The Day the Earth Stood Still

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/films/daytheearthstoodstill.php


Looking forward to this quite a bit.

I'm only really familiar with the 2009 version I saw in theaters once.

[stellar_coyote]

This movie is classic to my dad, though there's a lot of pretty bad movies he calls "classic" I will agree with him in this regard.
I always found it unintentionally funny that the two doctors find Klatuu's advanced age and health to be unbelievable while they light up cigarettes in a hospital.
Just the little things.

[FlynnTaggart]

When I saw this movie I was blown away by the special effects. I don't know if they could get away with more using black and white or what but they were fantastic. I was so used to corny monster movies with clearly fake puppets some of the effects with Gort and the ship just blew my mind.

[Mabus]

I like how the film takes its time to set up each plot point of the film. Klaatu gets shot due to paranoia, gets treated by the Army with paranoia so he goes Undercover Boss to understand this paranoia. Then he decides to take a (relative) safe way of demonstrating his people's power by selectively shutting down the power, which not only demonstrates they have power of an entire planet, they can also do it as they please, basically if the military threatens them, they can just turn off the military while leaving the civilians unharmed. The only reason this doesn't contradict what Klaatu says later, that the Gort bots will annihilate humanity if humanity decide to take the cold war into space, is because a) it's Gort that will destroy Earth and b) I imagine humanity will eventually reach the technological development where they will be able to neutralize this "selective blackout" technology, so with that out of the question, planetary annihilation is back on the table. The aliens are menacing, but they're not malicious. They're not a threat, unless we foolishly make a first strike. And considering that before Klaatu had a chance to explain himself he got shot by a trigger-happy soldier, there's no way the aliens won't think of us but a threat. In fact, the latter aspect gets forgotten by most reviewers who think that the aliens came on Earth to threaten us with their power. That we are somehow innocents and we got threatened for no good reason. The aliens have an entire Federation out there, they see us about to reach space travel while neck-deep in nuclear arms race, so they come to tell us that if we want to be on friendly terms with them, we keep our problems to ourselves and not involve them in our petty squabbles. And if we somewhat think that we can even remotely go toe to toe with them, for some stupid reason, they can stop us, but not by bombing us to oblivion which is something humans do, but rather by selectively deciding who lives and who dies, and if that doesn't work, well, why bother doing it again since you won't get it so we'll just bomb you Earth-style. I mean, apart from the blatant way of saying it (which I'll chalk it down to the aliens being terrible diplomats due to having lived their entire life not seeing a problem with the Gort bots nuking you if you misbehave), the message of the aliens is not that different that what any military superpower feels in relation to a small defenseless country.

By comparison, the 2008 film feels like a parody of the original film. Down to the One saving the human race from the flying Machine swarm, after witnessing some mother's true love for her child or something. Oh and the solution to humans destroying the environment is to fry all the world's electronics, which would not only kill a fuckload of people (hospitals, planes and such), but with the entire economy and civilization in the gutter, people are going to, guess what, exploit the environment even more to survive (with no more technology to extract, refine and transport oil, no matter how dirty of a power source it is, now you have to chop entire forests again for fuel and other uses) not to mention all the environmental projects are now dead, which would only make the degradation of Earth's environment even worse. Did PETA wrote that film?
Also if the aliens love doggos so much, and have already harvested the DNA from all the Earth's non-sapient lifeforms, why not just, I don't know, terraform Venus or Mars and move all that life there? If they can use their nanobots to turn Earth into a lifeless rock and turn it green again, surely they can do that to already dead planets, right?

[Percysowner]

By comparison, the 2008 film feels like a parody of the original film. Down to the One saving the human race from the flying Machine swarm, after witnessing some mother's true love for her child or something. Oh and the solution to humans destroying the environment is to fry all the world's electronics, which would not only kill a fuckload of people (hospitals, planes and such), but with the entire economy and civilization in the gutter, people are going to, guess what, exploit the environment even more to survive (with no more technology to extract, refine and transport oil, no matter how dirty of a power source it is, now you have to chop entire forests again for fuel and other uses) not to mention all the environmental projects are now dead, which would only make the degradation of Earth's environment even worse. Did PETA wrote that film?
Also if the aliens love doggos so much, and have already harvested the DNA from all the Earth's non-sapient lifeforms, why not just, I don't know, terraform Venus or Mars and move all that life there? If they can use their nanobots to turn Earth into a lifeless rock and turn it green again, surely they can do that to already dead planets, right?

Me: "There's a remake? It sounds...not good"

This is one of the classic films that I remember, not from childhood, my parent's weren't SciFi fans, but from late night showings and movie night on campus, which was big in the 70s when I was going to college. It's a great film with a great message. I'm glad Chuck decided to talk about it.

[CrypticMirror]

This movie is classic to my dad, though there's a lot of pretty bad movies he calls "classic" I will agree with him in this regard.
I always found it unintentionally funny that the two doctors find Klatuu's advanced age and health to be unbelievable while they light up cigarettes in a hospital.
Just the little things.

That scene had to be intentional, surely? It is so on the nose that it almost looks like a Mitchell and Webb sketch. We knew cigarettes and tobacco caused cancer and illnesses pretty well by the time this movie was made, even though the big tobacco firms were fighting against that knowledge, so the irony in that scene had to be deliberate and sly. It is the movie's entire message on humanity in a nutshell, all in that one little scene.

[FaxModem1]

"Aunt Bea has no tolerance for the pinkos." and "Clearly the safest thing to do is try to provoke him further." had me laughing with tears.

The humans in this movie really come off as paranoid idiots.

[RobbyB1982]

The humans in this movie really come off as paranoid idiots.

To be fair that's broadly the case in real life too.

[JL_Stinger]

Is it just me or does Michael Rennie look like a young and less sinister version of Christopher Lee?

I hope Chuck will be reviewing the remake of this movie with Keanu Reeves for a comparison (and a thorough mocking).

[Keyser94]

I like how the film takes its time to set up each plot point of the film. Klaatu gets shot due to paranoia, gets treated by the Army with paranoia so he goes Undercover Boss to understand this paranoia. Then he decides to take a (relative) safe way of demonstrating his people's power by selectively shutting down the power, which not only demonstrates they have power of an entire planet, they can also do it as they please, basically if the military threatens them, they can just turn off the military while leaving the civilians unharmed. The only reason this doesn't contradict what Klaatu says later, that the Gort bots will annihilate humanity if humanity decide to take the cold war into space, is because a) it's Gort that will destroy Earth and b) I imagine humanity will eventually reach the technological development where they will be able to neutralize this "selective blackout" technology, so with that out of the question, planetary annihilation is back on the table. The aliens are menacing, but they're not malicious. They're not a threat, unless we foolishly make a first strike. And considering that before Klaatu had a chance to explain himself he got shot by a trigger-happy soldier, there's no way the aliens won't think of us but a threat. In fact, the latter aspect gets forgotten by most reviewers who think that the aliens came on Earth to threaten us with their power. That we are somehow innocents and we got threatened for no good reason. The aliens have an entire Federation out there, they see us about to reach space travel while neck-deep in nuclear arms race, so they come to tell us that if we want to be on friendly terms with them, we keep our problems to ourselves and not involve them in our petty squabbles. And if we somewhat think that we can even remotely go toe to toe with them, for some stupid reason, they can stop us, but not by bombing us to oblivion which is something humans do, but rather by selectively deciding who lives and who dies, and if that doesn't work, well, why bother doing it again since you won't get it so we'll just bomb you Earth-style. I mean, apart from the blatant way of saying it (which I'll chalk it down to the aliens being terrible diplomats due to having lived their entire life not seeing a problem with the Gort bots nuking you if you misbehave), the message of the aliens is not that different that what any military superpower feels in relation to a small defenseless country.

By comparison, the 2008 film feels like a parody of the original film. Down to the One saving the human race from the flying Machine swarm, after witnessing some mother's true love for her child or something. Oh and the solution to humans destroying the environment is to fry all the world's electronics, which would not only kill a fuckload of people (hospitals, planes and such), but with the entire economy and civilization in the gutter, people are going to, guess what, exploit the environment even more to survive (with no more technology to extract, refine and transport oil, no matter how dirty of a power source it is, now you have to chop entire forests again for fuel and other uses) not to mention all the environmental projects are now dead, which would only make the degradation of Earth's environment even worse. Did PETA wrote that film?
Also if the aliens love doggos so much, and have already harvested the DNA from all the Earth's non-sapient lifeforms, why not just, I don't know, terraform Venus or Mars and move all that life there? If they can use their nanobots to turn Earth into a lifeless rock and turn it green again, surely they can do that to already dead planets, right?

Are you kidding me, it may be a parody for the U. S. audience but the U. S. officials behave exactly like what you expect them to behave by international standards, petty, self-righteous, like U. S. owns the decisions from the entire Earth, I not blame Klaatu for wanting to wipe us all with the attitude of the U. S. officials, he demanded a reunion with leaders of the Earth and what he receive was an officials that believed that they have the right to make the choice for all of us, the only reason why Klaatu didnt destroy Earth was pure compassion, even that turn off all the technology of Earth, giving us a second chance, but maybe Klaatu should have learned better from humans, you cant change human nature.