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Forbidden Planet

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Forbidden Planet is a classic 1956 science fiction film and a subsequent novelization by W.J. Stuart. The film features a number of spectacular special effects, groundbreaking use of an all-electronic music score, and the first screen appearance of the famous Robby the Robot. The film's characters and setting were inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, 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.

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Plot

[Spoiler warningSpoiler 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 won't 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. 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 up one weekend" (with Robby exhibiting a technology of sophistication beyond that currently known). 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 an "educator" machine that instantly killed one person who had tried it. He explains that it put him into a coma for almost two days, though he recovered with a doubled IQ.

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 is awakened by his daughter, screaming from a nightmare. The attacker vanishes and the power meters revert back to near zero.

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 one 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.

Notes

A small portion of the Great Machine on Altair IV (note the characters walking on the platform)
Enlarge
A small portion of the Great Machine on Altair IV (note the characters walking on the platform)

For contemporary 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. 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 even manual labor to navigate a ship, is badly dated.

For the film, a full-size mockup, 3/4ths 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: 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. 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 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.

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.

After the movie came out, there followed a novelization by W.J. Stuart. The book follows 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 two ways: the mythical Greek hero Bellerophon was struck down by the gods for the crime of hubris in trying to reach Olympian heights; also, 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: 

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 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.

The title of the film surely alludes to forbidden fruit, as some critics have noted [link], reminding us that The Tempest itself is a version of the "Eden lost" myth, 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 wizardian character Dr. Morbius 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.

Influences on Pop Culture

Influences on Star Trek

Overall, though it preceded the television series by ten years, Forbidden Planet is remarkably like one of the better Star Trek episodes: it could easily have been (but never was) adapted as an episode in that series, complete with the starship captain's amorous entanglements with the beautiful young planet-dweller. Gene Roddenberry noted in his biography Star Trek Creator that Forbidden Planet was one of the inspirations for Star Trek.

Some possible connections between the film and the original Star Trek series have been noted by critics:

Other Influences

See also

External links

 

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