Oh My Gort! Another 50s Remake?

Imagine sitting down in the cinema, popcorn in hand, ready to watch the new Keanu Reeves film. Trailers have shown a great orb rising from the ocean, football arenas disintegrating, and the briefest of brief glimpses of a laser-emitting robot. The film starts, and the first lines are uttered: “Holy mackerel! Call Headquarters! Get the lieutenant!”

Profanities from the fifties may inspire many things, but urgency is not one of them. So Scott Derrickson’s remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is less of a remake, and more of an updating, similar to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. It is not the only film of its kind to be remade; the 1950s films that offered a different concept to the traditional alien invasion, namely They Come In Peace (or at least, varying degrees of peace), are now reappearing.

Some, like The Day the Earth Stood Still, while undoubtedly dated when viewed today, deserve a place among the classic ‘atomic’ movies of the time. Alien Klaatu and his terrifying robot Gort come to warn Earth of the perils of continuing warfare and development of weaponry, and understandably so. This is the fifties - World War II may be over, but the horrors of the nuclear bomb are fresh in people’s minds.

Two years later, It Came From Outer Space offered a slightly different outlook, capitalising on the suspicions towards the Russians at the beginning of the Cold War. As aliens crash land on Earth, they are forced to inhabit the bodies of humans - these peaceful but misunderstood extraterrestrials are used as a way of emphasising the need for tolerance over violence.

Perhaps most surprising as a candidate for remaking is Plan 9 From Outer Space, Ed Wood’s ironically termed ‘masterpiece’, also known as the worst film of all time. Wood’s success in his attempt at social commentary is questionable, but behind the wobbly gravestones, undead Vampira and tenacious link between the plot and the last remaining footage of Bela Lugosi (who had died three years previously) is a reiteration of Klaatu’s original message: be wary of scientific progress in times of political strife.

Of the three, only one remake, that of The Day the Earth Stood Still, will see a cinematic release. Times have changed dramatically since Robert Wise’s film, and a direct reproduction would probably not excite today’s cinemagoers. The original’s meandering scenes of everyday life in America and the majority of the population’s surprising lack of panic at the appearance of a flying saucer makes for a slow-paced film by modern standards. Yet Derrickson believes the core message is still relevant today.

Inevitably, The Day the Earth Stood Still will not remain an ‘atomic’ movie - this concept no longer applies. Even the use of the wise alien is obsolete; in the 50s the space race was just beginning, capturing the public’s imagination and desire for discovery of the unknown. Now science has shown space to be a largely barren place. Meanwhile the threat of the A-bomb is replaced with another, more modern man-made issue - global warming. The revised topic jars somewhat with the original’s social distrust; while characters previously pointed the finger at the Russians, will they now blame the Middle East, and if so, of what? Derrickson’s new vision seems more comparable to recent films such as The Happening or The Day After Tomorrow (whose title, incidentally, is a possible reference to a comment made by Klaatu in Wise’s original). Regardless, now viewers are being given the choice - watch the original, watch the remake, watch both. As Klaatu informed the world, “the decision rests with you”.