Opinions on the Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated

FORBIDDEN PLANETHello and abandon hope all ye who enter here! …I’m sorry; I don’t know why I

said that. I mean, when I start off with something stupid like that, it really makes youwonder why anyone would—on purpose—give me space in their magazine. Hmm, perhaps I shouldn’t mention that, it might be considered by the wrong people…

Where was I? Oh yeah, welcome to the column! You’ve heard the expression“every idiot has an opinion”, well this column is where I totally embrace that phrase andshare all the idiotic opinions I can come up with! …Wait, I don’t think that came outright. Oh well, never mind.

This time, we’re talking about milestone science-fiction and cult classic: Forbidden Planet ! …Planet! …planet… Ok, so that was bad. Gimme a break, fancysound effects are hard to simulate when all you can do is type. Why Forbidden Planet ?Well, mostly because I’ve recently found some rumors on the net suggesting a remake isin the works. But more about that a little later on.

So, step one: What is Forbidden Planet ? …Whoa! Time-out! WHAT is Forbidden Planet ? Nobody out there is seriously asking that question, are they? Well, just in case… Forbidden Planet is a great movie, a landmark in cinematic history thattotally redefined what a science-fiction movie could be!

See, back in the 50’s, Hollywood was spitting out cheap little sci-fi films left andright. But they were all basically the same. Some evil robot or bug-eyed evil alien(sometimes both together!) would come to Earth via flying saucer…wackiness andscreaming women ensued.

But when MGM released Forbidden Planet in 1956 all that changed! First of all,it was the product of a major studio (MGM, in case you weren’t paying attention) and ithad a REAL budget. This included big-name stars (and soon-to-be big-name stars) liketwo-time academy award nominee Walter Pidgeon, who’d been making movies since thesilent era and ended up with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It also starsAnne Francis (TV’s Honey West ), a dead-serious Leslie Nielsen (from Airplane! and The

 Naked Gun series). Also appearing are, in lesser roles, Jack Kelly (TV’s Bart Maverick in Maverick ), Warren Stevens (who seems to be in one or two episodes of EVERYthing!),and Richard Anderson (from the Six-Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman). Ohyeah, and introducing Robby the Robot!

 Now let’s see…where to start…I guess ‘as near the beginning as possible’ is agood spot. The original story was penned around 1610 by every high school Englishclass’s worst nightmare: William Shakespeare. His play, called The Tempest , was about

 

a sorcerer named Prospero who was stranded on an island with his daughter and a host of fairies. The story is about his revenge on the parties who orchestrated his exile to usurphis kingdom.

Well, okay, so maybe that’s going back a little farther than necessary. Then again,maybe not. It’s always been said that the film had a strong influence from Shakespeare’sThe Tempest . Perhaps that was from the very beginning, in 1952, when Irving Block andAllen Adler wrote the screen treatment for  Fatal Planet . The year (1976), the planet(Mercury), and a whole bunch of character’s names got changed, but the basic plot wasthe same: a rescue ship is after a scientist and his daughter stranded alone on a planet for several years, and they all get stalked by an invisible monster. The main difference seemsto be that in this version, the scientist-who-would-become Morbius actually lived.

The story was turned over to Cyril Hume, who wrote the screenplay. Somewherealong the line, the title was changed to Forbidden Planet because someone believed itwould bestow bigger, better box-office appeal.

 Now for the story itself…Sometime in the early 2200s, the United Planets cruiser C-57D (a flying saucer 

 built by humans to visit other planets [groundbreaking stuff!]) gets sent on a mission toAltair-IV to find out what happened to the colonists sent there twenty years earlier. Fromtheir orbit, they detect no signs of civilization, but receive a transmission from Dr.Morbius (Pidgeon) who basically says “Thanks for stopping by, but we don’t needanything so you can go home now”. But, with typical military mentality, Captain Adams(Nielsen) says, “I got orders, and those order say land!” So they do.

Upon landing, the crew is met by marvelous mechanical man, Robby (played byRobby the Robot). ‘He’ is Dr. Morbius’ man-made manservant, and has come to…well, IGOTTA say it! He has come to take them to his leader.

Captain Adams, Lt. ‘Doc’ Ostrow (Stevens), and pilot Lt. Farman (Kelly)interview Morbius and learn that he and his daughter (born on Altair-IV) are the solesurvivors of the original colonists, who all succumbed to a mysterious, invisible forcethat literally ripped them to pieces. Only Morbius, his late wife (who died of naturalcauses) and their daughter Altaira (Francis) are inexplicably immune.

For some reason, it was never considered that all or most of the colonists would be dead. So the Captain decides to call Earth for new orders. His ship is not equippedwith a communications device that will span the sixteen light years distance (it took themover a year to make the trip), so they have to take apart some of the equipment of their ship to construct a suitable communicator.

That night…sabotage! An unseen entity creeps past the guards and destroys vitalequipment, including the Our-Communicator-Won’t-Run-Without-This Part! So they go back to see Morbius, to find out more about the ancient alien civilization he’s beenstudying.

They were the Krell and they were about a million years more technologicallyadvanced than mankind, but mysteriously died out in a single night. He shows them agreat underground installation, fifty miles below the planet surface. It is twenty miles ona side, eight thousand cubic miles, seven thousand eight hundred levels high and containsfour hundred shafts and nine thousand two hundred thermonuclear reactors. Morbiusexplains that, thought unfinished, it was to be the Krell’s crowning achievement: amachine that instantly manifests any item you think of. He also tells them that it

 

mysteriously reconfigured itself sixteen years earlier. He also showed them a device hecalls a “plastic educator”, which put him into a coma for nearly two days and tripled hisintelligence.

Of course, the Captain and his mate are highly impressed, and can’t wait to takeexamples back to Earth. But Morbius dislikes this prospect immediately. He announceshimself the regulator of Krell technology, basically saying that he’ll pass on to Earthwhatever machinery he feels like, when he feels like it. The Captain doesn’t like that oneat all.

But the Captain and the crew of the C-57D have other, more urgent problems.After the sabotage of the previous night, the crew set up a perimeter fence. That night,the invisible thing came back. You can only see it for a moment, traced in the laser  beams as it passes through the fence. It walked unseen past the guards, entered the ship,and killed the chief engineer.

 Nobody saw anything, but they make some educated guesses based on the tracksit left behind. Mankind has encountered nothing like it in the known galaxy, and itcontradicts all known evolutionary laws.

The next night, the invisible monster returns, seen only outlined by the laser fenceand the crew’s laser fire. It runs rampant, killing crewmen left and right, only toinexplicably vanish at the exact moment that Dr. Morbius—far away in his home— suddenly awakes.

So the Captain and Ostrow go to confront Morbius and insist they all return toEarth. Ostrow sneaks off and uses the educator, increasing his intelligence even greater than Morbius did, mortally injuring himself in the process. He figures out the terribletruth, and, while dying, tells the Captain that the great machine works, but that the Krellforgot about their subconscious. Or, as he says it in the movie, “Monsters from the id!”

So the Captain figures it all out. Morbius boosted his intelligence, that’s probablywhy the machine reconfigured itself sixteen years ago. Now, when he gets mad aboutsomething, he goes to sleep and the machine brings to life some weird nightmare creaturefrom Morbius’ subconscious. This monster is what killed his fellow colonists, and it’skilling the crew of the C-57D now.

They run deeper into the underground installation as Morbius digests this andcomes to grips with it. He gets mortally wounded by his own id monster while trying to protect his daughter. The monster vanishes as he lies dying. Morbius instructs theCaptain to set off a self-destruct sequence that will destroy the great machine and thewhole of Altair-IV.

So the Captain, Altaira, what’s left of the crew, and Robby the Robot all pile intothe saucer and head back to Earth.

Of course, this is the condensed version. The movie is much better. But thewhole thing is really about the primal, brutal basic nature of mankind (and, apparently,Krell-kind) and the fragile illusion of civility. It’s a cautionary tale about creatingtechnology that can’t be controlled. Probably influenced by concerns over the atomic bomb, which were everywhere at the time the movie was made.

Robby the Robot, being such an expensive prop (about $125,000), was used inmany movies, TV shows, and even a Charmin commercial. He got to be a pretty famousface in and around Hollywood in the 50’s, and has a page on the Internet Movie Database(IMDB.COM) longer than some actors.

 

The flying saucer was likewise used in other movies and TV shows, most notablyin several episodes of the Twilight Zone.

More recently, there has been some news concerning the possibility of a remake.After being kicked around for a few years, Warner Brothers has reacquired the rights. OnOctober 31, 2008 they announced the project would be written by J. Michael Straczinski,creator of  Babylon 5. He told producer Joel Silver his idea, which makes it “not aremake”, “not a re-imagining”, and “not exactly a prequel”. News found lurking on thenet suggests that these will actually be a trilogy, first concentrating on crew of the Bellerophon, the ship that brought the original colonists. Apparently the C-57D wouldn’teven show up until the third movie, after giving us the chance to witness the back-storyfirsthand.

I don’t know, that could be cool. Then again, it could suck. But, one thing’s for sure: if it actually gets made, there will be people arguing about it on the net! So, I guesswe’ll just have to wait and see!

Anyway, I guess it’s time to pull out the old D&D percentage dice and see whatkind of rating my highly complicated and well-thought-out system can devise for this,one of my favorite movies! Ready? Here goes…

Hmm, I think I need new dice. I rolled an 83. I’m sure it’s better than that. Don’t youthink so?

Oh well, it’s a really great film, a timeless classic. But, in the end, I guess that’s just one idiot’s opinion and, hey, you don’t have to take it! No siree! You could go watchit and form your own opinions! You could even share them with us online in thediscussion forum!

Well folks, I guess that’s all for now. See ya next time! Be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube