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Jacob Benson (Jaden Smith) with Klaatu

For example, what gives the aliens the right to meddle in our affairs? In the original film, the aliens were threatened by the possibility that we might bring our warlike ways into space, but this time around, the aliens merely claim that Earth is one of a rare number of life-supporting planets—though it does not seem that they have any plans to use it themselves in the near future. Klaatu looks offended when someone remarks that Earth is "our" planet, but certainly it is more ours than theirs.

Naturally, the film has to at least raise the possibility that humanity might survive—that something might change the aliens' minds—but here, things turn awfully simple again. Klaatu spends much of his time with Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), a scientist whose husband died in the Iraq War, and whose stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith, son of Will) keeps insisting that the aliens ought to be killed—and it is through Klaatu's exposure to human relationships, and the fact that humans can love and forgive each other, that he begins to see that we have our good side, too.

The thing is, none of this should be a surprise to the aliens; supposedly, they have been observing us for some time, and one of them (James Hong) has even been living among us for decades, and has come to love us for who and what we are. (He is resigned to our fate, though.) Can it be that the aliens out there really haven't figured out what families are like, or what human relationships are like? Would a few days with the Bensons really be enough to make the aliens halt a global apocalypse that had already been put into motion, and that had been years in the making?

An enormous orb in Central Park triggers a global upheaval

Script issues aside, the film does have some impressive set pieces. Derrickson, who got his start writing and directing intelligent, low-budget horror movies, takes full advantage of the bigger canvas available to him and proves equally adept at fulfilling genre conventions (cracking windows never seemed so ominous) while indulging, successfully, in the odd bit of counter-intuitive thinking (such as casting John Cleese as a scientist who tries to reason Klaatu into changing the aliens' plan).

Finally, a note about the religious themes. One of the fascinating things about the original film is that Klaatu was such an obvious Christ-figure—he went by the name Carpenter when he mingled among regular people, he died and came back to life, and he professed a belief in the "Almighty Spirit." Yet the director of that film, Robert Wise, insisted he was unaware of the Christian parallels until other people pointed them out. The remake, on the other hand, is directed by a professing Christian, but on a certain level, the religious parallels are more subdued: Klaatu raises someone else from the dead, after killing him, but never dies himself; he never goes by the name Carpenter; and he talks of how "the universe" transforms people when they die.

Most significantly, the aliens, it is suggested, are fallible—and Klaatu himself is changed by becoming a human and living among us, however briefly. In the original, Klaatu represented a certain ideal, a vision of what we humans could become, and our survival depended on becoming more like him. In the remake, on the other hand, our survival depends on bringing the alien down to our level and making him more like us. That may or may not have theological significance, but it does say something about how our culture has changed over the last five decades.

Talk About It

1. Is this planet "ours"? If not, whose is it? How, and why, should we care for it? Do the aliens in this film have any right to tell us what to do with it?

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