The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils movie The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).

I didn't remember I had this movie It was still unopened. I found it when I went through my collection looking for another movie. When I went through my collection I picked up few other movies. I won't hang myself into another theme month, but you could expect posts about classic science fiction movies during april. Some may be classic only in my books.

This is one of my all time favourite science fiction movies. This is one of those movies where space aliens are peaceful and humans are the aggressive party. This is not your average aliens come to earth and then it is war which humans win scifi movie. This is what could happen if both parties want to have peaceful solution. Compared to average science fiction movie this have better production values. If you want to see best two scifi movies from 1950's, this is one. War of the Worlds is the another.

Flying saucer lands to Washington. Klaatu, the alien, was shot during first encounter by too trigger happy solder. Gort, the body-guard of Klaatu, showed his powers, but nothing worse happened. Klaatu wanted to talk with all nations on earth. Due politics this was not possible. Politicians could not get to same page even on this sort of issue. Klaatu escapes and tries to find different way to deliver his message. People fear that Klaatu is actually from Soviet Union or at least he is there to destroy the earth. Military tries to study flying saucer and Gort with very little success.

Klaatu manages meet scientist who promises to help gather meeting Klaatu wants. Scientist ask for show of strength before meeting. Klaatu disables all electric devices that can be disabled without casualties all around the world. People start to fear Klaatu after this and military does not want him alive anymore. One of people Klaatu was living after escape learns that Klaatu is alien and tells that to military. Military manages to catch Klaatu but not without killing him. Gort gets Kaatu's dead body and makes it alive with machines inside flying saucer. Meeting is held outside flying saucer. Klaatu delivers his message in the meeting.

Klaatu tells his people have created robot police force that acts against all aggression. Robots have power to destroy all aggressor and this power can't be taken away. Robot army have forces his people to learn to live in peace. If humans act aggressively against other planets they will have to face this police force. Because this is 1950's science fiction all implications of this police force are not mentioned. This movie was made during early days of threat of nuclear war. Robot police force does same thing as mutually assured destruction. As we saw humans learned to live more peacefully after that. But as we have also seen humans learned to be violent in other ways.

I can't stop wondering if robot police force is that good idea after all. How that force could find who the aggressor is? Could you make police force to kill someone if you could make them mad enough to become aggressive? How people feel living with constant threat from police force? I would like to see movie from world where Klaatu came from. It could be similar to what we got after 9/11. I started to think maybe remake studies these themes. I checked trailer and it didn't look promising.