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 and soundstage scenic paintings.
Plot:
In 2371, 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 10 year voyage (one year to those on-board), the crew detects some immense power source scanning the ship. They are contacted by a survivor, Doctor Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), who warns them to go away, 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 everybody overnight. Only he, his wife (who later died of natural causes), and his infant daughter 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-tech defenses. Commander Adams (played by Leslie Nielsen) begins to question Morbius' technological abilities, as his specialty was in philology, the study of languages.
For twenty years, Morbius tells the commander, he has been reconstructing the history and some of the minor technologies (such as Robby) of the Krell, the extinct natives. They had had a technology far in advance of that of the humans, but had all died two hundred thousand 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. A vast underground machine powered by a countless number of thermonuclear reactors has been operating, self-repairing and self-maintaining, purpose unknown, since the extinction of the Krell. The effects shots of the Great Machine are well done, showing enormous, miles-deep shafts with huge and incomprehensible structures moving up and down with vast energy discharges passing between them.
Things get interesting for the commander when he meets Morbius' beautiful but extremely naïve daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis). Nineteen years old, she is very curious about human relations. The commander and his executive officer compete for the privilege of enlightening her on this topic, establishing the tradition so avidly followed by James T. Kirk.
That night, while Morbius sleeps in the Krell nursery, power meters all round the walls sequentially start lighting up and the ship is attacked by an invisible monster made of pure energy. This creature is a spectacular special effect: a roaring, gigantic armless 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 clue, 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 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, causing the monster to disappear. As he lies dying, he directs the commander to initiate the self-destruction of the machine. He has realized that it is far too dangerous to be used by any race that cannot fully control its subconscious desires.
Notes:
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 girl. Gene Roddenberry admitted in his biography Star Trek Creator that Forbidden Planet was one of the inspirations for Star Trek. Some would dispute that the commander of Forbidden Planet was of this character — he was only described as such by another character who himself several times attempted to take advantage of Altaira's naiveté (once in a scene not included in the DVD but previously seen in TV releases), and the commander's actions and perceived intentions were always beyond reproach — both in his command duties and in his personal relations.
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. 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 navigated manually — at the film's conclusion, the fact that Robby can navigate the ship is considered a novelty. Approximately a half-century later, faster-than-light travel seems as impossible as ever, but the idea of requiring manual calculations to navigate a ship is now ridiculous in an age of ubiquitous computers. Another notable device featured in the movie is a crew belt-communication device that may have inspired Star Trek's "Communicator".
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 also resembles the Looney Tunes character "Gossamer".
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. In some ways, the book is superior to the film, because of its insights into the mystery of the Krell, and Morbius's relationship to them. Readers find that, unlike in the movie, Morbius repeatedly exposed himself to the Krell Mind Machine, which expanded his brain power far beyond the most intelligent human. Unfortunately, Morbius retained enough of his imperfect human nature to be afflicted with hubris (his contempt for humanity is obvious), which was ultimately his downfall.
The movie is also an example of Cooper's Law ("All machines are amplifiers"), as exemplified by Morbius's Id using the Krell machines to murder.
As mentioned above, 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 clearly be lined up with one another:
Prospero = Morbius
Miranda = Altaira
Ariel = Robby the Robot
Caliban = Monster from the Id
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. The "monsters from the Id" can be identified with Caliban ("This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," Prospero says in The Tempest); and they also may have been inspired by the spirits, in addition to Ariel, who were controlled by Prospero.
The use of the name "Bellerophon" ties in with Morbius's character in two ways: the Greek hero Bellerophon was struck down by the gods for crime of hubris; also, Morbius was brought to his unintended exile by a ship sharing the same name as the ship that took Napoleon Bonaparte to his final exile, the HMS Bellerophon.
Forbidden Planet is clearly based on Aristotle's rules for tragedy. A great man, Morbius, is brought down by a single tragic flaw, his belief in his moral superiority. In fact, the story is a double tragedy; this flaw destroys the 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) was composed by Louis and Bebe Barron. Their score is widely credited with being the first completely electronic film score, and opened the door for electronic music in film.
Influences on Pop Culture:
Influences on Star Trek
During deceleration from supra-lightspeed, the occupants of the spaceship stand in beams that appear similar to those used in the transporter from Star Trek, although the crew does not disappear. (The beams apparently freeze the crew in stasis to protect them from the effects of acceleration and deceleration.) The transporter design was admittedly influenced by this feature of the movie.
Altair IV is mentioned as the location of a prestigious hospital in 2371, in the Star Trek DS9 episode ' Prophet Motive '.
The Star Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah shows many similarities to Forbidden Planet, as it is also based on The Tempest. The character associations are:
Prospero = Mr. Flint
Miranda = Rayna Kapec
Ariel = "M4" The Sentry Robot
The film also bears more than a passing resemblance to the original Star Trek pilot episode, The Cage. Both include:
A military/science crew sent on a mission to discover why a space colony lost contact
A young woman who lives on the planet
A dashing leading man who falls in love with the female inhabitant
A race of extremely advanced beings living underground
The death of the majority of the colony crew
A deadly mental ability which endangers the crew in some fashion
The inability of standard ship weapons to stop the mental ability
An actor who will later portray an alien in the Star Trek series. In Forbidden Planet, Warren Stevens portrays Lt. 'Doc' Ostrow. In the Star Trek episode By Any Other Name he would portray Rojan, the leader of the Kelvans.
Other Influences
The 1990s television series Babylon 5 also had a Great Machine beneath a planetary surface, and some of the visual effects of that many have thought were plainly done as a homage to the machine in Forbidden Planet. However, J. Michael Straczynski has claimed that he selected the shots he did of the Great Machine for aesthetic reasons, even though he knew many viewers would immediately recognize the resemblance to the Krell underground city.
The robot "B9" in the television series Lost in Space is quite similar in character to Robby, and also in some mechanical aspects, although far less sophisticated in motion. This is likely due to the fact that both robots were created by the same designer, Robert Kinoshita. B9 combined many of the personal characteristics of Robby - able to calculate, interact socially, yet with a humor that was completely unintended by its (fictional) makers - a situational, rather than a mental wittiness. The domed 'astrogator' unit in the center of C-57D's control deck is also markedly similar to that featured in Lost In Space's Jupiter 2 spaceship (similarly, both were probably designed by Kinoshita). Robbie shows up in one form or another in The Twilight Zone's episodes #2 (One for the Angels) and #153 (The Brain Center at Whipple's), etc.
Forbidden Planet set a high standard for plot, characters, and effects in science fiction movies. A combination of elements of this quality would not be seen again until 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first Star Wars movie.
In the 1990s, a tongue-in-cheek stage musical adaptation was made, entitled Return to the Forbidden Planet, which merged the plot of the film with characters and dialogue closer to that of Shakespeare's play.
The C-57D saucer model later appeared in several television programs as the de facto standard space ship, including Twilight Zone episodes #14 ("Third From the Sun"), #15 ("I Shot an Arrow Into the Air"), #25 ("People are Alike All Over"), #51 ("The Invaders"), and #89 ("To Serve Man") to name a few.
Michael Crichton's book Sphere bears a striking resemblance to the film.
The 2005 film Serenity contains several references, namely Miranda and C-57D.
A comic book store at the corner of Broadway and 13th Street near Union Square in New York City is named "Forbidden Planet."
There is a chain of comic book stores in the UK and Europe called Forbidden Planet.
Forbidden Planet is one of the many classic science fiction films mentioned in the song "Science Fiction Double Feature", which is the opening song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The mention is in a line from the chorus: "See androids fighting/Brad and Janet/Anne Francis stars in/Forbidden Planet..."