This is another one of those movies which come from the darkness and leaves an everlasting imprint on the film world and the hearts of the people who treasure it. It ALSO has a huge robot which would like nothing better than to destroy the Earth with his giant laser eye. Robby was never that cool (though, personally, I'd still prefer the slinky arms to a death-ray eye anyday.)

As stated above, the humanesk alien, Klaatu pays Earth a friendly visit in his flying saucer. There are several shots of the giant shadow slowly masking the city of Washington DC as it moved about (something that Independence Day borrowed). Naturally when it lands, the Army is out in full force and makes no hesitation before shooting poor Klaatu when he tries to present a gift to the people of Earth. In our defense, the gift did look an awful lot like a raygun, and we couldn't tell if he was different than us or not, from the goofy space-helmet, which, by the way, it would seem he doesn't need at all, as he immediately takes it off and never puts it back on. Perhaps he needed it inside his ship?

To make a long story short, we eventually learn that Klaatu represents a federation of planets, all kept in check by giant robots. Since Earth is about to develop faster-than-light travel, he decided to come on down and make contact. But, after examining our greatest weapon (the nuke!) he has decided that Earth is too dangerous, so unless we change our ways, Gort (his robot) will kill us all.

It seems like these robots are worse than any nuclear weapon we could ever create. And Klaatu and his gang of planets wield them like a child whose found his father's gun. What if the United States of America bombed countries just because they're different than us? Oh wait... Well, in that case you'd think that aliens advanced enough to build robots wouldn't use scare tactics to obtain peace.

If you ask me, there should have been an uptight military general in the movie that kept insisting on sending a bunch of nukes to wherever Klaatu is from. It just isn't an anti-military sci-fi movie without one.