MovieChat Forums > The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Discussion > Headscratcher

Headscratcher

posted 11 years ago by [email protected]
10 replies | jump to latest

Yes, the world of 1951 was not as small as it is today, communications were comparatively primitive to what we have now...but how is it when Klaatu was at large, and the subject of a citywide manhunt, all they had to identify him was a picture of him inside his opaque helmet? Hospital personnel, the military, the President's secretary all saw his face in the hospital; couldn't they put a portrait sketch up on television and the newspapers? Or were the government agencies so secretive and distrustful of each other that they couldn't even communicate between...them...selves...ahh, never mind.

[–] mojo2004 9 years ago

Well they're just as stupid now. I can't count how many high profiled local crimes have been on the news and the police don't even give you what race the perp is much less what they look like!

MOJO2004

[–] brand78 9 years ago

It is interesting to note that the planet Venus was considered habitable; we now know that the temperature there averages 460 degrees C.

[–] b-rad 9 years ago

That was a common assumption at the time. We didn't really know that her atmosphere is dense with a large component of CO2, with clouds of sulfuric acid. The common wisdom was that clouds were water vapor, like here on Earth, and that they must be a sign that Venus was a swampy version of Earth. That was reflected in a lot of science fiction of the day. I remember Ray Bradbury using that premise for a couple of stories, and so did Arthur C Clarke in "History Lesson."

And we didn't really realize that Mars has such a harsh environment, either. Again, it was commonly thought that it was a dryer planet than Earth, but still generally habitable for humans, if we could get there. And that was reflected in science fiction at the time, too.

The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

[–] brand78 9 years ago

b-rad: your reply is very interesting; did you know that a hundred people have put their names down to live on Mars?

[–] hockeyhrs 8 years ago

Portrait sketch? The army should have been taking photographs as he was being disrobed & dressed in a hospital gown as he was being prepared for the operating room (to repair the gunshot to his shoulder)!

But that logic kills the movie's plot by removing his anonymity.

[–] liscarkat (18388) 6 years ago

In 1951, astronomers knew what the composition of the atmosphere of Venus was, its distance from the Sun, and that it was too hot to be habitable. The film's makers just ignored this.

[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

That's assuming that Klaatu was supposed to be from Venus. He never really said, did he, only how far he'd traveled to get here. Judging by that, I've always assumed he was supposed to be from Mars.

As brand78 mentioned above, there's currently talk of human colonies on Mars in the not-too-distant future, and if our technology is up to the job, then it should be a breeze for a civilization that can build space ships like that.

[–] strntz (12231) 3 years ago

I don't recall Klaatu saying where he was from either, only that he was a representative of other worlds who formed a coalition and lived in peace using robotic police.

I always thought his home planet and those of other planets they were associated with were in different solar systems than our own, but the first time I saw this film was after I had seen Star Trek as a child where all foreign worlds the Enterprise visited with life were in different star systems.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

It's been decades since I saw the movie, but I'm almost certain you are right.
Klaatu was from interstellar space somewhere because he refers to an organization of many worlds which would leave the solar system out.

According to IMDB trivia:
From what planet did Klaatu originate?
Just after Klaatu disappears from the hospital, the headline in the Washington Chronicle newspaper reads 'Man From Mars Escapes.' In the movie, we are given that Klaatu traveled 250 million miles. Pluto is about 3 billion miles (varies from apogree to perigee) from the sun, and the nearest other solar system (Alpha Centauri) is over 3.5 light years away, so Klaatu must have come from another planet in our own solar system. Using online Solar System Live; 250 million miles is approx 2.6 Astronomical units. For the date of July 11, 1951, Mars was nearly in opposition or very close to 250 million miles away from Earth. The movie states, we are "neighbors," and Venus and Mars are our solar system neighbors, so Mars seems to be the logical choice, even though Klaatu doesn't admit so.

I think the scriptwriters simply picked a big number that made it seem far away without giving much thought to the actual signficance. Similar to The Beast from 20000 Fathoms (22 miles!), One Million Years BC (missed that one by over 64 million), and other sci-fi movies at the time.

I doubt they did much consulting with actual astronmers and astrophysicists who could have told them that Mars was uninhabitable.

Counter-point: Klaatu may have been part of a colony established on Mars by extrasolar explorers. So, he could have been truthful in saying that he came 250 million miles for that particular mission.

[–] strntz (12231) 3 years ago

Good points.

Another possibility is that the original script might have been 25 or 250 light years away, but figured the audience would get a better idea of distance using miles instead. I suspect they weren't all that concerned with scientific accuracy in those days.