The alien messiah is a staple of science fiction, and few have been as messianic as Klaatu, who came to Earth to deliver a message of peace and a warning of possible apocalyptic doom in the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). The clues are all there: he walks incognito among regular people under the name “Carpenter,” he is ignored by the governments of this world and ultimately killed by its soldiers, he is brought back to life inside his tomb-like spaceship with the help of a guardian robot (who dispenses with the human troops stationed nearby), and then he emerges to spread one last message to the entire world before he ascends back into the heavens. And yet, director Robert Wise claimed he was unaware of the Christological parallels until other people began to point them out to him.
No such ignorance lies behind the new version, which is directed by Scott Derrickson, one of the few openly Christian writer-directors working in Hollywood. But the new film comes at a time when ideas about gods, aliens, and human beings have become a little more, well, complicated. Derrickson himself is no stranger to complicated thinking; his previous film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), was carefully designed to stimulate discussion on the nature of faith and doubt without tilting its scales entirely to one side or the other. However, his new film, which the studio had been developing for some time before he came on board, is caught between the demands of a major-studio tentpole and the inclinations of its makers, just as it is caught between the need to bring the material up to date and the pressure, from fans and others, to recycle familiar elements from the original film even when they don’t seem to fit the new movie’s internal logic.
The basic elements go back to a 1940 short story by Harry Bates called “Farewell to the Master.” In that story, an alien named Klaatu—”godlike” in appearance, we’re told—steps from a ship that has appeared out of nowhere in the middle of Washington, D.C. This mysterious visitor is promptly shot and killed by a man who thinks the alien is a “devil.” The people of Earth are terrified that Klaatu’s people might seek retribution if they hear of the deed, so they create a memorial to the alien, to show their respect for him; and since Klaatu was accompanied by a giant robot, who now stands motionless outside the ship, they construct a building around the robot and the ship as well. Some years later, however, a photojournalist discovers that the robot has, in fact, been busy when no one is looking—conducting experiments in a bid to bring Klaatu back to life. The story ends with a twist, in which we learn that the robot is not Klaatu’s servant but, rather, his master.
The 1951 film keeps some of these details even as it tells an entirely different story. This time, the saintly Klaatu—portrayed by Michael Rennie, who would go on to play the apostle Peter in The Robe (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)—is shot not by a “mentally unbalanced” fanatic but by a soldier, who pulls his trigger in fear when Klaatu approaches him bearing a strange object. (In this version of the story, Klaatu survives the initial shooting; his death and resurrection take place much later.) The object, it turns out, was not a weapon but a gift that would have helped the American president to study life on other planets. The robot, here named Gort, turns out to be part of an interstellar police force that has been put in place to ensure that no planet can pose any sort of threat to the other planets. And so the film underscores its basic themes: that reason and good will should take the place of fear, jealousy, and other dangerous emotions; and that humanity can better itself if it follows the example set by Klaatu and his people.
That human beings need to turn from fear to reason is a point the film hammers home repeatedly. [1] Everywhere Klaatu goes, he encounters paranoia and hysteria. While some reporters urge the public to remain calm, others stoke the fears of the people and spread wild rumors about Klaatu. Meanwhile, for their part, regular citizens squabble across lines both partisan and national; at one point, a woman even speculates that the alien might come from Soviet Russia. In contrast to all this, Klaatu goes looking for the world’s “greatest philosopher, the greatest thinker,” and so he meets an Einstein-like scientist named Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), who agrees to gather other scientists from around the world. To get the rest of the planet’s attention, Klaatu uses his technology to block nearly all of the electrical activity on Earth for half an hour—an action that amazes the ever-curious Barnhardt but frightens his secretary. Finally, Klaatu declares that Gort and his fellow robots can and will destroy any planet that brings its violent ways into space—and this power, which the robots exercise autonomously, cannot be revoked. And yet, even as fearsome as this warning may be, it is ultimately rooted in a belief that reason can save the day. A world governed by logic—however cold, mechanical, or devastating it might be—is ultimately better for everyone. [2]
But reason need not be the exclusive domain of the robots, nor need it be something to fear. In its portrayal of scientists as open-minded idealists, the film embodies a thoroughly modern, optimistic belief in scientific progress and the glories that await if humanity only follows Klaatu’s example. The alien civilization he represents, we learn, has superior technology, superior access to resources, and superior medicine—but not so superior that they are utterly out of our reach. And while Klaatu frowns upon the nuclear weapons that we might bring with us into outer space, he is quick to point out that atomic power has its beneficial uses, too. So while Klaatu may leave us with a warning, he also represents an unspoken invitation, to join him in a better future. His first act, after all, thwarted though it was by the soldier with the twitchy trigger finger, was to present us with a sample of his technology.
The Klaatu of the new film is nowhere near as friendly, and this poses interesting challenges, both for the dramatists and for those who would seek some sort of theological subtext. This time, Klaatu—Keanu Reeves, who played the founder of Buddhism in Little Buddha (1993) and the Zen Christ-figure Neo in the Matrix trilogy (1999–2003)—comes to Earth not to bring a warning but to bring judgment against the human race for our ecological sins. And no, this time the aliens don’t feel like sharing their advanced science with us.
Curiously, the aliens in the new film are both more godlike and more fallible than they were in the original. More godlike, in that they seem to transcend earthly categories such as biology and technology: Klaatu is an alien living in a human body formed from the DNA of a long-dead man, and he can manipulate any machine he comes across just by touching it. What is more, his arrival on Earth, as he emerges from a glowing sphere that has touched down in New York City’s Central Park, is treated with the same sort of mystical awe that often greets the extra-terrestrials in, say, a Steven Spielberg film. (In a prologue set in 1928, the man from whom Klaatu gets his DNA encounters a similar sphere and is left with stigmata-like marks on his hands.) And yet the reasons the aliens give for intervening in our affairs, and their methods of intervention, are questionable to say the least. The aliens don’t seem to have any plan to use Earth themselves, nor do we appear to pose any threat to them, so their meddling in our affairs smacks of presumptuous arrogance—a point that may be echoed in the film’s allusions to the Iraq War and the sweeping powers assumed by the government over its citizens in the name of “national security.” Likewise, the haste with which Klaatu passes judgment on us seems unwarranted, especially when he changes his mind shortly afterward and decides to spare us from complete annihilation, having learned that humans can forgive each other—which is the sort of thing you’d think the aliens might have noticed in all those decades while they were studying our planet.
Every step along the way is accompanied by biblical or religious imagery, though to what end is not entirely clear. Klaatu leaves us no Counselor, no Comforter; instead, he throws humanity back to the Dark Ages and leaves us to fend for ourselves, without any of the modern methods of production, transportation, trade, or communication that we have come to rely upon. [3] Whether this is salvation or just another form of punishment is hard to say, but it does suggest that alien messiahs sure aren’t what they used to be.
Peter T. Chattaway lives in British Columbia with his wife and three children and writes about movies.
1. On this point, I am indebted to Mark Jancovich, Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s (Manchester University Press, 1996).
2. Compare this with Isaac Asimov’s “The Evitable Conflict,” which serves as the climax to his short story collection I, Robot (1950), and which similarly expresses the hope that machines could bring peace, in that case by secretly controlling the economy.
3. For more on this, see Orson Scott Card’s review at hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2008-12-14.shtml.
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