The Conversation is a feature at PopOptiq bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their thirteenth piece, they discuss Robert Wise’s sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). LANDON’S TAKE Works of Hollywood genre – be they science fiction, westerns, or gangster films – have received serious …
“For our policemen, we created a race of robots,” the Alien Klaatu tells a crowd of fear-stricken earthlings in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Robots like “Gort,” we are told, were made to patrol the galaxy to preserve civility. “Your choice is simple,” Klaatu tells us. “Join us, and live in peace…or pursue your present course, and face …
Whether rightly or wrongly, Man has been declared has the superior being on planet Earth. For the scope of their cognitive skills, their ability to emote in countless ways, the complexity of their intellect, such factors have led humans to dominate, so to speak, other forms of life as well as organize itself in vast, regimented societies with hundreds of customs and rules.
Undertones: Volume 6 The classic science fiction film emerged during a period of great societal paranoia in the US in the early 1950s. The post-WW2 environment saw an increased concern with nuclear armament and a fear of the infiltration of communism on the American way of life. Essentially, the sci-fi film was Hollywood’s great metaphor …