Merrick here...

Last week, we got our first look at the trailer for this Christmas' remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL [HERE].

The last shot in the trailer revealed a "Gort"-like robot zapping something with his laser eye.

The shot evoked this moment from the original film:

This surprised many, as a review of the remake's script by AICN's Uncapie indicated Gort did not appear in the new film.

...we do get a robot to come out of the ship. But it's nothing like "Gort" - nor is it as fierce as "Gort."

Its called the "Totem". It walks around on all fours, does its destructo-ray stuff, and stands upright like a totem pole when its finished.

...said Uncapie, whose write-up you can fine HERE.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (remake) director Scott Derrickson has now addressed the "Gort"/"no Gort" connundrum over at MTV's Movie Blog.

“It was intentional,” Derrickson said. “I certainly took a lot of time to explore other possibilities. It wasn’t just a foregone conclusion in my mind that we would be sticking to the original. I tried looking at a lot of different possibilities, worked on a lot of different ideas with artists and just always a nagging sense that there was something right about the way the original, that there was something about this alien entity choosing a human form or being in a human form that had value even by modern standards, not by 1950 standards. I also am such a fan of the original film. You have to also just have some respect for Gort. Gort is Gort. There’s no question what we designed pays homage to the original.”

...says Derrickson in THIS INTERVIEW with MTV.

Derrickson also talks about adjusting the original film's thematics to make them seem more immediate to contemporary audiences, and indirectly retaining the Klaatu-as-Christ metaphor of Robert Wise's 1951 progenitor.