|
Gort is the runner-up in the '50s robot
competition. Though he predated Robby the Robot by five years
with his debut in The Day the Earth Stood Still (20th Century
Fox 1951), he lacked the charisma that Robby brought to the screen.
But where Robby embodied the ideal relationship between man and robot,
Gort represented the robot as the instrument of judgment wielding
vast, unfeeling power. He is the "servant," sort of, of Klaatu,
an alien from space who has come to our planet to bring us greetings
and scare the living crap out of us. Gort is key to this.
He not only possesses superhuman strength, an unstoppable death ray,
and the power to restore life, but he also comes equipped with an
Allegorical Message Generator that would have made Gene Roddenberry
swoon.
Not bad for a robot who wears mittens.
The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of a
clutch of '50s sci-fi films that strove mightily for seriousness, and
this one is about as serious as you can get without resorting to
actual finger wagging. It ends with Klaatu standing next to Gort,
who's the strong, silent type, and lecturing the Earth that it must
give up its warlike ways or the peaceful people of space will send
GIANT KILLER ROBOTS to blow our planet to gravel. Oh, he says
that it's all automatic and they can't do anything about it, sorry old
chap, but it still comes off as rather like letting loose the brake on
a steamroller and saying that it isn't your fault if it hits
somebody's house.
And the filmmakers thought that this was an
enlightened message?
Question: Did anyone bother to check
Klaatu's ID? Lot of cranks bouncing around the Cosmos, you know. |
