The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 & 2008): Come in Peace, Or Else
Journey Through Sci-Fi: Science Fiction Film HistoryShow Notes
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and its 2008 remake. The alien who comes in peace and brings a threat with him. Journey Through Sci-Fi continues We Come in Peace, our series tracing the history of friendly aliens on screen. This time, the foundational one. A saucer lands on a Washington baseball field, a man walks out with a gift and a message, and he is shot for it inside a minute. Klaatu is polite, patient and 78 years old in a 35 year old body. Behind him stands Gort, seven foot seven of rubber suit and near limitless force. We get into what 1951 audiences carried into the cinema with them, why a film about world peace was built from a short story that had nothing to do with world peace, and how much of the friendly alien playbook starts right here. Then 2008. Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, a swarm of nanobots and a McDonald's. The nuclear threat becomes an environmental one, Klaatu arrives having already decided we are not worth saving, and the remake we both expected to be terrible turns out to be an admirable attempt at updating the classic sci-fi movie. In this episode: Flying saucer mania Farewell to the Master: Harry Bates' 1940 story, and the twist Fox threw away Michael Rennie's charm offensive, and the two separate times he gets gunned down Gort's little pants, circus strongmen and the Superman connection Who would you take an alien to today? Brian Cox or Martin Lewis Milk, milkshakes, and the day the American dairy industry stood still GORT as an acronym Old Testament orbs, arks and biblical locusts Is humanity worth saving? Asked and answered in a McDonald's car park Also discussed: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, A Message from Mars, Destination Moon, The Man from Planet X, The Twilight Zone, War of the Worlds (2005), The Happening, WALL-E, Armageddon, The Matrix, John Wick, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Alien: Romulus, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Disclosure Day. Gort or GORT? Tell us which robot you would rather meet in a field. Next time: It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Warning from Space (1956). Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne. Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can, a review or a share costs nothing and helps a lot. Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.
More from Journey Through Sci-Fi: Science Fiction Film History
The 27th Day (1957) and The Space Children (1958). Two films that hand humanity a weapon and watch what happens next. Journey Through Sci-Fi continues We Come in Peace, our series tracing the history of friendly aliens on screen. This time, one alien picks five adults at random and gives them all the power to end the world. The other skips the adults entirely and goes to the children. First, The 27th Day. Five strangers from five countries are abducted, handed capsules that can kill every human within 3,000 miles, and dropped straight back home. Only they can open the box. Anyone can fire what's inside. It's a thought experiment with a script wrapped round it, it runs 75 minutes, and the final act takes a turn neither of us saw coming. Then Jack Arnold, a year on from It Came from Outer Space. A glowing brain washes up near a missile base where the Air Force is about to park a hydrogen bomb in orbit. It never speaks, never explains itself, and does all its work through the children of the men building the bomb. In this episode: - An alien who introduces himself as "the alien", in a leather jumpsuit, wasting nobody's time - A lock that only opens for you, and a weapon anyone can fire once it's open - Shaving off a moustache as a witness protection programme - A nuanced Soviet soldier and a cartoon Soviet general, in the same 1957 American film - An H-bomb parked in the sky, and the kids who think it's brilliant - Wisdom and innocence, and why the alien never once talks to an adult - A stepdad with it coming, and a body nobody grieves Also discussed: The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space, Warning from Space, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Colossus of New York, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Twilight Zone, The Box, The Blob, Flubber, Micromegas, The Midwich Cuckoos, Five Children and It, Spirited Away and Space Truckers. Five adults or a gang of kids? Tell us who you would trust with the button. Next time: The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne. Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can, a review or a share costs nothing and helps a lot. Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.
It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Warning from Space (1956). Two sets of aliens who mean us no harm, and both decide the safest thing to do is put on a human face. Journey Through Sci-Fi continues We Come in Peace, our series tracing the history of friendly aliens on screen. This time, two films where the visitors are not hostile, and nobody believes it until they see it with their own eyes. First, Ray Bradbury's desert. A meteor that isn't a meteor, an amateur astronomer nobody listens to, and townspeople going missing one by one. Bradbury handed Universal the monster movie they asked for and the one he actually wanted to make, and got away with it. We get into Jack Arnold's frontier eye, the 3D gimmicks, and the spider speech that says everything the film has to say and changes nobody's mind. Then Japan, three years later. Starfish aliens in fabric suits, a rogue planet on its way, and a script by one of Kurosawa's regular writers. Japan's first science fiction film in colour swerves from horror to magical girl comedy to a bleak disaster movie, sometimes inside one scene. It has the friendliest aliens we have met so far, which does not stop them acting mostly in their own interest. In this episode: - Universal's first 3D film, and the cork boulders fired at the premiere audience - An intermission 55 minutes into an 80 minute film, and why the projector is to blame - Barbara Rush's Golden Globe and her three identical screams - Starfish pyjamas, and the scene that shows you far too much - A ring communicator, a tennis match, and a magical girl detour into a nuclear disaster movie - Friendly aliens, or just extremely risk averse ones? Also discussed: The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Message from Mars, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Space Children, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Godzilla, Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Ran, The Hidden Fortress, I Live in Fear, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Star Trek: First Contact. Starfish or a one-eyed jellyfish alien? Tell us which one you would rather find at the bottom of your garden. Next time: The 27th Day (1957) and The Space Children (1958). Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne. Bonus episodes on Patreon: patreon.com/journeythroughscifi Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can, a review or a share costs nothing and helps a lot. Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.
Where does the friendly alien begin? Not with E.T., but with a Martian exiled to Edwardian London to reform the most selfish man alive. Journey Through Sci-Fi returns with a brand new series. We Come in Peace traces the history of friendly aliens on screen. In this opener we set out the stall: what makes a visitor friendly rather than hostile, why everything gets measured against E.T., and how one mistranslated Italian word put Martians in our heads. Then we go back to 1913 and A Message from Mars, widely held to be the first British science fiction film. Ramiel, a Martian stripped of his rank and banished to Earth, has to reform a selfish London bachelor called Horace Parker. It is A Christmas Carol with a spaceman, and almost every benevolent visitor since owes it something. In this episode: Friendly visitor or invader? Where the line actually sits Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), possibly the first friendly alien story ever written Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, and how 1947 gave us the flying saucer Schiaparelli's canali: the mistranslation that built fictional Mars Ramiel's tough love, the zap power, and some baffling 1913 camera trickery Lizard people or Arthurian courtiers? Britain in 1913: picture palaces and a film industry inventing itself Also discussed: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, Earth Girls Are Easy, It Came from Outer Space, Aelita: Queen of Mars, A Princess of Mars, Project Hail Mary and Armageddon. Watch along with us. A Message from Mars is free on BFI Replay: https://replay.bfi.org.uk/video/7f470ecc-3ccd-5cde-aca0-ac97153f8ecd Lizards or courtiers? Tell us what you saw. Next time: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) meets its 2008 remake. Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne. Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi Join the JTSF Logbook our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can a review or a share costs nothing and helps a lot. Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the Evolution of Horror Network.
Some of them came to warn us. Some of them just wanted to go home. We Come in Peace is a new series from Journey Through Sci-Fi, tracing the friendly alien across a century of film and television. We start in the earliest days of visitors from other worlds and work our way to the present, asking how and why that image kept changing. Along the way: The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space, Warning from Space, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Starman, Cocoon, Alien Nation, Coneheads, Men in Black, The Iron Giant, Arrival and plenty more. Episode one arrives (in peace) on 10 September, with new episodes every other week. Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH network. Hosted by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the first episode.
New to Journey Through Sci-Fi? Start here. Before we launch our next full series on friendly aliens, we're taking a journey back through the archive with a special starter pack episode, featuring some of our favourite clips from past series. Across this episode, we revisit some of the biggest ideas in sci-fi cinema: the mythic storytelling of the original Star Wars trilogy, the artificial intelligence and uneasy humanity of Blade Runner, the time-loop perfection of Groundhog Day, the simulated reality of The Matrix, the collapsing world of Mad Max, and the haunted-house-in-space horror of Event Horizon. Featuring discussions of: Star Wars Original Trilogy Blade Runner Metropolis Groundhog Day The Matrix Trilogy Mad Max Event Horizon Whether you're a longtime listener revisiting old favourites or a new listener looking for the best place to begin, this episode is a guided tour through the many worlds, subgenres and strange obsessions of Journey Through Sci-Fi. Our new series, We Come in Peace, exploring the history of friendly aliens on screen, begins soon. Follow Journey Through Sci-Fi now so you don't miss it.