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Saint
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| Joined: | Fri Nov 17th, 2006 |
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Fri Nov 17th, 2006 02:44 pm |
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If you've never watched "Forbidden Planet" you are missing out on one of the greatest Sci-fi movies of all time!
It's not just a well-written plot based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" or some very decent acting including the gorgeous Ann Francis, Leslie Neilson as a young and striking Captain, and the great Walter Pidgeon as the mad scientist. It's not even the all-electronic soundtrack, the very first of its kind.
You're also missing some special effects that were so far ahead of their time that they still stand up well today!
There are awe-inspiring scenes of mas*ive underground machine levels, invisible super-monsters, warp speed scenes, and a great ray-gun battle!
I've watched this movie many times and it never ceases to amaze. Highly recommended.
For modern viewers, some of the technologies featured on the saucer-design starship are interesting, both in their relationship to how human technology has actually developed, and in terms of their influence on later science fiction. In this film, "quantum mechanic" is a job description.
The starship has a "quanto-gravitetic" drive system that allows travel over the 16 light year journey distance in about a year. The crew must place themselves in "DC Stations" as the ship comes out of light speed -- a form of restraint in order to avoid injury or death from such braking forces. By contrast, the ship is controlled at least partly manually — at the film's conclusion, the fact that Robby can navigate the ship is considered a novelty (obviously the ship itself does not have a complete autopilot)
. Approximately a half-century later, faster-than-light travel seems as impossible as ever, but the idea of requiring manual calculations or manual labor to navigate a ship is badly dated.
For the film, a full-size mockup of three quarters of the C-57D was built to suggest its full width of 170 ft (51 meters).
Robby the Robot was possibly the most expensive film prop ever constructed at the time ($125,000);[3] he also featured in the film The Invisible Boy. He also made two separate appearances, playing different characters in the TV series Lost in Space [4]. He made a cameo appearance in the 1984 film Gremlins; he can be seen in the background during a telephone conversation scene at an inventors' convention.
The adamantine steel of the Krell which was used by Morbius to create protection for his residence shares a common etymological origin with the fictional metal adamantium, although the word "adamantine" itself simply means "hard and unyielding" and does not necessarily have mythic connotations.
The original screen treatment was titled "Fatal Planet" by Irving Block and Allen Adler; the screenplay by Cyril Hume was retitled "Forbidden Planet" which was felt to have more box-office appeal[5].
Forbidden Planet was released on DVD in 1999 on Warner Brothers, catalogue number 65059. It comes with both standard and widescreen format visuals and English, French and Spanish soundtrack and subtitle options.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The animated sequences used for the special effects (especially the attack of the Id Monster) were animated by veteran FX animator, Joshua Meador who was loaned to MGM from Walt Disney Pictures for the film. Curiously, shots showing the shape of the invisible Id Monster outlined in the blaster beams were evidently removed from some prints shown on TV — presumably because its monstrous appearance was considered too terrifying for younger viewers — and it was many years before these shots were restored.
The Id Monster vaguely resembles the Looney Tunes character "Gossamer". Interestingly, however, a close look at the Id Monster shows it to have a small goatee beard, suggesting that it is the product of the deep psychology of Dr. Morbius, the only other figure in the movie with this feature.
After the movie came out, there followed a novelization by W.J. Stuart. The book delves further into the mystery of the vanished Krell, and Morbius's relationship to them. In the novel Morbius repeatedly exposes himself to the Krell mind machine, which (as suggested in the film) increases his brain power far beyond human intelligence.
Unfortunately, Morbius retains enough of his imperfect human nature to be afflicted with hubris (his contempt for humanity, not to mention military command structure, is obvious). Not recognizing his own limitations is Morbius' downfall, as it had been for the Krell.
Mythic precursors
The use of the name "Bellerophon" ties in with Morbius's character in several ways:
The mythical Greek hero Bellerophon was struck down by the gods for the crime of hubris in trying to reach Olympian heights.
One of Bellerophon's greatest feats was his victory over the Chimera, a monster with mismatched body parts appropriate to many other animals. When the ship's doctor tries to reconstruct the Monster from the Id based on a cast of its footprint, he is puzzled by its having attributes appropriate to many different and incompatible animals.
Morbius was taken to his unintended exile by a ship sharing the same name as the ship that transported Napoleon Bonaparte to his final exile, the HMS Bellerophon.
As mentioned, the film was influenced by Shakespeare's The Tempest, though the plot of the film only superficially resembles the plot of the play. Some of the characters can more clearly be opposed:
Prospero = Morbius
Miranda = Altaira
Ariel = Robby (or alternately, Monster from the Id)
Caliban = Monster from the Id (or alternately, Robby the Robot).
However, although the identification of Ferdinand with Commander Adams, Stephano and Trinculo with Cookie, and Gonzalo with "Doc" Ostrow is tempting, the characters do not really match up. There are no further identifications for important characters such as Alonso, Antonio, or Sebastian.
Robby the Robot
Robby the Robot can be identified with Caliban -- he's clumsy; he does the housework, he gets drunk with the ship's crew; "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," Prospero says in The Tempest.
The "monsters from the Id" represent the spirits, in addition to Ariel, who were invisible and controlled by Prospero. Alternately, most critical sources (see The Tempest) have identified the libidinous Caliban with the Id Monster, and the sexless Robby with Ariel, despite Robby's corporality.
This is probably because Robby is entirely in Morbius' control, and because Robby, like Ariel, cannot be used to do harmful acts, going into lockup in somewhat the same way as Ariel when commanded to do "abhorred" acts by the witch Sycorax.
Robby acts in accordance with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, and is unable even to act against the Id Monster, which actually would require the killing of Morbius.
The title of the film surely alludes to forbidden fruit, as some critics have noted , reminding us that The Tempest itself is a version of the "Eden lost" story, in which isolated islands seem Brave New Worlds full of innocent people and different kinds of Serpents.
Altaira, with her garden of tame animals and her ignorance of the meaning of nakedness, represents the innocence which is soon to be brought down by the forbidden fruit of knowledge, here represented both by the starship full of ordinary men, and by the re-awakening of the slumbering technologies of the Krell.
Unlike Prospero, the wizardly character Dr. Morbius is not in full command of the magic of the technology he discovers, and like the Krell he is ultimately destroyed by the combination of power and what Commander Adams calls "the secret devil of every soul on the planet."
As the loser in a pact with technology and hidden desires, Dr. Morbius has something in common with Dr. Faustus, and this film of the post-atomic age also is keeping with the warnings of the Faust mythos.
Forbidden Planet follows Aristotle's rules for tragedy. A great man is brought down by a single tragic flaw — his belief in his moral superiority, which supposedly follows his intellectual superiority. The same flaw destroyed the "noble Krell" as well. And, as Aristotle preferred, the story takes place over 20 years, yet is told almost entirely through exposition.
Soundtrack
The movie's innovative electronic music score (credited as Electronic Tonalities partly to avoid having to pay movie industry music guild fees) was composed by Louis and Bebe Barron.
Their score is widely credited with being the first completely electronic film score, and helped open the door for electronic music in film.
The synthesized sounds of "bleats, burps, whirs, whines, throbs, hums and screeches" that comprise the sound track contained carefully developed themes and motifs, while supporting the general atmosphere of the various scenes.
Using the equations presented in the 1948 book, Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by mathematician Norbert Wiener, Louis Barron constructed the electronic circuits which he used to generate sounds. Most of the tonalities were generated using a circuit called a ring modulator.
After recording the base sounds, Louis and Bebe Barron further manipulated the material by adding effects: such as reverb and delay, and reversing or changing the speed of certain sounds.
The soundtrack for Forbidden Planet preceded the Moog synthesizer of 1964 by almost a decade.
The innovative soundtrack was released on a vinyl LP album and, later, on a music CD: with a six-page colour booklet containing images from Forbidden Planet plus liner notes from the composers, Louis & Bebe Barron, and Bill Malone.
A number of similarities between Forbidden Planet and later science fiction movies and TV shows have been noted by observers. Star Trek is mentioned particularly often, both in its general structure and in the plots and details of various episodes. Indeed, Gene Roddenberry noted in his biography Star Trek Creator that Forbidden Planet was one of the inspirations for Star Trek
.
The Star Trek episode " Requiem for Methuselah" shows many similarities to Forbidden Planet, as it is also based on The Tempest.
In Serenity, the movie finale to the TV show Firefly, the plot revelation is made on the planet Miranda, which itself contains several references, including uses of the number C-57D.
Trivia
In the movie Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis' character, Laurie Strode, has "Forbidden Planet" playing on the television while she babysits. Curtis and Planet star Leslie Nielson would later appear together in the 1980 film Prom Night.
In Babylon 5 one particular shot of the Great Machine of Epsilon 3 (as seen in the episode "A Voice in the Wilderness") bears a strong resemblance to the bridge through the Great Machine of the Krell in Forbidden Planet. (Babylon 5's producer claims that this similarity was clear at the time of production but the form the shot took was due to production requirements, and was not a deliberate reference to the film.)
In the musical The Rocky Horror Show, and its film adaptation, the opening song Science Fiction/Double Feature references many clas*ic SF films; one line is "Anne Francis stars in (ooo, ooo, ooo) Forbidden Planet"
In the Futurama episode A Tale of Two Santas the logical paradox presented to Robby is mirrored when in an effort to destory the Santa Bot, Leela and Fry present him with a logical paradox about his views of naughty and nice.Last edited on Fri Nov 17th, 2006 02:45 pm by Saint
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shorty
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Posted: Fri Nov 17th, 2006 03:34 pm |
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| I have never seen this movie. My husband said it was a classic, he loves sci-fi movies.Thanks for review, may watch it since it has Leslie Nielsen in it.
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Jess
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Fri Nov 17th, 2006 06:45 pm |
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Yeah Leslie Nielson is awesome although I have a hard time picturing him in a serious role. I wonder why
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princess
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Posted: Tue Jan 30th, 2007 06:51 pm |
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long summary you have there..  i had never watched this one, but i was pretty convinced with that you said in your summary.
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harry_puta
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Tue Feb 13th, 2007 11:27 am |
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I'm tired of reading that long text, can you rate the movie from 1-5 ?
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Saint
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Posted: Wed Feb 21st, 2007 06:02 pm |
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Sorry for the long winded "summary" ROFL! This was my first post here and I guess I just went overboard trying to impress.
Here's the short version: Fun action flick, nice special effects that still hold up today, considered the "original" sci-fi movie. Some heavy hitting actors and a good script... In other words, just good clean Saturday afternoon sci-fi fun!
Better?
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Jess
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Thu Feb 22nd, 2007 02:55 am |
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| LOL, Saint I thought ur review was awesome and incredibly informative
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labrev
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| Joined: | Fri Jan 5th, 2007 |
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Posted: Thu Feb 22nd, 2007 02:12 pm |
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| Ive never seen this movie either, for a second I thought you were talking about another movie. Great reveiw though you hit all the major points
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