If the original The Day the Earth Stood Still is known for one thing, it's Christ imagery. In Robert Wise's 1951 film, alien emissary Klaatu announces his arrival with a paraphrase of Luke 2:14, preaches peace, love, and understanding before the U.N., is murdered by the forces of empire, rises from the dead, and delivers an apocalyptic warning before ascending to heaven. "If you threaten to extend your violence," he warns, "this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration." Though Klaatu's message is more political ultimatum than extension of grace, his story is a transparent attempt to transfer the Jesus story into an SF setting (Robert Wise's claims of scriptural ignorance notwithstanding). The salvation Klaatu extends is admittedly limited; he offers freedom not from sin or death but from nuclear war. Nevertheless, Klaatu was a Cold War messiah.
It may seem surprising, then, that Scott Derrickson's remake excises the messianism from the story. Klaatu is still shot by the military, but it happens well before he's had a chance to do any preaching. on top of that, at no point do we believe he's dead, so he can't really be said to have a resurrection. That fact alone separates this story from the messianic original by a few parsecs. But the differences don't end there: few people even know of Klaatu's existence, since he's denied an audience before the U.N. The public knows aliens have landed, but they don't know why. Klaatu's mission on Earth is therefore a secret one. And it's a bleaker one, too: in this film, the aliens have already decided we're beyond saving, and they're here to exterminate the human race. Klaatu isn't here to deliver a final warning; there is no last chance. Klaatu isn't an advocate; he's just here to read the sentence of the condemned.*
The new Day the Earth Stood Still is fixated on moral depravity. The aliens have "waited long enough," we learn, and humankind has shown no sign of changing. The aliens are Calvinists, believing in the total depravity of humankind, our complete inability to improve ourselves. By the film's end Klaatu has begun to doubt this view, but by that point it's too late for him to extend a warning; the destruction of humankind has already begun. His role then becomes that of Abraham at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: arguing for the deliverance of the condemned despite our sins.
And it's here that the remake drops the ball. It doesn't really give the audience any reason for expecting that humankind will change. I suppose the filmmakers expect that our worthiness is just supposed to go without saying, but the fact is that, in dramatic terms at least, the aliens make a far better case for our destruction than the humans do for our salvation. This is the role that John Cleese, playing a scientist who received a Nobel Prize for his research in "biological altruism," is supposed to fill, but apparently his argument got left on the cutting room floor. (Despite his relatively high billing, he only speaks a handful of lines.) The film feels generally lackluster, and it's here, what should be the real message of the story, where that shows most clearly. Despite a half-hearted spoken claim that we can become better, the question hanging over the movie's abrupt ending is: what if we can't?
I'm generally critical of the concept of total depravity, which has some ardent descendants in conservative Christianity today. It's a topic on which I'll say more in a few weeks (when I review James A. Herrick's Scientific Mythologies**). The original The Day the Earth Stood Still had a slightly pessimistic edge. Klaatu was an irascible messiah; he seemed irritated that we needed to be told not to kill each other. But in the end it affirmed a belief in moral progress, and in messiahs, be they divine or alien, as agents and advocates for that progress. The remake offers scant hints at that kind of progress, and it leaves the audience with a profound sense that, though humanity's sentence has been suspended, its case has not been dismissed.
For more on the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, see chapter 6 of The Gospel According to Science Fiction.
*I think aliens should come to Earth and threaten to reduce our world to a burned-out cinder if we don't stop giving Keanu Reeves lead roles in science fiction movies.
**Special sneak-preview capsule review: I don't like it!
Comments