The film is about this humanoid alien named Klaatu. He comes to earth in a spaceship accompanied by an eight-foot robot named Gort. He has an important message for the entire human race. Klaatu only gets to speak through a few sentences before some lunatic shoots him down, blood oozing out of his shoulder.
Klaatu goes to a hospital where he's treated by doctors ("He makes me look like a third world witch doctor!") but the doctors eventually learn that Klaatu has healed himself with some sort of futuristic healing salve. He gets himself out of there, mysteriously. The government was not going to let Klaatu go off and do his own thing. Their primary directive was to keep him imprisoned for a while, maybe even do some experiments on him (the dark side of political and scientific research). They don't show on-screen how he leaves the hospital, as it was surrounded by army personnel. In the next scene we find him on the streets, at a dry cleaners. He takes a suit with the name Mr. Carpenter on it, his new human identity.
He finds lodging in a sort of boarding house, using the name Mr. Carpenter. There's a boy and her mother there that Klaatu becomes involved in. He babysits the son while the mother is off with a guy (boyfriend, businessman) who wants to marry her. While exploring the city Klaatu asks the kid who the most important person in the world is. He says some scientist. So off they go the scientists's house.
Klaatu tells the scientist that he needs to bring together all the greatest minds of Earth to the spaceship and there he will give a speech outlining a message for the future of human civilization. There's some political and relationship stuff that happens in between that happening. For example the mother's boyfriend suspects Klaatu is the alien (who everybody is looking for) and he informs the authorities. Consequently the mother dumps her boyfriend and goes off with our alien main character.
In the end Klaatu ends up getting shot (again!). But this time Gort (the eight-foot tall robot) comes to his rescue, doing a lot of damage in the meantime. Klaatu had told the mother some alien language words that she needed to say to Gort if anything was to happen to him. So she ends up saying the magick alien words and the robot calms down and stops destroying everything.
Gort picks up the mother and they go in the spaceship. Gort places Klaatu is some sort of plasma beam generator healing tank and it makes a bunch of melodious beeping and tea-pot kettle-esque sounds. My friends really liked that sound effect and scene in particular, although I found it to be quite jarring. Klaatu starts breathing again and the gun wound is but a blood spot on his suit.
He puts on his alien clothes, this sort of chrome sports suit and goes to address the greatest minds of Earth. He warns them about their tendency to war and violence. And that if they keep it up Earth will be blown asunder. He doesn't really explain much beyond this, its almost as if his entire being for going to Earth was more of a warning, which the Earthlings could construe as a sort of threat.
After that he goes back into the ship, which causes the smartest Earthlings to run in fear, ironic. Klaatu and the mother fly off into space. The End in cool science fiction letters. Cool movie.
A movie like this is quite stylized for its time period, the 50's. Its a sort of old school science fiction when science fiction was still in the ghetto. The characters are sympathetic, understanding, and realistic. The idea of an alien coming to warn Earthlings about their nature and future is a popular idea. The movie does a great job of developing Klaatu and the ways in which he learns to work with humans from a different civilization from his own. I think I got a lot out of that idea from the movie.
The film can be found on Netflix.
Klaatu: I must admit I'm a little confused.
No comments:
Post a Comment