Posted on 12/09/2008 10:41:03 AM PST by JoeProBono
The original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still deliberately left audiences with many questions. Does Klaatu return to Earth? Does humanity prove itself worthy of survival? In 1981, Fox commissioned science fiction author Ray Bradbury to pen a sequel to the film. But Bradbury's script never made it to the silver screen - perhaps because it minimizes the roles of the robot and his alien master, trades Klaatu’s message of peace for a lesson on solar power, and features a Christmas love story. Bradbury’s script outline for The Day the Earth Stood Still II: The Evening of the Second Day opens on Christmas Eve, thirty years after the events of the original film. Chris Atkins, an employee at the Vehicle Assembly Building for the Apollo Mission, witnesses the landing of an alien spacecraft, a sight he half-remembers from his childhood. It is revealed that someone left the spacecraft, and NASA officials are on the lookout for him, her, or it. But Atkins has a vague feeling about the ship, a feeling he describes with a vague bit of dialogue:
And they said WE were paranoid because we knew along the agenda being pushed down our throats by Hollyweird.
We just see right through it. It scares me how weaker less disciplined minds soak it all up.
Today, we see the results of this indoctrination.
Welcome to Obama Nation.
I can’t think of a horror flick worse than this!
How about the new movie? Every time I see the trailer, I get irritated.
Woman: "Have you come to help our planet"?
Keanu say incredulously "Your Planet?"
Now the enviroweenies think that we don't belong here at all. They should all kill themselves as a sacrifice to Gaia.
Knock at the spaceship door,
Who is it?
It’s Klaatu; open up man.
I got the stuff.
Klaatu’s not here, man.
No, it’s me Klaatu, let me in!
I think a cop saw me.
Who?
It’s ME Klaatu; I got the stuff man.
Oh!
Klaatu’s not here ...
I have my doubts that much of Ray Bradbury's original draft made it into the final shooting script with Hollywood's "magic script doctors".
I'd heard that an eco "remake" was in the works. I suspect that this is that project. I'd like to see what Ray Bradbury's take is on this film as Hollywood has made it today.
Arafat???
Ray Bradbury writes every day. I doubt that he’s making the rounds to promote one work over all of the other things he’s working on.
Likewise! In fact, I saw Bradbury interviewed on Turner Classic Movies by that other old guy, the usual host, just two or three weeks ago. I did appreciate that Bradbury, a few years back, slammed Michael Moore for using 'Fahrenheit 911' as the title for his propaganda movie.
Yeah, it's not like human beings ever feel annoyed by ants or would do anything to harm them!/sarcasm
The point of the original movie (but not the original story) was that Earth was apparently poised to begin venturing into space and militarizing it. The aliens didn't care a whit whether we Earthlings "blew each other up" or not.
As Klaatu explicitly stated at the conclusion of the film, his people had created a police force of intelligent, completely autonomous super-robots to whom they had entrusted total discretion in dealing with any gesture of interplaneetary aggression on the part of one species against another.
Klaatu had come to Earth to warn us that his people were powerless to stop the robots from annihilating humanity if we were ever to act aggressively in outer space.
Of course, the movie is guilty of one laughably optimistic presupposition, namely that, in the 1950s, Earth was on the verge of being capable of performing acts of interplanetary mischief which might have attracted the attention of robotic patrols cruising around the Solar System in their flying saucers or warranted their intervention.
But on the whole, the film displays a high degree of internal logical consistency extremely and has aged remarkably well.
I see absolutely no need to remake or "re-imagine" it.
By the way, in case anyone is interested:
"Gort, Klaatu borada nikto!"
means
"Gort, revive Klaatu!"
Regards,
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots.
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there's no such thing.... You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
Lieutenant John Harper: He's mad.
Tanna: Mad? Is it mad that you destroy other people to save yourselves? You have done this. Is it mad that one country must destroy another to save themselves? You have also done this. How then is it "mad" that one planet must destroy another who threatens the very existence-...
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured.
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can *explode* one. A ray of sunlight is made up of *many* atoms! Jeff Trent: So what if we *do* develop this Solanite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: [with disgust] Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Jeff Trent: That's all I'm taking from you! [pistol-whips Eros upside the head]
- Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space
One of my favorite parts in the original movie was when Klaatu wrote the final piece of the long equation on the professor’s blackboard, and then later, when the awestruck professor asks Klaatu if that final piece is the exact solution to the equation, Klaatu responds, “It’s close enough”.
Ash: "Klaatu Barrada n... Necktie... Nickel... It's an 'N' word..."
Another piece of trivia: The female lead, Patricia Neal, played Dominique in one of my all time favorite classics, the Fountainhead.
She is still alive. God Bless her!
Forgot to mention: Patricia Neal is also active in pro-life causes.
What a class act she really is. So unlike the rest of Hollyweird. She lives on the East Coast.
Ohfergawdsake!!!!
LOL!
She won an Academy Award for her performance in HUD, a great Paul Newman flick, and was also very good in A FACE IN THE CROWD.
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