Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, directed by Fred M. Wilcox, that stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen. Shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, it is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the plot contains certain analogues to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation.
Forbidden Planet pioneered several aspects of science fiction cinema. It was the first science fiction film to depict humans traveling in a faster-than-light starship of their own creation. It was also the first to be set entirely on another planet in interstellar space, far away from Earth. The Robby the Robot character is one of the first film robots that was more than just a mechanical "tin can" on legs; Robby displays a distinct personality and is an integral supporting character in the film. Outside science fiction, the film was groundbreaking as the first of any genre to use an entirely electronic musical score, courtesy of Bebe and Louis Barron.
Forbidden Planet's effects team was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 29th Academy Awards. In 2013, the picture was entered into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Tony Magistrale describes it as one of the best examples of early techno-horror.
Plot
In the 23rd century, the starship C-57D reaches the distant planet Altair IV to determine the fate of an Earth expedition sent there 20 years earlier. Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the expedition's scientists, warns the relief ship not to land, saying he cannot guarantee their safety, but C-57D Commander John J. Adams ignores his warning.After landing, Adams and Lieutenants Jerry Farman and "Doc" Ostrow are met by Robby the Robot, who transports them to Morbius' residence. Morbius describes how, one by one, the rest of the expedition was killed by a "planetary force" and that their starship, the Bellerophon, was vaporized as the last survivors tried to lift off. Only Morbius, his wife, and their daughter Altaira were somehow immune. Morbius offers to help them prepare to return home, but Adams says he must await further instructions from Earth.
The next day, Adams finds Farman trying to seduce Altaira; furious, he dresses down Farman and criticizes Altaira for her naivety around the crewmen and what he considers her excessively-revealing clothing. She reports the incident to Morbius, claiming that she never wishes to see Adams again, though she later designs new, more conservative clothing to appease Adams. That night, an invisible intruder sabotages equipment aboard the starship. Adams and Ostrow attempt to confront Morbius about this the following morning. While waiting, Adams goes outside to talk to Altaira. He apologizes for his behavior and they kiss. When they are unexpectedly attacked by Altaira's pet tiger, Adams disintegrates it with his blaster.
When Morbius appears, Adams and Ostrow learn that he has been studying the Krell, a highly advanced native race that perished overnight 200,000 years before. In a Krell laboratory, Morbius shows them a "plastic educator", a device capable of measuring and enhancing intellectual capacity. When Morbius first used it, he barely survived, but his intellect was permanently doubled. Morbius takes them on a tour of a gigantic Krell underground machine complex, a cube long on each side, still functioning and powered by 9,200 thermonuclear reactors, operating in tandem. Afterwards, Adams demands that Morbius turn over his discoveries to Earth. Morbius, however, states that "humanity is not yet ready to receive such limitless power".
Adams orders the crew to erect a force field fence around the starship to prevent further sabotage. It proves ineffective when the invisible intruder returns and murders Chief Engineer Quinn. Morbius warns Adams of his premonition of further deadly attacks, similar to what happened with the Bellerophon. That night, the invisible creature returns and is outlined in the fence's force field. The ship's blaster weapons have no effect and the creature kills Farman and two other crewmen. Morbius, asleep in the Krell lab, is startled awake by screams from Altaira; at the same instant, the roaring creature vanishes.
Later, while Adams tries to persuade Altaira to leave, Ostrow sneaks away to use the Krell educator. He is fatally injured, but with his dying words, Ostrow tells Adams that the great machine was built to create anything from thought alone. He says that the Krell forgot one thing, however: "Monsters from the Id". Their own base subconscious desires, given free rein and unlimited power by the machine, brought about their quick extinction. Adams asserts that Morbius' subconscious mind created the creature that killed the original expedition and attacked his crew; Morbius refuses to believe him.
After Altaira tells Morbius that she intends to leave with Adams, Robby detects the creature approaching. Morbius commands the robot to kill it, but Robby knows it is a creation of Morbius's subconscious mind and shuts down rather than harm him to stop it. The monster melts through the almost indestructible Krell metal doors of the laboratory where Adams, Altaira, and Morbius have taken refuge. Morbius finally accepts the truth. He confronts and disowns the creature, but is fatally injured by the backlash resulting from the confrontation; the Id monster vanishes. Before Morbius dies, he has Adams unknowingly initiate an irreversible chain reaction within the Krell reactors—a planetary self-destruct device—saying that everyone must be 100 million miles out in deep space within 24 hours. At that safe distance, Adams, Altaira, Robby, and the surviving crew watch the destruction of Altair IV. Adams then comforts Altaira by saying that this tragedy will serve as a reminder that, "... we are, after all, not God." The starship departs for Earth.
Cast
Production
The screenplay by Irving Block and Allen Adler, written in 1952, was originally titled Fatal Planet. The later screenplay draft by Cyril Hume renamed the film Forbidden Planet, because this was believed to have greater box-office appeal. Block and Adler's drama took place in the year 1976 on the planet Mercury. An Earth 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. From then on, its plot is roughly the same as that of the completed film, though Grant is able to rescue both Adams and his daughter and escape the invisible monster stalking them.The film sets for Forbidden Planet were constructed on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer sound stage at its Culver City film lot and were designed by Cedric Gibbons and Arthur Lonergan. The film was shot entirely indoors, with all the Altair IV exterior scenes simulated using sets, visual effects, and matte paintings.
A full-size mock-up of roughly three-quarters of the starship was built to suggest its full width of 170 ft. The starship was surrounded by a huge, painted cyclorama featuring the desert landscape of Altair IV; this one set took up all of the available space in one of the Culver City sound stages. Principal photography took place from April 18 to late May 1955.
Later, many costume and prop items were reused in several different episodes of the television series The Twilight Zone, most of which were filmed by Rod Serling's Cayuga Productions at the MGM studio in Culver City, including Robby the Robot, the various C-57D models, the full-scale mock-up of the base of the ship, the blaster pistols and rifles, crew uniforms, and special effects shots.
At a cost of roughly $125,000, Robby the Robot was very expensive for a film prop at this time; it represented almost 7% of the film's $1.9 million budget and equates to at least $1 million in 2017 dollars. Both the electrically controlled passenger vehicle driven by Robby and the truck/tractor-crane off-loaded from the starship were also constructed especially for this film. Robby also starred in the science fiction film The Invisible Boy and later appeared in many TV series and films.
The animated sequences of Forbidden Planet, especially the attack of the Id Monster, were created by veteran animator Joshua Meador, who was loaned to MGM by Walt Disney Productions. According to a "Behind the Scenes" featurette on the film's DVD, a close look at the creature shows it to have a small goatee beard, suggesting its connection to Dr. Morbius, the only character with this physical feature. Unusually, the scene in which the Id Monster is finally revealed during its attack on the Earth ship was not created using traditional cel animation. Instead, Meador simply sketched each frame of the entire sequence in black pencil on animation stand translucent vellum paper; each page was then photographed in high contrast, so that only the major details remained visible. These images were then photographically reversed into negative and the resulting white line images were then tinted red, creating the effect of the Id Monster's body remaining largely invisible, with only its major outlines illuminated by the energy from the force-field and blaster beams.
Reception
Forbidden Planet had its world premiere at the Southeastern Science Fiction Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 3 and 4, 1956, and opened in more than 100 cities on March 23 in CinemaScope, Eastmancolor, and in some theaters, stereophonic sound, either by the magnetic or Perspecta processes.The film received positive reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that everyone who worked on the film certainly "had a barrel of fun with it. And, if you've got an ounce of taste for crazy humor, you'll have a barrel of fun, too." Variety wrote: "Imaginative gadgets galore, plus plenty of suspense and thrills, make the Nicholas Nayfack production a top offering in the space travel category." Harrison's Reports called the film "weird but fascinating and exciting," with "highly imaginative" production. Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was "more than another science-fiction movie, with the emphasis on fiction; it is a genuinely thought-through concept of the future, and the production MGM has bestowed on it gives new breadth and dimension to that time-worn phrase, 'out of this world.'" John McCarten of The New Yorker called the film "a pleasant spoof of all the moonstruck nonsense the movies have been dishing up about what goes on among our neighbors out there in interstellar space." The Monthly Film Bulletin of Britain praised the film as "an enjoyably thorough-going space fantasy," adding, "In tone the film adroitly combines naivete with sophistication, approaching its inter-planetary heroics with a cheerful consciousness of their absurdity that still allows for one or two genuinely weird and exciting moments, such as the monster's first advance on the spaceship."
According to MGM records the film initially earned $1,530,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,235,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $210,000.
Forbidden Planet was re-released to film theaters during 1972 as one of MGM's "Kiddie Matinee" features; it was missing about six minutes of film footage cut to ensure it received a "G" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Later video releases carry a "G" rating, though they are all the original theatrical version.
The American Film Institute nominated the film for their top 10 science fiction films. The score was nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
Home media
Forbidden Planet was first released in the pan and scan format in 1982 on MGM VHS and Betamax videotape and on MGM laser disc and CED Videodisc; years later, in 1996, it was again re-issued by MGM/UA, but this time in widescreen VHS and laserdisc, both for the film's 40th anniversary. But it was The Criterion Collection that later re-issued Forbidden Planet in CinemaScope's original wider screen 2.55-to-1 aspect ratio, on a deluxe laserdisc set, with various extra features on a second disc. Warner Bros. next released the film on DVD in 1999. Warner's release offered both cropped and widescreen picture formats on the same disc.For the film's 50th anniversary, the Ultimate Collector's Edition was released on November 28, 2006, in an oversized red metal box, using the original film poster for its wraparound cover. Both DVD and high definition HD DVD formats were available in this deluxe package. Inside both premium packages were the films Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy, The Thin Man episode "Robot Client" and a documentary Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, The 1950s and Us. Also included were miniature lobby cards and an 8 cm toy replica of Robby the Robot. This was quickly followed by the release of the Forbidden Planet 50th Anniversary edition in both standard DVD and HD DVD packaging. Both 50th anniversary formats were mastered by Warner Bros.-MGM techs from a fully restored, digital transfer of the film. A Blu-ray edition of Forbidden Planet was released on September 7, 2010.
Novelization
Shortly before the film was released, a novelization appeared in hardcover and then later in mass-market paperback; it was written by W. J. Stuart, which chapters the novel into separate first person narrations by Dr. Ostrow, Commander Adams, and Dr. Morbius. The novel delves further into the mysteries of the vanished Krell and Morbius' relationship to them. In the novel, he repeatedly exposes himself to the Krell's manifestation machine, which boosts his brain power far beyond normal human intelligence. Unfortunately, Morbius retains enough of his imperfect human nature to be afflicted with hubris and a contempt for humanity. Not recognizing his own base primitive drives and limitations proves to be Morbius' downfall, as it had for the extinct Krell. While not stated explicitly in the film, the novelization compared Altaira's ability to tame the tiger to the medieval myth of a unicorn being tamable only by a virgin.The novel also includes some elements never included in the film: For one, Adams, Farman, and Ostrow clandestinely observe Morbius' house overnight one evening, but see or hear nothing. When they leave they accidentally kill one of Altaira's pet monkeys. When Dr. Ostrow later on dissects the dead animal he discovers that its internal structure precludes it from ever having been alive in the normal biological sense. The tiger, deer, and monkeys are all conscious creations by Dr. Morbius as companions for his daughter and only outwardly resemble their Earth counterparts. The novel also differs somewhat from the film in that it does not directly establish the great machine as the progenitor of the animals or monster; instead only attributes them to Morbius' elevated mental power. The Krell's self-destruction can be interpreted by the reader as a cosmic punishment for misappropriating the life-creating power of God. This is why in the film's ending, Commander Adams says in his speech to Altaira "... we are, after all, not God". The novel ends with a postscript making a similar observation.
Soundtrack
Forbidden Planets innovative electronic music score, credited as "electronic tonalities", partly to avoid having to pay any of the film industry music guild fees, was composed by Bebe and Louis Barron. MGM producer Dore Schary discovered the couple quite by chance at a beatnik nightclub in Greenwich Village while on a family Christmas visit to New York City; Schary hired them on the spot to compose his film's musical score. While the theremin had been used on the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, the Barrons' electronic composition is credited with being the first completely electronic film score; their soundtrack preceded the invention of the Moog synthesizer by eight years.Using ideas and procedures from the book by the mathematician and electrical engineer Norbert Wiener, Louis Barron constructed his own electronic circuits that he used to generate the score's "bleeps, blurps, whirs, whines, throbs, hums, and screeches". Most of these sounds were generated using an electronic circuit called a "ring modulator". After recording the basic sounds, the Barrons further manipulated the sounds by adding other effects, such as reverberation and delay, and reversing or changing the speeds of certain sounds.
Since Bebe and Louis Barron did not belong to the Musicians Union, their work could not be considered for an Academy Award, in either the "soundtrack" or the "sound effects" categories. MGM declined to publish a soundtrack album at the time that Forbidden Planet was released. However, film composer and conductor David Rose later published a 7" single of his original main title theme that he had recorded at the MGM Studios in Culver City during March 1956. His main title theme had been discarded when Rose, who had originally been hired to compose the musical score in 1955, was discharged from the project by Dore Schary sometime between Christmas 1955 and New Year's Day. The film's original theatrical trailer contains snippets of Rose's score, the tapes of which Rose reportedly later destroyed.
The Barrons finally released their soundtrack in 1976 as an LP album for the film's 20th anniversary; it was on their very own Planet Records label. The LP was premiered at MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Kansas City, MO over the 1976 Labor Day weekend, as part of a 20th Anniversary celebration of Forbidden Planet held at that Worldcon; the Barrons were there promoting their album's first release, signing all the copies sold at the convention. They also introduced the first of three packed-house screenings that showed an MGM 35mm fine grain vault print in original CinemaScope and stereophonic sound. A decade later, in 1986, their soundtrack was released on a music CD for the film's 30th Anniversary, with a six-page color booklet containing images from Forbidden Planet, plus liner notes from the composers, Bebe and Louis Barron, and Bill Malone.
A tribute to the film's soundtrack was performed live in concert by Jack Dangers, available on disc one of the album Forbidden Planet Explored.
Track list
The following is a list of compositions on the CD:- Main Titles
- Deceleration
- Once Around Altair
- The Landing
- Flurry Of Dust – A Robot Approaches
- A Shangri-La In The Desert / Garden With Cuddly Tiger
- Graveyard – A Night With Two Moons
- "Robby, Make Me A Gown"
- An Invisible Monster Approaches
- Robby Arranges Flowers, Zaps Monkey
- Love At The Swimming Hole
- Morbius' Study
- Ancient Krell Music
- The Mind Booster – Creation Of Matter
- Krell Shuttle Ride And Power Station
- Giant Footprints In The Sand
- "Nothing Like This Claw Found In Nature!"
- Robby, The Cook, And 60 Gallons Of Booze
- Battle With The Invisible Monster
- "Come Back To Earth With Me"
- The Monster Pursues – Morbius Is Overcome
- The Homecoming
- Overture
Costumes and props
Robby the Robot was operated by diminutive stuntman Frankie Darro. He was fired shortly after an early scene began, having had a "five-martini lunch" prior to the scene being shot; he nearly fell over while trying to walk while inside the expensive prop.
In late September 2015, several screen-used items from Forbidden Planet were offered in Profiles in History's Hollywood Auction 74, including Walter Pidgeon's "Morbius" costume, an illuminating blaster rifle, blaster pistol, a force field generator post, and an original Sascha Brastoff steel prehistoric fish sculpture seen outside Morbius' home; also offered were several lobby cards and publicity photos.
On November 2, 2017, the original Robby the Robot prop was offered for auction by Bonhams, and it earned US$5.3 million, including the buyers premium. It set a new record for TCM-Bonhams auctions, surpassing the US$4 million earned for a Maltese Falcon in 2013, making it the most valuable film prop ever sold at auction.
In popular culture
In the opening of the film, the narrator mentions that humanity landed on the Moon for the first time in the last decade of the 21st century. That prediction proved incorrect when humanity first landed on the Moon in 1969. The narrator also mentions that all the Solar System's planets were visited by 2200 AD and then faster than light drive was invented shortly afterward.An Australian radio adaptation using the original electronic music and noted local actors was broadcast in June 1959 on The Caltex Radio Theatre.
In Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, Altair-4 is frequently referenced as the home planet of the titular alien presence.
In the authorized biography of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Roddenberry notes that Forbidden Planet "was one of inspirations for Star Trek".
Elements of the Doctor Who serial Planet of Evil were consciously based on the 1956 film.
In the novel Strata by Terry Pratchett the main characters get stranded on a disc world which is driven completely by machinery in the underground. Close to the end an explicit reference ‘Didn’t you ever see “Forbidden Planet”? Human movie. They remade it five, six times.’ is made.
Forbidden Planet and star Anne Francis are named alongside ten other classic science fiction films in the opening song "Science Fiction Double Feature" in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show and its subsequent film adaptation.
The British musical Return to the Forbidden Planet was inspired by and loosely based on the MGM film, and won the Olivier Award for best musical of 1989/90.
A scene from the science fiction TV series Babylon 5, set on the Epsilon III Great Machine bridge, strongly resembles the Krell's great machine. While this was not the intent of the show's producer, the special effects crew, tasked with creating the imagery, stated that the Krell's machine was a definite influence on their Epsilon III designs.
The Time Tunnel pilot episode featured a matte shot of huge underground buildings and people running across a walkway above a giant power generator, in homage to the scene of the Krell complex.
The Outer Limits episode "The Man with the Power" revisits the premise of a person's subconscious manifesting as a destructive, murderous entity.
Forbidden Planets, a short story anthology inspired by the film was released in 2006.
's DLC Old World Blues uses multiple references including Doctor Mobius as a reference to the Morbius in the movie, the protectrons being modeled after Robby the Robot, and The Forbidden Dome being based on the movie's title.
In the first Mass Effect game while examining the planets in the Gagarin system of the Armstrong Nebula, on the planet's Junthor survey feed about the planet, a reference is made to "Monsters from the id."
Author George R. R. Martin cites Forbidden Planet as his favorite science fiction film and owns a working replica of Robby the Robot made by Fred Barton Productions.
In the Firefly movie “Serenity”, one of the vehicles they examine on the planet Miranda has C57D stenciled on its side.