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Forbidden Planet

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This article is about the 1956 film. For the bookstore chain, see Forbidden Planet (bookstore).
Forbidden Planet

Film poster
Directed by Fred M. Wilcox
Produced by Nicholas Nayfack
Written by Cyril Hume (screenplay)
from a story by
Irving Block
Allen Adler
Starring Walter Pidgeon
Anne Francis
Leslie Nielsen
Jack Kelly
Music by Louis and Bebe Barron
Cinematography George J. Folsey
Editing by Ferris Webster
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) March 15, 1956
Running time 98 min.
Language English
Budget $1,900,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Forbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film and a subsequent novelization by W.J. Stuart. The film features a number of spectacular special effects (Oscar nominated), groundbreaking use of an all-electronic music score, and the first screen appearance of the famous Robby the Robot<ref name="RHoF-Robby">The Robot Hall of Fame : Robby, the Robot. The Robot Hall of Fame (Carnegie Mellon University). Retrieved on 2006-08-14.</ref>. The film's characters and setting were inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest<ref name="IMDB-main-details">Forbidden Planet (1956). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2006-08-14.</ref>, though the plot is very different. Also notable is its very effective execution and use of well designed sets, props, matte paintings and soundstage scenic paintings. The film has a running time of 98 minutes<ref name="IMDB-main-details" />.

Contents

[edit] Select Cast

The cast <ref name="IMDB-main-details" /> of Forbidden Planet included the following:

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
In the early 2200s, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D is sent to the planet Altair IV in the Alpha Aquilae star system, to find out what happened to the Bellerophon Expedition, sent out some twenty years earlier. As their ship arrives after a year's voyage, the crew detects some immense power source scanning the ship.

They contact a survivor, Doctor Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), who warns them to leave, but will not say why. Upon landing, they are met by Robby the Robot, who takes them to Morbius' home. Morbius explains that a year after the expedition's arrival, some unknown force wiped out nearly everyone in his party. Only he, his wife (who later died of natural causes), and his infant daughter (now a beautiful young woman) survived. Image:FPcapSaucer.jpg Morbius fears that the same fate may await the crew of the C-57D. He and his daughter have remained unharmed, and his house has an interesting array of high-technologies: including Robby, which he states that he "tinkered him together during his first months up here" (with Robby exhibiting a technology of sophistication beyond that currently known), and including a home security system which can quickly cover the residence with steel plates. Commander Adams (played by Leslie Nielsen) begins to question the source of Morbius' technological abilities, as his specialty was philology, the study of languages.

For twenty years, Morbius tells the commander, he has been reconstructing the history and some of the minor technologies of the Krell, the now-extinct natives of the planet. They had possessed a technology far in advance of that of the humans, but had all died 200,000 years before in one mysterious night of destruction. Morbius shows the crew a Krell nursery, which includes a "plastic educator" machine that killed one person who had tried it at high power. Doctor Morbius explains that the educator put him into a coma for almost two days, though he recovered with a doubled IQ, enabling him to build Robby the Robot and other inventions.

Image:Forbidden Planet.jpg

Morbius then takes them on a tour of the Krell facilities. An underground machine in the shape of a cube 20 miles on a side, powered by 9200 thermonuclear reactors, has been operating, self-repairing and self-maintaining, purpose unknown, since the extinction of the Krell. The effects shots effectively convey images of enormous, miles-deep shafts with huge structures moving up and down, transferring powerful arcs of energy.

The commander meets Morbius' beautiful but naïve daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis). Nineteen years old, she is very curious about human relations. The commander and his executive officer compete for the chance to enlighten her on the topic.

Over the following few nights, the ship is attacked by an invisible monster which kills several crewmen. This creature is a spectacular special effect: a huge, roaring, leonine biped revealed only in outline by the energy from the ship's defensive neutron-particle-beam guns that flicker over its surface. Morbius, having a nightmare, is awakened by his daughter, screaming also from a nightmare. The attacker vanishes and the power meters revert back to near zero.

Image:Forbidden Planet 2.jpg Later, the ship's doctor sneaks in to use the Krell educator machine. Before he dies from its effects, he gasps out his revelation: the huge machine was designed to let the Krell materialize anything they wanted at a mere thought. "But the Krell forgot one thing, John. Monsters! Monsters from the id!" Though the Krell considered themselves civilized, their subconscious minds were unleashed by the almost limitless power of the Machine. The race was wiped out in a single night of frenzied destruction, as the machine acted out their darkest urges.

With this revelation, the commander realises that Morbius' sessions with the educator had attuned his mind to the machinery. Although Morbius' conscious mind was not strong enough to control the machine, his subconscious could and did, directing the attacks first against the Bellerophon party when they voted to return to Earth, and now the rescue ship. His deepest desire is simply to be left alone to study the Krell, and his subconscious is using the machine to fulfill that wish. Ultimately, Altaira declares her love for the commander and chooses to leave the planet with him, despite the risks posed by this defiance of her father.

In the climactic attack, the monster breaks into the Krell nursery to which the remaining principals have fled. Morbius, finally accepting the awful truth that the enemy is his own subconscious, throws himself between the monster and his daughter. He is mortally injured, and simultaneously the monster disappears. As he lies dying, he directs Adams to put the Krell machine into overload to initiate the destruction of the planet. He has realized that the machine is far too dangerous to be used by any race that cannot fully control its subconscious desires. Altaira and the surviving crew members escape to a safe distance where they witness the destruction of the planet, and then prepare for the trip to Earth.

[edit] Notes

A small portion of the Great Machine on Altair IV (note the characters walking on the platform)
  • 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);<ref name="MovieDiva-Forbidden-Planet">Forbidden Planet. MovieDiva. Retrieved on 2006-08-16.</ref> 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 <ref name="IMDB-Robby-the-Robot">Robby the Robot. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2006-08-14.</ref>. 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.
  • Block and Adler's treatment took place in the year 1976 on the planet Mercury. An expedition headed by John Grant is sent to the planet to retrieve Dr. Adams and his daughter Dorianne who have been stranded there for twenty years. The plot is roughly the same as the final film, though Grant is able to rescue both Adams and his daughter and escape the invisible monster stalking them.
  • 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.

[edit] 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. Image:Robbie Forbidden Planet.jpg

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 [1], 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.

[edit] 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<ref name="MovieDiva-Forbidden-Planet" />.

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.<ref name=MGroovesFP>Notes about film soundtrack and CD, MovieGrooves-FP</ref> 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. <ref name=MGroovesFP>Notes about film soundtrack and CD, MovieGrooves-FP</ref>

[edit] Track Listing of Forbidden Planet

The following is a list of compositions on the CD:<ref name=MGroovesFP>Notes about film soundtrack and CD, MovieGrooves-FP</ref>

  1. Main Titles (Overture)
  2. Deceleration
  3. Once Around Altair
  4. The Landing
  5. Flurry Of Dust - A Robot Approaches
  6. A Shangri-La In The Desert / Garden With Cuddly Tiger
  7. Graveyard - A Night With Two Moons
  8. "Robby, Make Me A Gown"
  9. An Invisible Monster Approaches
  10. Robby Arranges Flowers, Zaps Monkey
  11. Love At The Swimming Hole
  12. Morbius' Study
  13. Ancient Krell Music
  14. The Mind Booster - Creation Of Matter
  15. Krell Shuttle Ride And Power Station
  16. Giant Footprints In The Sand
  17. "Nothing Like This Claw Found In Nature!"
  18. Robby, The Cook, And 60 Gallons Of Booze
  19. Battle With The Invisible Monster
  20. "Come Back To Earth With Me"
  21. The Monster Pursues - Morbius Is Overcome
  22. The Homecoming
  23. Overture (Reprise)

[edit] Influences

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<ref name="Bio-Gene-Roddenberry">Alexander, David (1996-08-26). "Star Trek" Creator: Authorised Biography of Gene Roddenberry. Boxtree. ISBN 0-7522-0368-1.</ref>.

The Star Trek episode "Requiem for Methuselah" shows many similarities to Forbidden Planet, as it is also based on The Tempest.

Following on from the above - if you listen very carefully when the automated sentry (M4) arrives - the electronic music (the first few notes) sounds like part of the soundtrack from Forbidden planet. Perhaps this was an intentional way to pay homage.

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.

[edit] 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 Nielsen 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.)<ref>Straczsynski, J Michael (1995-10-29). JMSNews. Synthetic Worlds. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. “My second thought was, "Shit, somebody's going to gig us on the Forbidden Planet thing." Nonetheless, it was the right shot, for the right reasons, and we chose to go with it.”</ref>

In the musical The Rocky Horror Show, and its film adaptation, the opening song Science Fiction/Double Feature references many classic 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.

In the classic sci-fi film The Blob, the poster for Forbidden Planet is seen on the theater that is playing the midnight "spook show" (which is the theater that the Blob later on invades).

[edit] References

<references/>

[edit] External links

es:El planeta prohibido fr:Planète interdite it:Il pianeta proibito nl:Forbidden Planet ja:禁断の惑星 ru:Запретная планета (фильм) sv:Förbjuden Värld

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