The message of both versions is simple: if humanity does not learn to control its destructive impulses, then it will be destroyed.
The original movie was inspired by the threat of global nuclear annihilation, its re-make by the threat of global climate change.
The movie's chief protagonist is Klaatu, the impassive messenger from a confederation of alien civilisations.
His mission: to secure from humanity's leaders an undertaking that their species will abandon its destructive ways. Failure to change will result in the utter destruction of human civilisation.
As Keanu Reeves, who plays Klaatu in the 2008 version of the movie, puts it: "If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives."
In a universe woefully lacking in life-sustaining planets, Klaatu's duty is clear. Humanity must go.
So far, so reminiscent of the biblical story of Noah and the Ark.
According to the Book of Genesis, the Lord God, like the alien confederation, saw that the Eearth was corrupt and full of violence, declaring: "I am going to put an end to all people, for the Earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the Earth."
Substituting for the wrath of God in The Day the Earth Stood Still is Gort, an implacable robotic entity possessing destructive powers more than equal to the task of ridding the universe of its errant species.
In the face of the international community's (not to mention our own National-led government's) backsliding on the issue of anthropogenic climate change, it is tempting to see in Gort the ideal instrument for concentrating humanity's attention on the task in hand.
Perhaps if the world's politicians got a taste of Gort's all-consuming nanobot swarm (special effects care of our own Weta Workshops), progress towards a binding international covenant on climate change might be speeded up a bit.
It's also easy to see why an advanced alien confederation might be tempted to issue a demolition order on a civilisation so unwilling to heed the urgent counsel of its wisest citizens, or issue a warrant of execution upon a species which is moved to act decisively in the interests of its collective survival only when engaged in the grisly business of slaughtering its neighbours.
Easy, too, to understand, in the Book of Genesis, God's determination to wash away the world's sin.
But, of course, the story of Noah is too simple a tale upon which to hang a modern parable like The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Gort may represent the implacable wrath of the Old Testament God, but in Klaatu the film's creators have given us a technological Christ.
Taking the outward form of a human being, this messenger from above (in the 1951 version of the film Klaatu disguises himself as "Mr Carpenter") arrives to judge mankind.
But, as he learns more and more about our impossibly conflicted species' capacity for love and sacrifice, he comes to realise that human beings are neither wholly corrupt, nor wholly unredeemable.
In the end Klaatu sacrifices his own life so that the human species can prove that his faith in its power to evolve "on the edge of the precipice" has not been misplaced.God, too, repented of his impatience with humanity, reassuring Noah that never again would he seek to wipe the slate clean: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.
And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
"As long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."
In less than a week we celebrate Christmas - a potent religious narrative that lends itself to the science-fiction writer's art.
A bright light in the sky leads three of the greatest scientists of their day to a little town on the fringe of a mighty empire, where bright beings proclaim the birth of a planetary redeemer.
For these three, it really is the day the earth stands still.
Let us then hope, that although humanity cannot seem to either make or keep its own covenants, "Klaatu's" faith in us remains undiminished.
Chris Trotter is editor of the New Zealand Political Review.
