We’ve always been fascinated with aliens, both intelligent and malevolent, although the latter is what usually is depicted. I know a lot of people, myself included, had a fascination with the extraterrestrial in our childhood. One of the things we constantly experiment with in films is imagining what the aliens might look like, like in the Alien series, Star Trek, Star Wars, ect. That’s why it is both strange and interesting that the film The Day the Earth Stood Still chooses to have the alien look exactly like humans.
The alien in the film look just like humans do on earth, although he is superior in intelligence and the health of his body. He even speaks English, in a pleasant New-England accent. Obviously, at that time the technology wouldn’t allow them to create the type of space-freaks we do today, but at first this choice puzzled me. Indeed, there were still a lot of films in those times that did portray weird bug-like aliens, but why did they choose to go this way with this film? What makes this film more interesting than most science-fiction like this is that it is a parody and critique of the starting cold-war, as well as a comment of the impending nuclear age. It works, although I’m not sure I’ll ever be clear on why this is remembered as such a huge classic, sure it works, but on a fairly superficial level. One easy way to make the audience think you are right is having someone who is dumb say the opposite of what you believe, and this strategy is used throughout this film. It does though to a better level explore how easy it is for us humans to reach rapid conclusions and the only way we have of answering something we don’t know is by violence.
It’s not just a science-fiction spaceman film though; it uses quite a few other genre elements, like the noir or thriller, the lighting in several scenes and pacing points towards this. And at that it is a fairly successful genre blend. The film goes through the motions though, and except for the slightly unique plot there is a lot that we will see from other films. Not to say that it is completely unoriginal, it is quite original in fact. The problem is that the originality of the film doesn’t always transcend the elements that are taken from other sources, and I was left with a bit of mixed feelings. I didn’t feel the film worked well enough as a parable to the cold war, basically because it wasn’t subtle enough; it hit us over the head. I also detected some Jesus parable in the film, but I’m not going to bother to go there. All that said, this film did grab me, the protagonist – the alien – I managed to connect with, and was kept interested to the very last minute, but I guess this has been one of the things Hollywood always has been good at (or at least until these recent years).
For what it’s worth, The Day the Earth Stood Still is an interesting film on the cold-war and aliens, bringing up themes about peace and whatnot. The film as a whole didn’t do it for me, and I’m still not sure why it is praised as one of the greats. There are some interesting ideas, but the execution wasn’t that great. Oh, and by the way, later this year there will be a remake released, staring Keanu Reeves as the alien, and I’m sure it will be terrible.
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