“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (2008)
Today I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), a remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth.
Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: David Scarpa (screenplay), Edmund H. North (1951 screenplay)
Stars:Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates
Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) is summoned to a military facility with several other scientist when an alien spacecraft of sorts arrives in New York City. Aboard is a human-like alien and a giant robot of immense size and power. The alien identifies himself as Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) and says he has come to save the Earth. The US military and political authorities see him as a threat however and decide to use so-called intensive interrogation techniques on him but Dr. Benson decides to facilitate his escape. When she learns exactly what he means when he says he is there to save the Earth, she tries to convince him to change his intentions.
If the earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives. (Klaatu, Keanu Reeves)
Roger’s comments
I quite enjoyed this movie and the effects. The were three distinct elements that stood out to me.
1. The movie represented an intriguing and timely reminder about the unique and fragile nature of our home planet. It also made one think about the attitude of humanity towards our home planet and what would be lost if climate change due to human activites was to destroy our precious environment.
There are only a handful of planets in the cosmos that are capable of supporting complex life this one can’t be allowed to perish. We’ve watched, we’ve waited and hoped that you would change. It’s reached the tipping point. We have to act. (Klaatu)
2. The storyline provided a truly cringe-worthy critique of North American militarism and it’s “shoot first, ask questions later” and “might makes right” mentality. Some of the lame attempts by the American military to attack and destroy the aliens was laughable and is not-so-subtly lampooned by the film’s writers.
3. I found it ironic (but not really surprising) that the wisest and most well-informed “World Leader” in the movie , the one who could potentially disuade the alien Klaatu from his intention to wipe the human race from the face of the earth, was portrayed to be a theoretical physicist (played by John Cleese). It is not accident that the writers chose to portray scientists as the “voice of reason” and the potential saviours of humanity from both itself and the malevolent intentions of the extra-terrestrials. Scientism (really good old logical positivism sneaking in the back door) makes the false claim that the only things that can be known are those things which we can detect with our five senses (empiricism) and those things that can be proven by scientific experimentation. So the writers are merely promoting a popular contemporary view of epistemology that claims only empirical and experimental data counts as real knowledge. All else is considered to be mere opinion and speculation. The swarm of mutant bities that were sent by the aliens to chew up humanity and all of its structures reminded me a little of the relentless philosophical locust plague of Scientism currently chewing through our our marketplace of ideas and our contemporary culture’s collective consciousness.