The Day the Earth Stood Still: Perspectives on the remake

By Yun Xie, Kunio M. Sayanagi | Published: December 08, 2008 - 11:32PM CT

This past weekend, Ars writers Yun Xie and Kunio Sayanagi were invited to attend the pre-release events for the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, a remake of the classic 1951 Sci-Fi film. The first event was held on the campus of California Institute of Technology on Friday, December 5th, where lead actor Keanu Reeves and the director Scott Derrickson held a panel discussion with scientists Maria Spiropulu, Sean Carroll and Joel Burdick. The discussion was followed by a screening of the film. In this article, Yun gives a recap of highlights from the discussion, and Kuneo gives his impression of film itself from the viewpoint of a professional scientist. The film is set for release on December 12^th.

Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves isn't one of the stars you would normally expect to see at the California Institute of Technology, a world-renowned university and home to many stars of the science world. He and director Scott Derrickson took time away from the usual routine of promoting their upcoming sci-fi movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, to attend a slightly different marketing event at Caltech's Beckman auditorium on Friday. Instead of focusing on the mechanics and entertainment values of the movie, they were there to discuss the relationship between art and science in a panel with three leading scientists. Ars was there to catch every moment of philosophical discourse, genuine humor, and awkwardness.

Joining Reeves and Derrickson on the panel were Caltech Astrophysicist Sean Carroll and Caltech Robotic Engineer Joel Burdick. The fifth panelist, CERN physicist Maria Spiropulu, acted as the host by directing the conversation and presenting audience members' questions, which were collected throughout the show on note cards. From the evening's discussion, the topics that involved the fusion of art, science, and religion stood out.

Photo Credit: Kunio Sayanagi.

Is science the antithesis of art?

Science can often appear cold and removed from humanity; data seems to reign supreme, and when it comes to the graphics that science uses to convey ideas, accuracy is far more important than aesthetic design. So, does that mean science is the antithesis of art?

Derrickson certainly doesn't think so. He finds the idea ridiculous. He believes that "we are all searching for some kind of truth," and that "takes different forms." Carroll agreed, pointing out that movies and art can often bring up questions that science might not be able to directly address. Things like morality are hard to quantify in science, but art can probe its depths in various forms. However, that doesn't mean science lacks morals. Researchers must have a great deal of moral integrity to produce trustworthy results and to avoid misusing the trust placed on them. Humanity is at the heart of science and art.

At this point, Burdick lightened the mood by making a "small complaint to the art community." He noted that scientists have one of the highest mortality rates in movies. He would like to see that remedied in the future.

Keanu and Christ Roles

Spiropulu and several of the audience members pointed out that Keanu Reeves has played quite a few Christ-like figures, like Neo and Constantine. Klaatu, Reeves' character in the upcoming movie, is another one of those roles. He plays an alien that is "a friend to the Earth" and triggers massive global upheaval to perhaps save humanity in the end. What does he think of those roles?

Reeves believes "those are good roles," and he appreciates the chance to play "roles that have restitution." There is "a searching quality to these roles," and he enjoys finding the human qualities like redemption, evil, and virtue. That's why movies allow us to ask questions. For instance, we are polluting our planet, causing massive extinctions, and killing ourselves in war. What would aliens think of us? Carroll warns that "aliens might be very judgmental." This naturally led to the topic of God.

God and Aliens

One audience member asked, "What role does God play in whether or not there are aliens?"

Carroll proposed that religious people should ask themselves that question. For one thing, "can aliens invent Gods?" We invent Gods, so if aliens also do it, what would that mean? Would we then all have the same God? Or, would that mean living beings simply invent God to explain things that seem unfathomable. However, if Aliens arrived, he probably wouldn't ask about God right away. He later on revealed that he's anxious to ask "is our universe unique?"

Are we unique?

When Spiropulu asked, "Keanu, do you believe in alien beings?" he responded, "I feel like I am the theoretical guy." It's a hard question, as there are no concrete answers with our current knowledge; one can only speculate. Carroll put the probability of there being aliens "between 0 and 1." After all, he reasoned that "as long as the laws of physics allow complexity, life is possible."

Further complicating the question is the possible emergence of machine life. Burdick believes that "the boundary of human and machine is blurring." Machine parts are already being implanted into people to help them overcome medical difficulties. As artificial intelligence and robotics become more sophisticated, we may eventually face a new form of life without having to venture outside of our planet.

Photo Credit: Kunio Sayanagi.

Although the evening was enjoyable and thought-provoking, there were moments of awkwardness. Notably, several members of the audience laughed impolitely whenever Reeves spoke, which seemed to cause the actor, known for being short on words, to become even shorter in answering questions. When asked how he liked to prepare for roles that are nonhuman, he answered, "you read the script." In response to a question regarding how the role of Neo compared to that of Klaatu, he simply stated that they were "both great roles." After those short responses, there would be an uncomfortable pause followed by a slightly more elaborate answer from Reeves. It was clear that he was doing his best to be good natured, but he was out of his element.

It also didn't help that note cards containing audience questions appeared to be selected at random, leading Derrickson to remark at one point "these are strange questions." For example, Reeves was asked "are you human?" He replied, "If you cut me, do I not bleed," and then inquired jokingly, "What time is this over?"

An audience of mostly Caltech students and faculty can be a tough crowd. Unsurprisingly, the Caltech professors shined on that stage, presenting poise and wisdom. Derrickson also held his own; he showed a great deal of respect for scientific research and proved to be very well-read. From his personal studies, he noticed "a gap between science literature and science fiction." He thinks advanced science is sexy, and you can make movies based solely on it, but fiction hasn't caught up yet because there isn't enough understanding. He made an effort in the new movie to at least respect real science. He has cut a lot of the nonsense from the original script with the help of a science team.

Gort and Klaatu in the original movie

Spiropulu did an admirable job of trying to keep the conversations going as smoothly as possible, but as an experimental physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider, she probably has little opportunity to practice being a debate moderator or interviewer. When merging science and Hollywood in a panel comprised of stars from vastly different spheres, it might help to borrow a host from a news network or radio station next time.

A scientist's impressions of the movie

During the first evening's discussion, scientist Sean Carroll remarked that the parallel between a good movie and a good science project is that both involve raising a good "what if" question. This "what if" process is very familiar to a theoretical physicist like Carroll—for example, Albert Einstein asked "What would I see if I flew at the speed of light?" to come up with the theory of special relativity—this process is called a Gedanken Experiment, or a "thought experiment." In a gedanken experiment, a scientist comes up with a formerly unknown, exotic situation and theorizes how the laws of nature must work under the imagined extreme condition.

The what-if asked by The Day The Earth Stood Still is this: What would an advanced alien civilization see if they studied Planet Earth, and what would they do about their findings?

The imagined alien civilization's conclusions upon studying Earth are clearly spelled out in the movie's trailer: If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives. The alien civilization discovers the Earth on the brink of a total destruction, and draws a simple conclusion—planet Earth can be saved by eliminating just one single species: homo sapiens.

In both the 1951 and 2008 versions, the alien agent Klaatu (played by Keanu Reeves in the new version) gives us one last chance to show that we are evolved enough to be able to reason and to change our behavior. When Klaatu fails to find sufficient capacity for reason in our politicians, it seeks out a better contact.

Conclusions

Klaatu's search for a suitable Earthling to interact with is another what-if the movie is asking; who will the aliens turn to if they want to communicate their existence and intentions to the Earthlings? The movie concludes that scientists are Klaatu's best bet, since they're trained to shift and adapt their view of the world as new discoveries are made and old concepts become obsolete.

In the new movie, it is through a scientist that Klaatu is exposed to humanity. Scientist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connolly) is an astrobiologist who is called into action when Klaatu lands on Earth and ends up acting as its guide. Klaatu learns the complexity of human emotions through the relationship between Helen and her stepson.

It's in Klaatu's relationship with Benson where I begin to disagree with how the movie portrays Klaatu—why should complex emotions be foreign concepts to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization? Throughout the movie, Klaatu is an emotionless figure who acts only on cold logic. Why shouldn't any sufficiently complex civilization also develop contradicting moral values, conflicting emotions, compassion, and love? It might have been interesting to involve, for example, an evolutionary psychologist in the movie to do a gedanken experiment on this aspect of the encounter, where complex emotions might be manifested in very different ways. The what-if I am proposing here is this: how does one communicate trust if we were to have such an encounter?

Solid adaptation

Even the new movie left some interesting ideas unexplored, overall. I found it to be an excellent adaptation of the original film's theme to today's world. I was impressed by the old version when I watched it a few hours before the new one's premiere on Saturday, and I thought that the 1951 version had such a clear and well-packaged message that I didn't see any need for the film to be re-made. So I was very curious what the new movie could possibly add to the old version, beyond the obvious technological advances in the visual effects. But I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Among its many small improvements, the new movie added realistic portrayals of women in science and politics, and it incorporated families of mixed race into the mesh of the main storyline, which is basically kept the same. And of course, it is rather rare that the scientists are portrayed as compassionate, conscientious beings in Hollywood films, and I am happy to see this aspect of the movie well-preserved and even improved.

Regardless of what conclusions we humans draw from the film's message, the gedanken experiment conducted by The Day Earth Stood Still also has a clear implication to advanced alien civilizations, who surely are going to watch the movie somehow, if they have not already. In both old and new versions of the movie, the aliens land on Earth in a sudden and invasive manner, which is interpreted by us humans as an aggressive move. But any alien sci-fi fans should now know that, if the goal is to establish a peaceful relationship with the Earthlings, barging in on us clearly is not the way to go.