Apr. 13th, 2015

I might not be making this case if The Day The Earth Stood Still hadn't already been remade by a team that had an amazing capacity to miss the point. The original is not a subtle film, because it had no need to be. But, the remake misses the point by such a wide margin that I suspect it of trolling the movie-going public.

Seriously, go watch the original. It's a good movie with a thoughtful message that isn't exactly subtle... but again, it doesn't need to be. That said, be prepared for spoilers from here on in.

The two movies have some elements the same. An alien lands on a public park, in broad daylight, for all the world to see. The alien has one robot companion (Gort). The alien is taken into custody by American authorities, but escapes, to then have some interactions with a woman and her son.

The remake saw fit to attach this to an environmental message. I'm not against environmental messages, but this isn't the story to attach it, and certainly not with an attached threat of deliberate genocide.

The original film had that threat of deliberate genocide at the end, but as a message of peace... Describing it that way is weird, but give it a watch, you'll understand.

For the most part, we can keep the original story intact. A flying saucer enters Earth's atmosphere and lands on a public park, in full public view. We can have a running theme of the movie, the earth stands still... for about two seconds, then keeps going. But, yes, for a moment, the all humanity will stand still.

One thing we *can* take from the remake is to have separate units leave the saucer in order to collect biological samples in international waters. These units would take care to avoid interfering with the affairs of any humans, but taking no care, whatsoever, to hide their own activities.

This would be a part of a change that I would make to the story. In the original movie, Clatu, the alien, incidentally interacts with humanity while he's trying to evade recapture by the military. In this remake, that shouldn't be incidental, but part of Clatu's task. He should be actively learning about humanity and its unique cultures.

One of the things he should be learning about humanity is that this new, single thing to unify all of humanity (we have all just learned that we are not alone in the universe) hasn't solved a single thing. The conflicts are all still there and some people are arguing for warfare... seemingly just for the sake of warfare.

It's not exactly unfounded in recent history. Obama's thousands of drone strikes have multiple criticisms, many of which focus on how easy it is to kill the wrong people. Some of those criticisms involve calling Obama weak for not being more forceful in assaults. Humanity is ready to destroy in order to win conflicts that, in some cases, just exist for their own sake.

Another change, to counter that reality, should be to note that the military actions, including taking Clatu into custody, are reasonable actions. Yes, Clatu knows that he's peaceful, and so do we after all is said and done, but the military at the time only really knows that he's alien and technologically superior.

At the end of the original movie, Clatu delivers a message to all of humanity. There is an interstellar society. Humanity is approaching that level of technology on its own. That interstellar society is ready, willing, and able to accept humanity among the interstellar society, but not if it remains warlike.

That's the threat of genocide as a message of peace. And, that should be kept. If humanity hasn't gotten over its eagerness for war by the time it's started to travel between stars, the interstellar society will not allow them to threaten the lives and cultures that makeup the interstellar society.

To put it another, more vulgar way "humanity, sort your shit before you travel between stars, or we'll sort you out with a rain of burning plasma".

My advised change here is to be specific about how low a bar that really is. The call isn't to perfect society, eliminate murder from the human species, or to resolve all conflicts. The call is to step back from war as a primary means of resolving conflict. The call is for people to stop gaining and retaining power by supporting policies (such as regarding Iran or the Middle East in general) that can be summarized as "kill them all and let God sort them out".

The fact that this genocidal threat would hang over humanity is why Clatu would have that specific task of learning as much about human cultures as possible. To take a single life should never be something casual. To make it too easy is to accomplish without feeling the cost is to make it that much harder to resist the next time. So, as Clatu leaves the earth, we would see Clatu organizing a presentation on various human cultures, their uniqueness, their spiritualities and religions, their stories and, of course, some of the every-day individuals that are so easy to empathize with.

An essential part of Clatu's mission is to make sure that, if humanity's destruction is a necessity, it's as tragic a necessity for the rest of the interstellar community as it can possibly be.

The reason the interstellar community sends people like Clatu to planets like Earth is also part of the reason wars happen in the first place. Not because one side is essentially evil, but because either side has a mix of needs and always a potential fear that the other could become the grave threat.

The interstellar community should neither be, nor claim to be, better than humanity. It's just reasonably afraid... just like the military are of Clatu.

Thoughts?

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wingedbeast

December 2021

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