The Day the Earth Stood Still

[Keyser94]

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).

Why mocking? The U. S. officials behave exactly how everyone in the rest of the world expect them how to behave, arrogant, petty, paranoid, willing to destroy something that they not understand and willing to defied a fucking alien that have much more power than all their military might, as the DVD extras says, he is a Hitman, he come to Earth to evaluate humans, and from the beginning humans, at least the U. S. officials only receive him with pettiness and disdain, no wanting to respond to his demands, no wonders he see that humans not worth the effort and he began the process of destroying all the humans on Earth, after all Earth isn't ours, and the U. S. don't owns Earth and have the right to make decisions from others, the only reason why he didnt destroy us all was pure compassion, but that doesn't mean that we were saved from certain destruction, only that we were given a second chance, maybe Klaatu was right, human nature never would change, even if you destroy all the technology from Earth and destroy the status quo, humans would find way to kill each other.

[Taurian Patriot]

Imagine if this scenario happened today. One hour of social media and cable news, and Klaatu would be ready to head back to his ship, peace out, and dial up the robot army.

[ArchaonTheEverchosen]

The remake message wasn't very good but it does did a fine job capturing the paranoid and attitude the world leaders would take in case something like that would happen. A movies which did a similar things is Arrival, the aliens don't actually speak human language so the moment human was given the idea that the aliens are giving out free weapon to rule the world all cooperation between the countries almost immediately stop.

[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?

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.

Because, as I mentioned, it undermines its own message by having the very advanced aliens just come in to destroy not just all the humans but every living thing on Earth before repopulating the planet with non-human life. Did you miss the part where the Gort nanoswarm was also destroying the trees and the other non-human life? If they can destroy all life on another planet and then rebuild it from scratch almost exactly the same, what stops them from from terraforming a dead planet, seeding it with the same life they took from an endangered planet then put in orbit some automated system that prevents anyone from landing on the planet?
And to make matters worse the aliens show up on Earth with the clear message to kill us all so any "self-righteous attitude" would be justified since, holy shit! Aliens are literally coming to kill us all! Unlike in the original, where the aliens came on Earth with a message of peace (in their own Gort-nanny-state view anyway) and did everything to minimize the damage.
Unlike in 1951 when there was no global radio or TV, so direct approach was a slightly better approach, in 2008 things are different. We have global TV, global radio and of course the Internet. If the aliens knew how terrible people were, they wouldn't have landed the spaceship in the middle of the "self-righteous" capital of the world, after they would have made that relativistic speed demonstration, and the missile deactivation, they would stay on the orbit, then use the global communication system to broadcast their message. Even in MoS, General Zod was smart enough to do that, and he wasn't even a scientist, if anything he was a military numb nut. Instead not only do the aliens land, the just allow Klaatu to get captured, and if they were so keen on sending that message that if humans will wreck their planet they will be exterminated. they surely would have done that from the other ships that were busy collecting plant and animal DNA.
It's like the aliens had to act stupid so that the Earthlings also act stupid, because everyone has to act stupid. The entire remake feels like a reject Ronald Emmerich script, minus the dumb humor.

[Keyser94]

The remake message wasn't very good but it does did a fine job capturing the paranoid and attitude the world leaders would take in case something like that would happen. A movies which did a similar things is Arrival, the aliens don't actually speak human language so the moment human was given the idea that the aliens are giving out free weapon to rule the world all cooperation between the countries almost immediately stop.

The only world leaders that appears in the remake are U. S. officials, it seems very realistic their attitude, when the alien demand them to speak with world leaders and they refuse, saying that he argue with them, it a pretty good message how real world international politics works, the U. S. is not the saviour of the world, nearly doom us all.

[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.

Because, as I mentioned, it undermines its own message by having the very advanced aliens just come in to destroy not just all the humans but every living thing on Earth before repopulating the planet with non-human life. Did you miss the part where the Gort nanoswarm was also destroying the trees and the other non-human life? If they can destroy all life on another planet and then rebuild it from scratch almost exactly the same, what stops them from from terraforming a dead planet, seeding it with the same life they took from an endangered planet then put in orbit some automated system that prevents anyone from landing on the planet?
And to make matters worse the aliens show up on Earth with the clear message to kill us all so any "self-righteous attitude" would be justified since, holy shit! Aliens are literally coming to kill us all! Unlike in the original, where the aliens came on Earth with a message of peace (in their own Gort-nanny-state view anyway) and did everything to minimize the damage.
Unlike in 1951 when there was no global radio or TV, so direct approach was a slightly better approach, in 2008 things are different. We have global TV, global radio and of course the Internet. If the aliens knew how terrible people were, they wouldn't have landed the spaceship in the middle of the "self-righteous" capital of the world, after they would have made that relativistic speed demonstration, and the missile deactivation, they would stay on the orbit, then use the global communication system to broadcast their message. Even in MoS, General Zod was smart enough to do that, and he wasn't even a scientist, if anything he was a military numb nut. Instead not only do the aliens land, the just allow Klaatu to get captured, and if they were so keen on sending that message that if humans will wreck their planet they will be exterminated. they surely would have done that from the other ships that were busy collecting plant and animal DNA.
It's like the aliens had to act stupid so that the Earthlings also act stupid, because everyone has to act stupid. The entire remake feels like a reject Ronald Emmerich script, minus the dumb humor.

You seems to be defending more the attitude of the U. S. than the attitude of humans in generals, because he wasn't allowed to speak to world leaders remember, and they wanted to be close as the original, but adapting to current politics, and let me say to you, that the U. S. isn't the saviour of the world, that why Klaatu began the plan to wipe out of humanity beginning with the U. S., and the ending is very good, Klaatu show clemency but that doesn't mean that left us off the hook he literally destroyed the status quo on Earth by cutting all the electricity of the world, meaning that the U. S. and European war machines doesn't work anymore, sure, humans would continue to kill each other, but the old status quo is no more.

[clearspira]

The 1950s. When mum had no problem with allowing her son to go off with a man they only just met that day whilst she goes off for a date with her boyfriend. That kid would trigger an amber alert in 2020 the moment she was out of her sight.

Also, sorry, I think that the humans were in the right. Klaatu turns up completely unannounced and walks towards a group of soldiers with a device that suddenly snaps open within melee range. Anyone could be forgiven for flinching in such a situation.

He then runs away and turns off all the power, makes threats, and then sets a Terminator with a death ray upon them. Why was anyone meant to assume that he wasn't a villain without the benefit of the 4th Wall again? And by the end of the film, yeah, he's a villain. Threatening to end all life on Earth, even the innocents. Frankly, I would go as far as to say that if this was set in the DC universe, there would be a guy wearing red and blue swooping in to beat the guy up in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

[Keyser94]

The 1950s. When mum had no problem with allowing her son to go off with a man they only just met that day whilst she goes off for a date with her boyfriend. That kid would trigger an amber alert in 2020 the moment she was out of her sight.

Also, sorry, I think that the humans were in the right. Klaatu turns up completely unannounced and walks towards a group of soldiers with a device that suddenly snaps open within melee range. Anyone could be forgiven for flinching in such a situation.

He then runs away and turns off all the power, makes threats, and then sets a Terminator with a death ray upon them. Why was anyone meant to assume that he wasn't a villain without the benefit of the 4th Wall again? And by the end of the film, yeah, he's a villain. Threatening to end all life on Earth, even the innocents. Frankly, I would go as far as to say that if this was set in the DC universe, there would be a guy wearing red and blue swooping in to beat the guy up in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

Funny because " truth, justice and the American way" is a motto that DC applied to Superman during the cold war, and what kind of " truth, justice and the American way" it is? Setting coups all around the world for the benefit of corporations and rich people in the U. S.? Overthrowing democracies in favour of brutal dictatorships? Rigging elections in favour of corrupt candidates that benefit the U. S.? You call that justice? That not counting the countless genocides and massacres along the U. S. history, killing innocent people in domestic and foreign lands. You call that justice? No, Klaatu is not the villain in this story, he is just indifferent, the U. S. is as always arrogant and believe in their own superiority, call this a modern adaptation of War of the World with a more benevolent ending, I prefer more the ending of the reboot, were Klaatu destroy all the technology of Earth, sure, he didnt kill the humans, but destroyed the old status quo, the humans can kill each other if they want, but the state cant do that against other nations anymore because they no have any power any longer.

[CrypticMirror]

The 1950s. When mum had no problem with allowing her son to go off with a man they only just met that day whilst she goes off for a date with her boyfriend. That kid would trigger an amber alert in 2020 the moment she was out of her sight.

Also, sorry, I think that the humans were in the right. Klaatu turns up completely unannounced and walks towards a group of soldiers with a device that suddenly snaps open within melee range. Anyone could be forgiven for flinching in such a situation.

He then runs away and turns off all the power, makes threats, and then sets a Terminator with a death ray upon them. Why was anyone meant to assume that he wasn't a villain without the benefit of the 4th Wall again? And by the end of the film, yeah, he's a villain. Threatening to end all life on Earth, even the innocents. Frankly, I would go as far as to say that if this was set in the DC universe, there would be a guy wearing red and blue swooping in to beat the guy up in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

Funny because " truth, justice and the American way" is a motto that DC applied to Superman during the cold war, and what kind of " truth, justice and the American way" it is? Setting coups all around the world for the benefit of corporations and rich people in the U. S.? Overthrowing democracies in favour of brutal dictatorships? Rigging elections in favour of corrupt candidates that benefit the U. S.? You call that justice? That not counting the countless genocides and massacres along the U. S. history, killing innocent people in domestic and foreign lands. You call that justice? No, Klaatu is not the , I prefer more the ending of the reboot, were Klaatu destroy all the technology of Earth, sure, he didnt kill the humans, but destroyed the old status quo, the humans can kill each other if they want, but the state cant do that against other nations anymore because they no have any power any longer.

I haven't seen the reboot, but, yeah, he killed a bunch of people if he stopped technology working. Like billions of people. Take electricity away from the modern world and people will start dying, instantly too. Millions of people are dependant on technology just to keep breathing, so they died in the first few minutes. Others who depended on technology for other life sustaining uses will die over the next few days to weeks, then the real deaths start hitting out of starvation and lack of access to clean water, and the death toll only goes up from there. Remove electricity and that is genocide on a scale unparalleled in history. In fact, given how interconnected and interdependant modern society is, it could actually manage over a few decades to be the big one and gets enough of the species to drive the numbers of humans below sustainable population numbers at all and extinction will beckon. Even avoiding that, Earth would still be a planet of corpses.

So don't give me that Baku rubbish about doing away with technology not being disastrous.

[clearspira]

The 1950s. When mum had no problem with allowing her son to go off with a man they only just met that day whilst she goes off for a date with her boyfriend. That kid would trigger an amber alert in 2020 the moment she was out of her sight.

Also, sorry, I think that the humans were in the right. Klaatu turns up completely unannounced and walks towards a group of soldiers with a device that suddenly snaps open within melee range. Anyone could be forgiven for flinching in such a situation.

He then runs away and turns off all the power, makes threats, and then sets a Terminator with a death ray upon them. Why was anyone meant to assume that he wasn't a villain without the benefit of the 4th Wall again? And by the end of the film, yeah, he's a villain. Threatening to end all life on Earth, even the innocents. Frankly, I would go as far as to say that if this was set in the DC universe, there would be a guy wearing red and blue swooping in to beat the guy up in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

Funny because " truth, justice and the American way" is a motto that DC applied to Superman during the cold war, and what kind of " truth, justice and the American way" it is? Setting coups all around the world for the benefit of corporations and rich people in the U. S.? Overthrowing democracies in favour of brutal dictatorships? Rigging elections in favour of corrupt candidates that benefit the U. S.? You call that justice? That not counting the countless genocides and massacres along the U. S. history, killing innocent people in domestic and foreign lands. You call that justice? No, Klaatu is not the villain in this story, he is just indifferent, the U. S. is as always arrogant and believe in their own superiority, call this a modern adaptation of War of the World with a more benevolent ending, I prefer more the ending of the reboot, were Klaatu destroy all the technology of Earth, sure, he didnt kill the humans, but destroyed the old status quo, the humans can kill each other if they want, but the state cant do that against other nations anymore because they no have any power any longer.

I haven't seen the reboot so I will take you at your word. Seems to me that he is even more a villain in that story though as I can assure you that whether it is with nukes or swords, the human race is quite capable of continuing to kill ourselves and invading other countries. If you doubt that, I advise you to look up the history of the entire classical world. Not to mention the fact that destroying our technology means no more modern medicine which means that hundreds of millions of people will die from disease and illness alone. And it also means no modern sanitation, no communications, no internet and no global trade.

We would have been better off dying instantly than being subjected to the horrors of the Dark Ages in which basically nobody today is suited or prepared for.

And whilst it is clear you have a hate boner on for the US, I guess I will annoy you by pointing out that ''the American way'' is freedom, democracy, and capitalism. And whilst I am sure that you will balk at that in your reply, I request that you name me the country that you come from and I will tell you the blood that your ancestors have on their hands so we can compare it to the US that you hate so much. I'll get the ball rolling: I'm British, we subjugated a quarter of the globe.