83 - The Day the Earth Stood Still

    Klaatu, an alien, lands on Earth.  He wants to assemble world leaders in an effort to explain his message to them.  That doesn't work out, so he winds up hanging around, and tries to coordinate a meeting through other means.  In the meantime, the military is getting nervous, and they're trying to deal with the robot guardian that Klaatu has brought along, Gort.
    This movie seems to have defined the sci-fi genre pretty solidly.  What's remarkable is how many big names are in this.  Robert Wise directed it!  A score by Bernard Herrmann!
    The first thing I noticed is how little time is wasted.  The story jumps right into the main event.  There's no introduction to characters, no time spent setting up secondary stories.  Straight to the main event.  There are montages going on pretty often in this, which makes the whole thing seem like it races along faster than normal.  They do a pretty good job of avoiding using stock footage, too!
    The main thing that the movie has to offer is a much more peaceful, and philosophical approach to mankind's place in the universe.  We already have a big aggression problem between nations.  This is an early cold war perspective, but we see a lot of this still going on.  Pre-emptive military action is pretty commonplace now.  The fact that we have a hard time arguing against it is a bad sign too.
    But as we extend our abilities out into space, it becomes more likely that we would find ourselves in conflict with other beings.  It's not a good idea to extend the cold war to aliens, especially if we have no hope of outclassing them.

    What I found distracting as I watched this was how much it seemed like Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space.  While there's the horror/reanimated corpses angle to Plan 9, the primary message is the same - we need to keep you from making mistakes with weapons, or else we have to wipe you out.