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So in this film, I don't think there's a contradiction or a conflict in terms of how Klaatu comes with this mission: To assess human nature, to get his report, and having gotten all that information, make his decision. And when he makes his decision, he makes the decision based on what he believes is predictable about human nature.

And Klaatu is not the one who is usually killing people. The one time he does it, with the helicopter pilots, he does it as an act of self-defense. He's wired into them and we hear the line, "You're a go to take out the target," and it's not until that moment that he decides to do what he does. But then when the trooper is in his way, and the trooper is going to stop him from completing this process, he stops the trooper but then he heals the trooper, because he knows that the trooper wasn't going to kill him. So he is conflicted, and when Jennifer Connelly [as scientist Helen Benson] sees that, she realizes there is something in him.

Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Helen Benson

Think of it this way: there are moments that we are completely fine to smash a bug, and then there are moments where we feel very strange about it and want to take it out and let it go free. I think that he's a little bit like that, at that point in the movie, until something breaks through and he realizes, Wait a minute, these aren't just bugs, there is something more here, and he feels it, he sees it, he understands it, and suddenly the value of humanity goes to a level that far exceeded what he ever expected to feel.

That segues into something else—the contrast between this film and the original, in terms of the Christ-figure aspects. In the first film, Klaatu dies and rises again, whereas here, that never happens to him, but in the scene with the trooper. Did the trooper die, or was he merely hurt really badly?

Derrickson: He was dead. I mean, we tried to give him the nice dead open eyes, and of course Jaden Smith [as Helen's son Jacob] is yelling, "You killed him! You killed him!" But we definitely had the idea that he was dead. So that's the Lazarus moment, I guess.

Klaatu doesn't seem as much like a Christ figure here the way he did in the first film; he also doesn't call himself "Carpenter," that sort of thing.

Derrickson: I would argue against the statement that there is less of a representation of him as a Christ-figure. The first Keanu [Reeves, as Klaatu] we meet has the stigmata mark on his hands, and [the second Keanu] walks on water when he goes to touch the sphere. And most importantly, for me … I don't know if anyone is going to catch this, but I really wanted, in updating this and preserving this Christ allegory, I wanted the allegory of the atonement, of what really matters about the Christ story, that he does die the sacrificial death and literally takes these "aphids," as we called them, from inside the two characters at the end. He takes that upon himself and then goes and dies, and then when he leaves, Jacob makes the comment, "He's leaving." He's not dead, and that's the ascension, and I was very conscientious of those allegorical images being in there, just being kind of fresh and interesting.

I noticed the walking on water, but it didn't register so much, because the camera cut to a tighter angle fairly soon, and I wasn't sure if it was simply really shallow water, or if he actually was …

Derrickson: And that's deliberate. But again, it's one of those things where part of the thing I was trying to play with was to not make those things too obvious. The choice not to put "Mr. Carpenter" in there had something to do with that. I find that to be a little blunt, and there is something very 1951 about that one. I just felt like it didn't have a good place in the story the way it was conceived.

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