The Day the Earth Stood Still

The 1951 science fiction classic gets a new edition at the same time as a remake hits the theaters, but the original remains the most thoughtful of the first contact films. Michael Rennie is Klaatu, the visitor from space who lands his saucer in Washington, D.C., to speak to the world's leaders and escapes his imprisonment to explore incognito, where he befriends single mother Patricia Neal and her innocent son. It's as much a Christ parable as a science fiction film (a messenger from the heavens on a mission of peace roams among us and is killed by the people of Earth, rises from the dead for a last sermon, and returns to the heavens), yet its message is delivered less like a sermon than a threat. Handsomely directed by Robert Wise, who places the fantastic elements in a scrupulously realistic Washington, D.C., setting. He gives the film dramatic weight and narrative elegance, as well as the most enigmatic movie robot ever. "Klaatu barada nikto!"

This new, two-disc special edition features the previously released commentary track by Wise and Nicolas Meyer, a fellow director who makes an intelligent interviewer and moderator and a sharp commentator, and new commentary by film and music historians John Morgan, Steven Smith, William Stromberg and Nick Redman. The 80-minute documentary "Making the Earth Stand Still" from the previous DVD release is replaced by a new, 23-minute making-of production and a collection of new featurettes probing the film's meaning and metaphors, profiling original author Harry Bates and screenwriter Edmund North (a passionate anti-war activist), and exploring the music. The 1982 documentary short "Race to Oblivion," a plea for disarmament written and produced by North and hosted by Burt Lancaster, is a marvelous archival curiosity. Also features galleries of stills and advertising, spaceship blueprints and the shooting script.