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Weâve been indiscriminately beaming everything from telephone calls to commercials deep into outer space for more than a century, but itâs only recently that weâve started to actively exploit that targeted demographic: Theoretical aliens. Well, that's all changed now that the new remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was broadcast directly to Alpha Centauri last week in celebration of its Earthly release date.Â Now, while it's true that the inherent consumerism-run-amok vibe given off by this action - harnessing billions of dollars worth of NASA technology just for a simple PR stunt â speaks of such a pure, unabashed greed that it would shame even the bastard lovechild of Gordon Gekko and the Grinch (probably conceived on the night Scrooge McDuck paid them to fuck on camera for his budding amateur porn site ifuckforpennies.com ) thatâs not the central issue here. The real problems are far more distressing than mere Duck Tales pornography:

âJust put it in a little bit. See how it feels. Just the tipâ¦â Namely (assuming that the remake is anything like the original) the central message of this film is that our species is such an epic fuck-up, that the only motivation strong enough to force a change in our ways is having a hostile alien force descend from the heavens and burn our children until we learn to love each other (I guess in the new one the lesson is recycling or something? I havenât actually seen it because I just donât hate ten dollar bills that much.) So if weâre trying to establish contact, shouldnât we be beaming something a little more optimistic? Independence Day, Aliens, hell even Predator would be a better choice; at least we fucking win in those! And thatâs because the primary theme all these movies have in common is the idea that, yes, you may be more advanced than us, aliens, but our plucky can-do attitude actually deflects laser beams, turns the hearts of heartless robots and charms photon torpedoes so completely that they will choose not to explode on impact, but rather to pen a series of rhyming couplets about how our everlasting beauty is like the morning fog. Whereas The Day The Earth Stood Still conveys the idea that, though our kindly human nature does ultimately convince the aliens against complete annihilation, the near-total genocide really teaches us a valuable lesson. Itâs like broadcasting an After School Special where the protagonist learns not to make fun of fat kidsâ¦ because a chubby girl eats their entire family in retaliation. Effective? Incredibly. Iâm just saying that maybe itâs not a method of teaching you want to actively advertise... when youâre the one getting eaten.