Real science in 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

— -- Hollywood and extraterrestrials have long enjoyed a love affair, from Plan 9 From Outer Space to E.T.: The Extraterrestrial to Contact. The unrequited part of that romance, between movie-making and science, gets a little attention in the just released remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And the encounter of alien cultures may be a sign of things to come.

"It's very important for science fiction to respect science if it's going to work," says Scott Derrickson, director of the remake of the 1951 classic. In the updated movie, Keanu Reeves stars as Klaatu, the enigmatic alien come to judge humanity from the depths of space. Hijinx ensue, involving Giants Stadium getting a severe renovation, but for fans of science, the movie offers up Jennifer Connelly as a scientist and the hero of the story. Astrobiology, climatology and cosmology all get respectable nods in the movie. "We really decided that when people see the film, there has to be a real attempt to give the science some validity," Derrickson says.

So, the filmmakers turned to the SETI Institute, the private non-profit that aims to "explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe," best known for radio signal searches for messages from aliens. Senior astronomer Seth Shostak consulted with the script-writers, and the effects show.

"I liked the movie, I really had only the slightest criticism," says Caltech physicist Sean Carroll, who spoke on a panel with Derrickson and others last week after a preview of the film — although he confessed to preferring the 1951 original "a tiny bit better."

In the movie, Klaatu meets the Nobel-prize winning physicist, Professor Barnhardt, who "specializes in the study of the evolutionary basis of altruism," as the movie's production notes put it, played by John Cleese. Barnhardt (spoiler alert) tries to persuade the alien to give humanity another chance to fix things on Earth.

"I had to slightly criticize them for having a theoretical physicist win the Nobel for a biological discovery," Carroll says. "Still, I thought it was very intriguing that they held up a scientist as the exemplar of what's right about humanity. I mean, it's an interesting party question isn't it, who would you introduce an alien to in order to convince them to spare Earth?"