Monday, September 30, 2013

The Day The Earth Stood Still

The film begins with a spaceship being tracked down on some sort of radar-like machine.  The ship lands and appears seamless until a door way opens up with a ramp.  Out comes a robot (Gort) and a figure (Klattu).  They have army tanks and men with guns waiting for the alien figure to do something, he whips out a spikey thing and one gunman shoots him in the arm.  Everyone sympathizes with Klattu once he appears to have human emotions and fragility.  He is taken to a hospital to recover, which he does remarkably and freaks everyone out with his age.  Klattu's whole purpose of being there is to warn them before their planet is destroyed!  Other life forms know that Earth has been messing with nuclear power and have been thinking about shooting some into space, therefore the other planets would be forced to destroy Earth before this can happen.  Unless Klattu can warn them and they do what he says, their planet will be destroyed.  Klattu is trying to meet every representative of every culture/country to convince them of this threat, but people are too focused on personal fights and wars to think of the Earth as being a united force.  Klattu takes refuge as a boarder in a house filled with people, some of which are a pretty lady (Helen) and her unsuspecting son (Bobby).  Klattu needs to learn more about humans on Earth so he can figure out how to get them to believe him, so he is undercover from the cops and hospital.  The little boy turns out to be a great teacher because he is so naive and young.  Klattu learns about Professor Barnhardt who is supposed to be the smartest person in all of the world according to the little boy, Bobby.  They happen to break into the Professors house and figure out this long confusing equation.  Of course the Professor is amazed by Klattu and has just happened to be organizing a meeting with some of the smartest people from all over the world and its happening really soon too!  Klattu is one lucky guy I'd say.  So the plan is for Klattu to talk to all of those people and they will believe him and save the world from killing itself.  But in order for everyone on Earth to believe him he has to do something amazing, so he basically makes the world stand still by shutting off all machines and time as people knew it.  Which of course freaks people out but its clear yet if everyone is convinced or just plain revengeful.  Plans never go as planned though so this story is not much different than other disaster stories/films.  Bobby follows Klattu to the spaceship and sees Gort smash some army guys and Klattu get into the ship.  Bobby runs home to tell his mother and her lame boyfriend, they don't really believe him until they piece it all together and the lame boyfriend sells out to the police about Klattu.  Klattu is in the run when he gets shot by a cop!  Helen, the pretty mother, escapes to Gort so she can tell him a message that will save Klattu.  She succeeds and Gort comes to the rescue, getting Klattu back and recovering him from death with the fancy alien magic machine.  Klattu realizes Earth is too stupid so he is going to tell them that in fact the robots are the ones in charge and they are the ones who will destroy their planet so their future is up to them.  He steps back into his spaceship and departs back to some far away land.  



This film probably had the best special effects of all the movies we have seen up to this date.  The robot with laser eyes that melted tanks and the seamless spaceship were all pretty well done.  The actors were good too, they were all pretty silly and likable.  The reading about this film described it as liberal, which stuck with me the whole time during the screening.  Afterwards I could definitely see how liberal could fit into the list of descriptions for The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Sontag's article's scenario types could also be found throughout this movie, two examples could be the Einstein looking professor and the call for other countries to intervene.    

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