10 Movie Conspiracy Theories You Won't Believe Exist
6. The Day The Earth Stood Still Was Alien Invasion Propaganda
Christopher Nolan was by no means the first director to indulge in a spot of predictive programming in his movies. In fact, it’s a shady Tinseltown practice that’s been around as long as the casting couch or creative Hollywood accounting and we need look no further than Robert Wise’s 1951 sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still for proof.
On the surface the movie is an entertaining, if slightly outdated, alien flick. Dig a little deeper and you might find a commentary on Cold War politics, a warning against atomic warfare or even a Christian allegory. Visit the deepest, darkest corners of the internet where conspiracy theories are not only entertained but actively encouraged and you’ll find that the movie was actually pro-alien invasion propaganda designed by the government to acclimatise people to the possibility of extra-terrestrial visitation on Earth.
How and why, you ask? Well, The Day the Earth Stood Still’s executive producer Darryl Zanuck was good friends with psychological warfare expert Charles Douglas Jackson who also happened to be working as a key strategist on the Psychological Strategy Board, a programme established by the CIA to disseminate certain ideas and sway public opinion in the government’s favour.
Zanuck was apparently very insistent that one of the movie’s most iconic scenes, in which alien Klaatu lands his spacecraft in Washington DC, be as realistic as possible. Which is naturally understandable – nobody wants a film they’re involved in to be an unbelievable pile of crap – but apparently that’s enough for some to establish a link between The Day the Earth Stood Still and the CIA and interpret the film as pro-ET brainwashing.