The evolution of the benevolent alien

A scene from the forthcoming remake of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. The remake portrays Klaatu as less benevolent than in the original, 1951 film.

(Credit: Twentieth-Century Fox)

In its bid for our ticket-buying dollars, Hollywood has long sought to reach into our pockets by giving us films that appeal to our current sense of hopefulness or fearfulness.

Over the years, one of the most reliable mechanisms for doing that has been the alien, the evil, destructive invaders hell-bent on laying waste to everything we hold dear (The War of the Worlds, say) or the inquisitive visitors curious to make our acquaintance and see what they can learn from us and our experience (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, maybe).

And to many, the extent to which these film aliens have been friend or foe has had a great deal to do with our general emotional state of mind.

"I think that it goes in waves," said Yair Landau, the former president of Sony Pictures Digital. "There was a wave of benign aliens around E.T. and Starman...Then there was a wave of, 'They're out to destroy us' aliens, like in Indepdence Day and the remake of War of the Worlds. It depends on whether we're looking for fear or reassurance as a society."

In 1951, Twentieth-Century Fox released director Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. In that Cold War-era film, we meet an alien, Klaatu, who has come to express, in the most soothing terms possible, that if we proceed with our nuclear weapons proliferation and are seen by the galactic consortium Klaatu represents as presenting a threat beyond our own atmosphere, we will be destroyed.

Even as he delivers this mortal threat, Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie, comes across as sympathetic, even benevolent, as he really, really wants to give us humans some say in what happens to us. He seems really to care, as expressed by his budding friendship (would it have become romance?) with Helen Benson, played by Patricia Neal, and the urgency with which he strives to deliver--even in the face of a belligerent U.S. military--his message that we have some say in our fate.

Next month, Twentieth-Century Fox will release a remake of the film, this time directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu.

This time around, Klaatu is here to tell us that the galactic consortium has had it with humans' mistreatment of our own planet, and he has come to explain that, effectively, his colleagues have taken the side of the Earth over the humans. Large-scale explosions and destruction ensue.

Why would these beings from outer space care so much about the health of the third rock from the sun? That's not entirely clear, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute who worked for a time as a scientific adviser on the film.

"The (aliens) come down...trying to save the planet, but saving the planet requires them to obliterate the problem threatening the planet," Shostak said, "and in this case, that's not just SUVs and coal-fired plants."

In the 57 years between versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still, aliens covered a lot of evolutionary ground, so to speak, in how they've been portrayed. Some of that ground has had to do with the world's emotional makeup and some has had to do with what has been possible from a technological perspective.

For example, the look and feel of the aliens in a film like the remake of The War of the Worlds have almost nothing in common with those of the original. What originally had to be built using crude models and special effects is now done to exacting detail with computer graphics. And these advances put a lot of pressure on filmmakers today to keep the audience's attention with a story while those in the old days could do so much more with the novelty of on-screen aliens, no matter how rudimentary they looked.

"Anything you can conceive of can be (computer generated)," said Landau. "Just blowing stuff up, or just having an alien creature itself, is not very compelling...We're (now) able to give aliens a much higher complexity, so you can imbue them with character...Now you can make us believe almost any physical destruction you can think of and you can make us believe in any sort of 3D CGI environment. So it's all about whether you can drive compelling story and performance."

Our friends the aliens
Further, as Landau put it, the story has to fill in gaps left by the fact that people view aliens--who have long stood in for foreigners, or the "other"--as less threatening. And while that presents writing challenges to filmmakers, it also opens doors to a whole new era of stories in which aliens can more easily be presumed to be friendlier than in the past.

An example of that might be Contact, the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film in which Jodie Foster plays a scientist scanning the skies for intelligent life. Upon discovering a far-away civilization, Foster interprets messages sent to us as instructions on building a monumental transporter that will allow us to travel to the aliens' distant world. And while the film gives a nod to the inevitable military suspicions of the aliens' motives, it is the optimistic view that carries the day.

"Aliens in fiction are exaggerations of our hopes and fears about ourselves," said Mike Kuniavsky, a co-founder of the ubiquitous computing device company ThingM. "If they were genuinely alien, they wouldn't be particularly interesting because we wouldn't be able to understand them."

To Allan Lundell, a co-founder of the DigiBarn computer museum and a former editor of Byte magazine, the question of how aliens are depicted has very much to do with the financial considerations involved in how people's fears and hopes resonate at any given moment in time.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger was popular as a good Terminator, keeping us safe from the evil sentient machines and the ever-present Skynet," Lundell said. "But soon, he will be facing serious competition from a new hero, Ramona, a sentient cybernetic being hatched from the inventive mind of Ray Kurzweil, in his upcoming feature release, The Singularity is Near. Much cuter than Arnie, she saves the world from a nano grey goo attack while showing us what love beyond biology is all about."

Steven Spielberg's 'E.T.' is a case of a film in which the alien is unequivocally benevolent. Its tone, therefore, was hopeful.

(Credit: Universal Pictures)

The question here, Lundell poses, is whether an artificial intelligence construct can be considered an alien. Given that the term "alien" in this context is generally assumed to be a creature from another world, that's open to debate. But his point is a good one, as Ramona, as Lundell described her, is certainly the other.

Yet even as cybernetic others will be increasingly making their way onto the silver screen, it's almost certain that malevolent aliens of a traditional kind will also be making regular appearances, despite the fact that we, as a people, are becoming more and more comfortable around those with whom we aren't familiar.

And why?

"Aliens have a bigger role today as bad guys in film," Shostak, of the SETI Institute, said, "because once the Soviet Union collapses, who are you going to make as bad guys? You can make certain (nationalities be) bad guys, but it's a little hard because everybody's so culturally sensitive. And aliens don't have any advocacy organizations that are going to protest (outside) your theater if you make them the bad guy."

Today, it seems, Hollywood has decided to apply that approach even to well-worn stories like The Day the Earth Stood Still.

For where the Klaatu of 1951 adopted a concerned facial expression as he explained to humanity that he wanted to save us, Reeves' 2008 Klaatu seems content to dispense with us as the only way to save our planet.

And while there might be some truth to that conclusion, it's not very benevolent, at least from the humans' perspective.

Perhaps, suggested Lundell, that's because we haven't been in a very optimistic mood the last few years, an idea backed up by opinion polls showing that vast majorities of Americans, at least, think things have been going very badly. But if things begin to look up, then perhaps the benevolent alien will return in force.

"From my perspective," Lundell said, "ultimately the greatest revelation about aliens is that 'they' are 'us.' It's just that some of us don't quite know that just yet."

[Penguinisto]

Heh... So the remake went from being a cautionary warning to being a snotty propaganda flick for gaia-worship?

Bleah. No thanks. I'm thinking That the very fact Hollywood went for a remake of a 1951 film instead of choosing from the literal hundreds of thousands of excellent sci-fi books says more about Hollywood than it does about the rest of us.... and that ain't saying anything good IMHO.

[sythara]

They just want your money. These days its considered bad to critisise(sp) the environmental movement, so everyone has to cater to it. Just as so many other movies cater to religious propaganda.

[Penguinisto]

True, though I have no desire to cater to it by throwing money at what appears to be a bad movie. Come to think of it, I don't cater to it at all.

I doubt I'm alone, either, considering that Hollywood hasn't been raking in the cash from first-run flicks like they used to.

[acheron5]

The changes in the ways aliens have been depicted in film over the last half century tell us less about ourselves as a society then they do about film making. We like to think that film caters to some social appetite and can be an indicator of what our social values may be but the truth is, particularly today, that most films are less concerned with message and more concerned with profit. Take as an example the original Godzilla flick which so obviously reflected an attitude, particularly in Japan, about nuclear power. This theme has been corrupted in subsequent films to serve purely as entertainment with little or no message of social value.

I think today's aliens are designed more for shock value or novelty then to depict either a scientific possibility or to resonate with some social attitude. And this has been largely due to the advances in film making and special effects than a greater understanding by film makers of our society.

[Len Bullard]

He is pretty much the hero of the millenials: trained, snarky, and in search of a good time which he can only have by being superior to someone else.

It makes one feel sorry for their children.

[inachu]

I have my own conspiracy theories on this. Like Star Trek introducing people unfamiliar faces that do not look like themselves so they get comfortable with the idea of seeing face not of his own land/country. But of course Roddenberry knew the NWO movement would take place no matter what. Then this one world govt will plan a world that does not use currency... that will take another 100-200 years

Once this is doen then the next step is to introduce an alien face that does not look so "alien" from ourselves.
SCI-FI is just future propaganda used to see how we swallow this information.

[runswithscissorsXX]

maybe this is a segue violation, but it kinda ties in with my theory on why aliens won't visit earth until humans have evolved past wars.
we humans are still primitive monkeys for the most part, and we can destroy all life on a planet. any more advanced alien civilization would thus have easier and more effective ways to destroy all life on a planet.
pretend 1980s america is earth and 1980s russia is mars. mars could launch a hundred nukes painted black, and earth would have no clue until they began entering the atmosphere. so earth develops a sensor shield (at a staggering cost) to detect incoming nukes. mars launches a biological-agent bomb; earth upgrades their sensors. mars builds a deathstar and shoots earth with a laser; earth's rebels destroy the death star before it fires. a giant mirror to reflect light onto earth's surface...

the point is, any one failure in defense would mean the immediate end of life on that planet. peace is the only option when dealing with advanced civilizations. otherwise, the first unexpected technology means the end of your civilization.

[sanenazok]

It's a violation alright! I don't know what your post is about, at all. Some do-goody aliens won't come to us because we're not dedicated to a one world order enough. Too damn bad. The rest of the post is kinda not-thought out. "Painted black" means undetectable? Really, we shouldn't start a war with advanced civilizations? Geez you should've been advising the Aztecs!

[yanchineseguy]

Good article write-up, Dan.

[popa pineapple]

Unfortunately, the premise of this movie is preposterous. We know from recent direct observations of nearby stars that extrasolar planets are almost certainly very common, and there are a lot of stars out there. The idea that aliens would be offended by our treatment of a single planet out of untold billions is simply ridiculous. Not that I don't sympathize with the theme of man's misguided treatment of our planet. The cause is good, it just needs some scientific insight. Also, and this comment is predicated on my understanding of the plot, it seems very unlikely that aliens would side with flora and fauna over intelligent beings. Intellect is evolution's finest achievement, even it that intellect is thoughtless in its treatment of the biology it came from. It's too bad they didn't keep the original idea. We are just as close to destroying ourselves as when the original was lensed.

[umbramistweave]

It's not ridiculous at all. Read any of the Uplift novels by the award winning David Brin as to a possible ecological mindset for a galactic civilization. The loss of biodiversity and species that could potentially be 'uplifted' (genetically enhanced to sentience) is a crime can result in the obliteration of the violating species.

[Penguinisto]

Err, you missed popa's point: you're assuming they, you know, give a damn about Earth - it's just some backwater planet in the galactic equivalent of 'the sticks'...

The things that we consider to be 'crimes' (or 'morals' for that matter) may not even figure into it when you consider an alien species' mindset. The one and only solid requirement for life -period- is water (that we know of). Assuming anything else is, well... cool for sci-fi, but not really practical in real life.

The absolute funniest in-your-face sci-fi short story (at least along these lines) was a Twilight Zone episode. The aliens had arrived, and they were so, so, so disappointed in our warfare habits (cue ominous music). We convinced 'em to give us 24 hours to prove ourselves worthy - and did it by signing a universal peace treaty among all nations, renouncing war forever, etc etc... only to find out that the aliens weren't looking for peace, but weapons and tactics technology (seems we were an experiment of genetic engineering millennia ago, to produce a superior army of sorts). We were thus deemed unworthy and were wiped out the next day.

That's the thing - fetishizing any potential alien sentient species smacks more of wishful worship than of anything concrete. David Brin isn't correct anymore than you and I are... and until we stumble across an alien sentient species, we never will be. *shrug*.

Hell, for all we know we may be the only sentient species in the whole frickin' galaxy (or at least the half we're in).

...now that would suck.

/P

[solitare_pax]

It seems that any aliens smart enough to travel between the stars would have better things to do than blow things up real good.

But blowing things up real good seems to be what movie making is all about these days.

[SteamChip]

There does not seem to be any mention at all of Earth Final Conflict, that Gene Roddenberry show that had 5 seasons of bald headed aliens and their various intrigues on or just above the planet Earth. Clearly these aliens had vastly superior technology but were functioning in a schizophrenic way as how to best exploit humanity for their own ends (as proxies in a series battle with other aliens elsewhere).

One group of these Aliens genuinely respected humankind and thought to gently nudge them to better ways, even considering the merging of the races to save both. The other group was contemptuous of mankind, working at secret bioengineering experiments to create super soldiers for their wars.

The aliens in the movie mentioned were:
--1. Intent on destroying humanity (War of the Worlds, Independence Day)
--2. Cryptic baloney (Contact, it?s been awhile since I saw that movie, but for some reason I have no desire to see it again)
--3. Lost and just wanted to phone home (ET)

The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in some ways #1, saving the earth from ourselves and maybe keeping it for THEMSELVES.