If I had to rank them, I’d say Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet and Them with The Day the Earth Stood Still somewhere in the top ten, but definitely below my top 3 50s SciFi movies.  The first “remake” of Invasion was clearly a sequel based upon the Kevin McCarthy cameo, and while it was okay, I wondered, as I often do, why they try to improve on perfection.  Why watch a remade Casablanca when the original still stands as one of the best ever?  Some say it’s so it can be shown in color.  But I say some points are better made in Black and White!

Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, was good, but took us in a different direction from the 1953 Byron Haskin classic with Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.  Still I stand by my question WHY a remake?  Why not a different movie altogether. 

But 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still left us with the Alien demand for cleaning up our collective societal act or having the Earth “reduced to a burned out cinder”.  When I saw the previews, I thought this movie represented the return of Klaatu to make good on his threat and in a lot of ways it could have been just that. Instead, to me, it represents a masterful rework of the original tale, now able to comment on the oh so many social ills we have amplified since 1951 but were not allowed to talk about back then. 

Klaatu still appears brilliant and confused by the human race, but this time he brings with him a very much new and improved model of Gort and an icy cold set of logic that we, literally, cannot resist.  This time the safe words of “Klaatuu barada niktu” remain unspoken but the The Earth Still Stands Still.  

In a rare departure from my stand against remakes, I sincerely applaud this continuation of the inspirational thought process that began some 57 years ago.  This is not OUR planet. If we continue to stand idly by for another 50 or 60 years while waiting for someone else to fix it, aliens or not, the Earth will have it’s stillness.