The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

1951 • 92 minutes

About this movie

The Day The Earth Stood Still depicts the arrival of an alien dignitary, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who has come to earth with his deadly robot, Gort (Lock Martin), to deliver the message that earthlings must stop warring among themselves--or else. After being shot at by military guards, Klaatu is brought to a Washington, D.C. hospital, where he begs a sympathetic but frank Major White (Robert Osterloh) to gather all the world's leaders so he can tell them more specifically what he has come to warn them about. Losing patience, Klaatu slips into the human world, adapting a false identity and living at a boarding house where he meets a smart woman with a conscience and her inquisitive son. Both mother and son soon find themselves embroiled in the complex mystery of Klaatu, his message and the government's witch hunt for the alien. Seen by many as a political, religious and humanitarian effort, the film is based on Harry Bates' story, "Farewell to the Master."

Ratings and reviews

As insane as this sounds, the message of a film made in 1951 is astonishingly relevant to events happening in 2021. Basically this movie is about the fear (plus stubbornness) humans harbor (and spread) about each other which leads to a standstill in cooperation and action (even in face of absolute complete annihilation). There's also some super Judge Dread level police state-like system suggested against violence that's a little problematic, but is presented as "not perfect" so... 🤷‍♂️

Fantastic tale of the utter power and the fear it creates with just a hint of control and bravery. Strange how love and kindness will win in the end. You could only hope those in charge or that come won't play games with your life or just throw it away on bad decisions or deadly sin. Child like spirt saves the day in a Universe ruled over by robots the choice of live free or die is dead. Peace or distruction in the end the first person that merges with machine will be corrupted by absolute power

This is a film in which science fiction, peppered with a drippy theremin soundtrack, carries a relatively simple, straightforward message about the madness and paranoia of the Cold War. A fear of such unintelligible magnitude that it could potentially aggravate conflict even if a peacekeeping mission were to arrive from another planet. It would instantly be made into a self-aggrandizing us vs. them than East v. West. This is the basic premise of the film. It shows the self centeredness of this wardrum bureaucracy. This alien being, exactly the same as any human anatomically, is vilified not unlike any of our enemies in any grand war. He is made into something less than human, ironically showing greater benevolence, humanity, and good humor than anybody else on screen. The exception being perhaps the young boy, Bobby in his innocence. Everyone is terrified of control, the alien, Klaatu (or Mr. Carpenter as his assumed human moniker, is this a biblical reference perhaps?) can’t help but laugh. He’s afraid. It’s funny, even in all this chaos the white suburban 1950s idylls that Hollywood had put out in such classic TV standards as Leave it to Beaver are ironically imposed on this scen