I thought I should get the ball rolling with a real classic: the original The Day the Earth Stood Still. At least I had always heard it was a classic. To be honest, the few 50s sci-fi movies I’d seen were horribly cheesy, the effects were laughable and the dialog wooden. I figured The Day the Earth Stood Still would be more of the same. That said, I told myself to keep an open mind about watching the movie.
Imagine my delight when I found it to be a pretty enjoyable film! Sure, the special effects are a bit dodgy by today’s standards, but I could definitely see how audiences would have been completely taken in back then. And the plot is much better than I expected. Yes, it does seem a bit camp in 2010, but I’m old enough to remember the tail end of the Cold War and my parents told me stories about “duck and cover drills” and the like so the message of “learn to live in peace or be destroyed” was a much more prominent threat in the days of Mutually Assured Destruction. Today, with the US the only remaining Cold War superpower and potential nuclear threats coming from small rogue states rather than an actual arms race, the level and nature of the threat is completely different. It feels quaint by today’s standards, but even back in the 80s, we could have totally related to the peril. (I am dating myself, aren’t I?)
The story is that of an alien spaceship landing in Washington, DC with a message for all the world’s leaders. Naturally, the first thing the US Army does is shoot the alien emissary. In the hospital, we find out his name is Klaatu and he looks human. (That’s handy!) As I said, he has a message for all the world’s leaders (basically: “learn to live in peace or the rest of the sentient races in the galaxy will see you obliterated”), but government officials explain to him that the Earth is politically fractured and a good many leaders will not come to Washington or even have diplomatic relations with the United States. The Soviet Bloc countries demand the world meeting take place in Moscow and other countries refuse to attend a meeting regardless of where it’s held. Realizing the intractability of the world’s leaders, Klaatu escapes “protective custody” and hides out in a boarding house in downtown DC. There he befriends a boy and his young widowed mother, Helen, learning about humanity while devising an alternate way to spread the message he was sent to convey. He contacts his spaceship and has the giant robot Gort disable everything electrical across the world for half an hour (at least he didn’t tell the young widow “for half of one of your Earth hours”) . Knowing the authorities are close on their heels, Klaatu instructs Helen that she must go to Gort and say what has become one of the most famous lines in all of science-fiction history: “Klaatu barada nikto“. And if you don’t know what that phrase does, I’m not going to spoil it for you.
As I said, I thought The Day the Earth Stood Still was a pretty good movie. It is dated and though the special effects were no doubt state-of-the-art in 1951, they look more than a little cheesy now. But that’s really beside the point. It really is a classic sci-fi movie and I’m glad I finally watched it.
8 out of 10.
Follow Us!