MovieChat Forums > The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Discussion > 'it will come at a price, to you and you...

'it will come at a price, to you and your way of life'


So, I'm a little confused here. At the end of the movie, where Klaatu decides to stop the nano bugs, what did he mean by that phrase? What exactly was the price of him sparing the human race? I noticed even after Klaatu left, all the electricity was gone. So is that the price, they're left with absolutely no ability to generate electricity whatsoever. Even the battery powered devices seemed to stop working. It's like he took away the existence of electricity in all forms.

Which brings me to my next question, how are the humans going to survive now? All those buildings with no electricity. Think of all the facilities that rely on electricity to work their doors, like modern prisons. What about all the patients in hospitals that rely on machines like MRI's and X-Rays, life support systems. All the food processing plants that give us our mass produced food. All the cars, buses, trains, airplanes that rely on electricity.

He basically took all of humanity back to the 1700's, forever. Can you imagine what it's like to live in such a world?

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Yes, the price to pay was losing technology.

Which brings me to my next question, how are the humans going to survive now?
Everyone keeps complaining about this, which I don't understand since they made it very clear. They said that when the world comes into crisis, that is when they will evolve into something greater than they were before. It happened to Klaatu's people when their sun died, which is a much greater crisis than loss of technology.

I'm not sure if the evolution is meant to be literal or figurative, but that leap in evolution that they spent a huge focal point of the movie explaining is the answer.

The movie is still rubbish, but I can't understand why people are going around talking like that problem hasn't been addressed.

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I'm not complaining at all. I just wanted some brainstorm ideas on how exactly that evolution could happen.

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The movie is still rubbish,


Interesting how you threw that in there. Disagree completely.

(and nicotine is nasty useless stuff)...

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Yes, but you're not telling me klaatus race evolved without the aid of the highest tech - what a bleedin' hypocrite. How are we supposed too: postive thinking and rubbing twigs together?!

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He basically took all of humanity back to the 1700's, forever. Can you imagine what it's like to live in such a world?

It would suck, but humans always rebuild. The whole "never change" thing isn't always bad. The human race will never give up.


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the human race managed to survive and thrive for thousands of years before we became so technologically dependant.
I dont think it would be such a bad thing to be honest, Look at the wonderfull things created by man before computers were around.

just a matter of interest given the massive amount of knowledge we have and technical books etc, how long do you think it would take for us to re-invent the computer etc?


Keep calm and Carry on

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Yeah except now we have BILLIONS of people who are dependent on such technology to survive.

Look at the amount of people born after the industrial revolution:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Population_curve.sv g

If he takes us back essentially to the 1700s, there's no way we can feed earth's population without technology, and billions of people will starve, and many will die fighting for food and water.

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So by the time we figure out how to reinvent the computer, we will have also reinvented burning coal, oil, and natural gas in order to power it. Klatuu didn't make a worldwide broadcast about whatever lesson he was trying to impart on us, so that opportunity was blown. After a couple billion people die from starvation, thirst, exposure, and sanitation-related diseases, we'll get out those books and work hard to get right back where we started.

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I wonder if the formula Klaatu writes on the board is another way to produce energy or something to help them.

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Warning, I'm a one.

Regarding your 2nd point, yes, think of how electricity is in everything we use and need; prison doors, hospital equipment, etc.....

Yeah, it's a shítty way of living. But it's much better than the alternative; not living.

So given the choice, would you rather die or live in a no-tech world?

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So given the choice, would you rather die or live in a no-tech world?
It's a tough choice...

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I'm not sure there is a choice for a lot of people in the "more advanced" countries. By and large we've forgotten how to live without our technology and we could not support ourselves without it.

I think most of us would die.

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I thought we were debating the 2 outcomes depicted in this movie: Death by nano bugs or life without technology.

Given that choice, I believe most people (unless you're elderly) would choose to live.

Now, whether we can survive without technology is another issue.



Warning, I'm a one.

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"Now, whether we can survive without technology is another issue. "

Sure, why wouldn't we? We have for thousands of years right?

Our big brains would move toward technology again, slowly but surely. Eventually we'd have technology like Keanu's people...and then...WE'RE BRINGING AN A$$-KICKING TO THEM!!!!!

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I would imagine that many power plants could be up and working again after Keanu left, but it would take a few years to get things running with any semblance of order; in the interim, many would, indeed, die of starvation and anarchy.
It would resemble the world of The Walking Dead, only with no Walkers, instead warlords and road warriors, preying on the survivors for whatever they can get out of them.
Klatuu was a genocidal criminal.

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a big question i wonder about is life uses electricity, so if he can shut down electricity he pretty much killed life on earth. Lightning is electricity and even inside our bodies electricity can be found.

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Maybe the alien technology is so advanced, it can distinguish between the two.

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Maybe the alien technology is so advanced, it can distinguish between the two.

I hate to defend this rotten remake, but perhaps there is a threshold below which the technology doesn't work. The electricity in your body is microvolt (or less) level.

Doesn't explain, of course, what to do about lightning. Maybe it only affects electricity within an upper and lower bound?

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1. maybe it is like terminator. distinguishes biological electricity. inside of organism it works but outside it doesn't.
2. it was a metaphor. you don't take it literally. it will not happen in million years. just made its point about ecology and that's all.

overall i think this was a great film. dont understand why people call it trashy. film looked beautiful and sci-fi part was also interesting. i kind of liked everything about it.

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He just probably delayed the inevitable.

The increase in human knowledge is the cause of the decline of religions.

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Thank God...

*There is no such thing as reality only what we perceive through our poor inadequate senses*

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I guess it is the same as watching a zombie apocalypse or a disaster movie or something. There will be survivors, and they will keep on living. They will manage without technology.

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First of all i do understand what the film is saying, and that is that our technologies are cannibalizing our planet. It is both doing it for the resources and for allowing so many of us to live. So shutting of technology the filmmakers are telling us this must end.

But if it was reality then it would leave earth in a serious problem and that is that at least half of us would die from starvation and local wars and riots. I believe that the human race would survive but just not all of us. The thing is today we are more than 7 billion people and lets assume that lowtech like steam technology would still work then we would essentially be back to the times around 1850 where there were at a maximum of 1½ billion people on earth.

So we know that earth can support that level of population and given we know a lot more about disease other stuff I guess that 3 billion should be no problem either. But here is the problem in 1850 all of our labor vre manual and a very high percentage of the population worked in farming. Today in the western world that number is below 1%, so we would have the accountants like me come out to the fields and work them by hand but since we haven’t needed manual tools for the last 100 years we will be missing the tools so blacksmiths will have to make them, but there are no manual blacksmiths so this has to be build. Besides this the produces we could make would have to be transported by carts but we don’t have enough horses to pull them. The list just goes on and on.

So would could revert to earlier times technology and I’m sure we eventually would but from day one we don’t have the infrastructure ready to do so and massive riots would follow. Your neighbor would suddenly be willing to kill you for the sack of rice you have in your basement because it would be life or dead for him.

In fact the places that would be in the best shape would be the 3. World countries that are lowtech today they would hardly feel any difference.

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Nobody seems to get the point of the end, and how positive and hopeful it is.

At the end, the entire worldwide power grid was knocked out, and all stand-alone powered devices stopped working as well.

The world is now free to start again, with renewable forms of power: Solar, hydro, geo-thermal, etc.

Remember, the entire reason Klaatu arrived to de-populate the planet was because humans caused climate change and was destroying the planet.







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Nobody seems to get the point of the end, and how positive and hopeful it is.

So killing off a few billion people is positive and hopefully to you?

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It's hopeful that he STOPPED the genocide (once he realized "there's another side")

It's also hopeful that the Earth is forced to start again after having the power knocked out.

I was only addressing the knocking out of the power.

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But that's the problem. Without a source of high density energy billions are going to die. We don't have a sustainable "live off the land"' population any longer.and since it is going to take quite a while to spin up even the low density energy source, people are going to be without power for a while.

Entire cities will revert to barbarism and either kill each other off or starve to death.

I'm sorry, I don't see any hope there. Now what WOULD have been a hopeful ending is if the aliens had taught us how to make their clean, sustainable energy.

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Without electricity, you can't make solar panels, or the components for most green energy.

Plus, humans have already harvested virtually all the minerals on the planet that are accessible by hand/manual labor. Without machines, we can't get deep enough to get fossil fuels or anything else we need to rebuild technology.

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