Day the Earth Stood Still

'THE DAY' wasn't an ordinary Day, not for the Earth, and not in the enduring and cliche-ridden Sci-Fi drama genre. The premise of the film is often over-simplified as: Alien arrives to bring Peace to the Earth and force an end to our differences.

Actually, that wasn't where he (Klaatu) was at or why he went there; as he said to the politician visiting him in the hospital: " I'm NOT concerned with your petty squables, etc .. I'm impatient with stupidity.. "

Klaatu was essentially on an errand, not a peace mission. Effectively, what these infantile parasitic earthlings do on their own dungpile is their own business, but now that they've reached the skies, they'll reach beyond, and start exporting this nonsense into {our} space .. and that's where it stops ("your choice is simple .. pursue your present course and you face obliteration").

If you haven't already seen this early SciFi epic, don't rent or buy it with any expectation of being thrilled by special effects, which are dated and cheezy in contrast to contemporary SciFi pics that have 3D visuals (but 2D characters); it's a head flick. Not because it's intricately cerebral, but because, in spite of the curious absence of logic in several of the plot devices, it still succeeds as a moralistic period piece that's engages you with its naivety, and it lingers.

Rod Serling once said that he felt what made Twilight Zone work was his focus on ORDINARY people placed in EXTRAordinary situations, and this film works on the same reasons. The tall and lanky Michael Rennie takes the Klaatu role with a seriousness that is memorably rare in early SciFi, and it makes you wonder how we ever got to the point that "Aliens" would have to look distinctively hideous and exotic to be accepted as aliens.

ID4 pays fair homage for derivation, for example (in a scene with a clip of 'TheDay' on a television), but doesn't see the light of 'Day' and so achieves less of a human drama, and is little more than an F/X reel in contrast. The Cinematic Arts have definitely evolved, incredibly, but mostly visually, in the five decades since this picture was lensed, but seeing THIS film (and seeing it again), is to not be swayed by the filming, but to get caught-up in the Film.

It would be possible, as with just about any film, to 'catalog' all of the credibility gaps .. why, for example the Alien spacecraft gets surrounded by tanks and artillery, but on the night Klaatu has to slip through a massive dragnet for the missing spaceman, there's only one or two distracted sentries posted; and why the guns they're holding are vaporized with some sort of laser, but they don't get so much as a hoflash, etc., etc., in that and in the respect that aside from the casting of the tall and gaunt Rennie as Klaatu (a role that almost went to Spencer Tracy - which would have been sooooo wrong), it is camping at times, but it's nice camping-out with them. Which is to say that: whatever it's flaws, it is eminently watchable, and it grows on you.

Many reviewers over the years have harped on the 'Christ figure' aspect of Klaatu, but no one appears to have caught the similarity (or derivation) in the early Silver Surfer comic book character; another case of unification by common enemy and alien ultimatum (Roddenbery acknowledged making several withdrawls from this brain trust also, during the original Trek series). Meanwhile, quotes from and references to The Day The Earth Stood Still also appear in George Lucas' work, and in more than two dozen other films.


TheDay went into production less than 5 years after the attempt to turn Hiroshima and Nagasaki into a set of matching ashtrays, and was launched before Sputnik .. and the movie's themes are amplified (particularly Klaatu's often-mimicked soliloquy at the end) and better appreciated in the context of the chill setting in that would freeze-over into the ColdWar between the superpowers, and where we were at back in '51.

It may well be a snore for a generation raised on F/X rather than affect, but it is a milestone of a period piece in it's genre. If it hasn't aged well visually, and seems quite dated now, it had tremendous relevancy and more tangibility at the time of it's release, and it will remain on the marquee above the hearts of all those who remember the immortal words .. Klaatu Barada Nikto!