The Day the Earth Stood Still: The Spaceman Slaps Our Wrists

SteynonLine ^ | July 19, 2025 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

There was a small renaissance in science fiction movies in the early '50s, aside from the space operas and creature features there were politically resonant, to include big budget titles like Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. How and why science fiction films took themselves seriously isn't hard to understand if you just look at the headlines from the moment the film began production to after it hit theatres.

Screenwriter Edmund North was working on the script for the film in the first two months of 1951, at the beginning of the first full year of the Korean War. The year began with Chinese and North Korean forces capturing Seoul, and on January 11th a report was delivered to U.S. president Truman by the National Security Resources Board recommending the expansion of the war to the bombing of China and even a potential nuclear strike on the USSR.

Just two weeks after North delivered his final draft, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg began; the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb just a year and a half earlier, and they would test two more weapons in September and October of that year. Two days after filming began on April 9, Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command of the Korean War. As filming was wrapping in May, the U.S. was testing its first thermonuclear warheads at Eniwetok Atoll. Just a few days after production wrapped Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union.

That year, the U.S. Census department took delivery of the UNIVAC 1 computer from Remington Rand and the USSR sent two dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, on a sub-orbital spaceflight.

[chud]

That was my take on it as well.

[Paperpusher]

Forbidden Planet was also a good one of the same era, and it still holds up well today.

[cuz1961]

Old Freepers

/

Like that ?

Hypocrite

[NonValueAdded]

that too was good