The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

111

Time is running out for humans, and Klaatu holds all the cards.

The remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still updates the film to a much more modern and darker context. It changes the theme from an anti-war film to an environmental message given the advancements of scientific knowledge in the intervening 50 years. But was it a film that needed to be remade?

First Impressions

A series of shots show army and emergency vehicles traveling somewhere. A female reporter hides her cell phone as she is about to enter a secure area. In a large room, a scientist is conducting a lie detector test on Keanu Reeves. When asked if he’s human, he replies that his body is. The man then asks if he’s aware of an impending attack on the planet. Keanu tells the man that he should really let him go. Mysterious lights rise over New York. Keanu tells the female reporter that if she dies, the Earth will live. It’s time for The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In 1928, an Arctic explorer (Keanu Reeves) discovers a large glowing orb in a snowstorm. The device knocks him out and he awakens with a scar on the back of one of his hands. In the present day Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), an astrobiologist, is surprised when Federal agents show up at her home asking her to come with them immediately but giving no explanation. She leaves her stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith) with a neighbor. She is loaded onto a helicopter with other scientists and experts and taken to a military base in New Jersey.

Her colleague, Michael Granier (Jon Hamm), requested she be brought in to consult. An object is heading towards Earth extremely fast, having changed direction to impact in New York City. As the object gets closer, defensive missiles are disabled, as the scientists all prepare for the worst. The object slows down, and a bright, glowing orb lands in Central Park. Something vaguely humanoid begins to come out of the light as Helen approaches. One of the gathered soldiers shoots the alien, triggering a giant 20-foot robot to leave the orb and disrupt the local power systems before being called off by the alien.

Helen and the other scientists take the injured alien into custody. An outer fatty layer sloughs off and inside is a male humanoid, who identifies himself as Klaatu (Keanu Reeves). He asks to speak to the United Nations, but Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates), says that is impossible, and he can speak to her. Klaatu is drugged by Helen at the urging of Secretary Jackson (but is injected with a placebo since Helen disagrees with the woman’s methods). He is taken to a secret location and given a polygraph. He telepathically incapacitates the guards and steals a suit from the technician, escaping into the city.

At a bus station, Klaatu realizes he is still bleeding from his wounds and contacts Helen who comes to pick him up. She has a DNA sample she stole from the lab of Klaatu’s “skin,” which he uses to repair his wound instantly. While military sorties attack (and fail) to destroy the giant robot, dubbed GORT by the military, is taken into custody for examination. Helen, with Jacob in tow, takes Klaatu to meet Mr. Wu (James Hong), another alien in human form who has lived his whole life on Earth. Klaatu indicates that he will have to destroy the humans in order to save the planet.

Klaatu activates a number of other smaller orbs around the planet which contain samples of the animal life, and they depart into space. Helen begs Klaatu to save humanity and takes him to talk to one of the scientific leaders of the planet, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese). While at the scientist’s house, Jacob calls the police, believing that’s what his deceased Army father would have done. Klaatu destroys the helicopters that come for him, escaping into the woods with Jacob, who apologizes for calling the authorities.

GORT, who is being examined by military personnel, senses danger and turns into a swarm of nanorobots consuming everything in their path. The microscopic robots head back to Central Park. Jacob leads Klaatu to a cemetery where his father is buried, hoping the alien can revive his father. Klaatu claims that is impossible. Jacob is infected by the nanobots, but Klaatu seeing the love that Helen has for the boy cures him and then heads for his ship, being consumed in the process–but ultimately shutting down the small robots. Believing the planet is worth saving now, Klaatu’s ship emits an energy pulse that shuts down all mechanical and electronic devices worldwide, as the sphere departs for outer space.

“Your problem is not technology. The problem is you. You lack the will to change.” – Klaatu

History in the Making

As many people know, The Day The Earth Stood Still is a remake of the popular 1951 science-fiction film by Robert Wise. The original film, which was based on a 1940 story in Astounding Science Fiction magazine called “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, followed a very similar premise. An alien arrives on Earth with a message of galactic peace for the warring planet, but is confronted by the military and not allowed to speak to the Earth’s leaders. He goes undercover meeting a woman named Helen and her son Bobby which affects his perceptions of the population of the planet, giving them one more chance. His giant robot Gort protects him and the ship, and he and his technology stop the electronics of the planet for 60 minutes to make humanity understand the consequences of their actions. The 2008 version directed by Scott Derrickson updates the story by 57 years for 21st Century audiences, giving the film a theme of conservationism rather than one about demilitarization.

Of the remakes reviewed so far on Sci-Fi Saturdays, which include titles such as Invaders from Mars, The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I Am Legend, The Day The Earth Stood Still is not quite a shot-for-shot remake, but it retains the same character archetypes and situations. It strives to tell the same story and touch the same emotional beats as the original. So why does this version of the film feel so distant and cold? The original is regarded as a classic, even with some of its more ham-fisted dialogue. How come the 2008 version leaves audiences unsatisfied? There are two primary reasons. The first is Keanu Reeves’s portrayal of Klaatu. Keanu was a big star by this time having starred in The Matrix and its sequels. Yet he lacks the warmth and humanity that audiences saw in Michael Rennie’s performance as Klaatu in 1951. Even though the portrayal is probably more accurate to an alien observing Earth in the early 21st Century, audiences can’t relate as well to the character as he experiences humanity’s oddities.

The second reason is the unfulfilling ending. In the original film, Klaatu made the Earth stand still for an hour, before releasing it and setting the world on a course to better itself. There’s some level of hope in that story, even though the 1950s screenplay gets preachy to the audience. In the modern version, Klaatu comes to understand the nature of humanity vis-a-vis a young boy and his stepmother and sacrifices his human body in order to stop the destruction of human life. But in doing so, he also deactivates all technology on the planet, reverting humanity to a pre-industrial society in a matter of moments. After this, the film just ends. While it’s not preaching to the audiences to be more careful with their planet, it doesn’t seem to go far enough. This ending is also more of a downer. While Klaatu saves humanity, it puts them at a loss of which there is still very little hope that they can achieve the enlightenment that Klaatu desires for them. At best, they will not be able to continue to harm the planet at least until they figure out how to turn everything back on.

Genre-fication

The Day The Earth Stood Still is a movie that shows how far the genre of science-fiction has come since the middle of the 20th Century. The original film was the third film reviewed in this series being an early mainstream sci-fi success. As a story, it set the tone and template for many other films in the coming decades. While the first two sci-fi films of the 1950s feature man traveling into space (Rocketship X-M and Destination Moon), The Day The Earth Stood Still and the other major sci-fi hit from 1951, When Worlds Collide, both featured aliens coming towards Earth. But unlike When Worlds Collide, this was the first sci-fi film to feature peaceful and advanced aliens trying to help mankind. Most alien films of the time have Martians or some other evil alien species coming to attack, invade, or destroy humans. The conceit of The Day The Earth Stood Still still remains unique even with the 2008 remake.

Any alien civilization that comes to Earth is going to be more advanced. They have conquered space flight and usually have other superior technology to go with that. Klaatu comes to the planet as a member of a species that has been visiting the planet for some time. One of the alien orbs arrives in the 1928 prologue, presumably taking a DNA sample from the polar explorer. The alien that masquerades as Mr. Wu has lived a large part of his life here, having learned a lot about the species. He tells Klaatu that even though humans are destructive, he loves them, but can’t really explain why. Klaatu, while nonviolent, has a mission to achieve. He is to catalog or rescue samples of the various Earth organisms, and then if he deems fit, he is to destroy the human populace in order to save the planet. It’s a story that was fresh and interesting but one that has been told with more nuance since the early days.

What this version of The Day The Earth Stood Still accomplishes is being able to tell a tried and true tale about the coming of aliens to our planet with a more modern sensibility. Instead of a humanoid alien in a silver suit and flying saucer landing in Washington DC, Derrickson and team created an alien that exists in a corporeal form entirely different from our own. It is able to grow its own human body to inhabit, but little is known of its real shape or being. This style of rebranding the aliens makes this version of Klaatu just as strange and interesting to modern audiences as the 1950s version was to audiences then. It also ups the stakes by having GORT be an even taller, more menacing robot, that is not just a mechanical being. This version takes its cue from modern science by creating a being out of nanomachines, upping the risk and the threat.

Societal Commentary

Having aliens decide the fate of our species is a great way to comment on social issues surrounding our species. The Day The Earth Stood Still creates a very fortunate interaction since Klaatu found the best people in the New York City area to prove that the planet was worth saving. Just imagine who else he might have run into that could have instantly led him to make the decision to wipe out humanity and not even reconsider. That very nearly happened with Secretary Jackson, were it not for Helen’s humanitarian assistance. Jackson is presented as a very officious individual, one who takes her role as Secretary of Defense very seriously. Of course, she’s normally dealing with terrestrial threats. She is of one mindset, being that the aliens are trying to invade. She even mentions that in first encounters between civilizations, the less advanced culture is either enslaved or exterminated. She’s not wrong. As an audience, this appears to be the exact wrong thing to do. But she doesn’t realize her mistakes until it’s too late.

Fortunately, Helen is an amazingly warm and thoughtful person. She (and the other scientists) realizes that drugging and interrogating Klaatu is the wrong thing to do, and switches the drug with saline solution, which allows Klaatu to escape. He sees the kindness in her but still makes the call to exterminate the species based on everything else he’s seen. It’s not until his experience with a child opens his eyes to the fallibility of the species. Jacob, like many others, wants to attack and kill Klaatu. The boy’s world is filled with pain after the loss of his father about a year ago, and he lashes out at everyone and everything. Klaatu experiences this firsthand with Jacob hoping that the alien can bring his father back to life. Unfortunately, he admits that he can’t, and Jacob breaks down. Klaatu then sees the final element that brings him to the realization that humanity should survive. Helen, who Jacob has been mean and nasty to throughout the film, still finds the love and compassion to comfort Jacob in his time of distress.

It seems that Klaatu is able to understand humanity so quickly, especially when Mr. Wu has spent decades on the planet. What both these aliens learn is that humanity is in the experience. It’s not made up of one moment, cherry-picked from all others. The sum of the lifetime, and all the experiences therein are what shows the strength of the human species. We can overcome so many obstacles when given the chance, and we might be able to make the necessary changes. Sometimes it seems like having a global crisis, such as an alien visitation might be the thing we as a species need to put away the hatred, bigotry, and nationalism to be able to make the world truly something better. But for that to happen, enough people need to care about the needs of more than just themselves. Putting humanity first needs to become more important than putting any one human first.

The Science in The Fiction

Klaatu’s species is one that has transcended human technology by an order of magnitude. He explains to Professor Barnhardt that his species’ sun was dying and in order to survive they had to evolve. This was their crisis moment, just as Barnhardt argues humanity is at now. The professor says that humans will only evolve on the brink of destruction as if it’s a direct reaction to extinction. However, the climate crisis that the film depicts as the impetus for Klaatu’s intervention is not a dramatic either/or situation. The original film showcased the building arms race between America and the Soviets as its tipping point. Mutually assured destruction on either side of a nuclear war is an easier concept to visualize the change. We just stop building, using, and stockpiling weapons. The change becomes real for the ones enacting the change. But the damage to the ecology is something much subtler. What does reversing the course of damage to the environment look like? It might take decades or centuries to reverse some of the harm, and there’s no immediate benefit to the populace. This makes it a difficult concept to portray in film, and an even more difficult idea to sell to the public.

The aliens have also created a sentient, or near-sentient nanotechnology, as seen in the robot GORT. In this version of the film, the classic alien machine is no longer 8 feet tall, but over triple that size. It’s iconically reminiscent with its smooth lines and single eye port with an oscillating red diode. Instead of being named by Klaatu, the name GORT is defined by the military scientists examining the device. Genetically Organized Robotic Technology is the phrase they use to describe the robot, and a microscopic close-up shows locust-like metal organisms. As GORT releases these microscopic robots, of which he is built, they consume everything in their path. Instead of one giant robot to contend with, suddenly there are billions and billions of tiny robots that are able to devour humans from the inside out. Klaatu appears to have some sort of control over the devices as he saves Jacob from being “infected” just before he shuts down all the nanobots. This is one of the more terrifying ways to die from early 21st Century sci-fi films. There’s no suit or material that these creatures cannot devour their way past, and no person is safe. One swarm of these would have been enough to destroy life on the planet. Luckily, Klaatu thought humanity deserved another chance.

The Final Frontier

It would be interesting to see another story after the events of this one. What does the Earth look like one, five, or ten years after this intervention? Can humanity survive? It’s a question that gets asked a lot lately. In the nearly twenty years since this film was released, it seems like for every step forward we as a species take two steps back. If The Day The Earth Stood Still was trying to be a warning about our actions, it was but a whisper into the void. If it was trying to create a film to rally audiences toward taking action, it failed. The story does not contain the Christina imagery of the first film (with Klaatu being a metaphor for Jesus Christ who dies for the sins of humanity to be reborn), nor does it have any applicable actions for people to take. The world is saved by the deus ex machina. Klaatu uses his superior technology to threaten the planet and then uses similar technology to save it. What is the message to take away from this? Seemingly Earth needs to be visited by a superior race of beings in order to be saved. Unfortunately, we are our own best saviors, and also our own worst destroyers.

Coming Next