Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (Part II)

Abstract

ROBERT WISE'S THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL PART II: KLAATU AS ALIEN MESSIAH AbstractIn Part I, the author had documented how the SF cult classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was traditionally perceived as a UFO film with Artificial Intelligence (AI), political, police and philosophical dimensions, and arguing that it is best understood as a profoundly religious film. In Part II, the critical literature was revisited and textually-based, humanist film criticism was again utilized as the guiding analytical lens to explicate the subtextual construction of Klaatu as an alien Messiah within an SF Passion picture. It is argued that Klaatu is the Christ-figure of 1950s science fiction cinema. IntroductionIn the Fall 2013 issue of Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media, the author closely examined the classic black-and-white UFO film The Day the Earth Stood Still. He highlighted the film's anti-nuclear political theme, its...