spacefaring races of the galazy have created a race of machines like Gort to police all cultures, destroying those who try to commit violence against others. The robots are answerable to no-one but their programming now and if Earth get’s into space, we must renounce our violent ways or Gort’s people will kick our asses.
Wait, so everyone’s living in fear of these killer robots if they don’t behave? The enlightened alien culture lives under a self imposed tyranny?
Maybe we’re reading too much into that description.
So those were the key points of a movie, that frankly, blew me away. I loved it. The overall message is probably more relevant today as it tells us as a people we should be united, not blowing ourselves up. Obviously there are some parts that show what a different time it was, like easily trusting a strange man with your young son, but things like that are part of the amusing charm of older films. I have a certain curiosity about the re-make, but I’d be surprised if it was a patch on this.
Following this, I watched
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