fortboise

Forbidden Planet

Fifty-six years after it was new (just about when I was), I watched the movie Forbidden Planet on YouTube, apparently, and took some notes, which sat around for a couple of years. What a fun sci-fi movie it was. If you know and love it, maybe you'll enjoy my stream of consciousness reaction to it. (If you've never seen it, total SPOILER ALERT here and go watch before you read on.)

The "electronic tonalities" took me back. Pretty much the canonical "flying saucer" form, eh? Leslie Nielsen! OMG. And transporters! They were slower and noisier back then... and woah, you didn't actually go anywhere?

Love "Cookie" with the white hat and apron in with the crew in their vaguely...

"The Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds."

Oxygen content 4.9% richer than earth standard? That would be dangerous.

"Jerry, can you make out anything down there?"

"I may be missing some individual structures, but there are no cities, ports, roads, bridges, dams... there's just no sign of civilization at all!"

"Sir, we're being radar scanned."

"Can you zero in on it?"

"No sir, but it seems to emanate from an area 20 miles square."

"20 miles square?!"

"Bos'n, pass the alert!"

"Aye aye sir."

"Combat stations. Blast event. Activate your scopes."

They found a philologist out there.

Love the 50's era vision of controls. Big whommer slide switches. Rheostats, maybe. The Resistance! Love the communicators on tethers. The early use of seat belts. "Looks after us like a mother."

Good news about that robot. "There happens to be a built-in safety factor." Goes into "a sub-electronic dilemma" when instructed to harm a human.

"C'mon in!"

"I didn't bring my bathing suit."

"What's a bathing suit?"

"The number 10 raised--almost literally--to the power infinity."

So many archetypes of sci fi. And the great dam building era on this planet comes to mind in the tour of the Krell's construction. Bigfoot.

The monster is totally "Night on Bald Mountain" from Fantasia. Or is this all inside my head? It is! "Monsters from the id."

("Anywhere in the galaxy, this is a nightmare," Dr. Ostrow observes after reconstructing the gigantic foot with a talon bigger than a man's head.)

And getting "into that Krell lab" to "take that brain boost." Ooo.

Ah, the tractor is a trike. Nice touch. Very space age.

Trying to get by Robbie: "Maybe if we reason with him."

"The beast!"

"After a million years of shining sanity."

And a climactic chase scene.

"We're all part monsters in our subsconcious."

"What man can remember his own dreams?!"

Is there a happy ending, talk therapy enabling Dr. Morbius to conquer his own id? Can he really depend on his daughter to save him from himself?

"Then it must be true."

"Kill me! Kill me! My evil self is at that door and I have no power to stop it!"

Wow, and they wouldn't.

"The switch. Throw it." It's the Ruby Slippers, sort of.

Non-reversible, you would've thought he'd put a guard on that pushrod, at least.

The Cap'n gets the girl, and holds her in his arms while pop pops. Not entirely a happy ending, but the journey we all have to take.

"You father's name will shine again--like a beacon in the galaxy. It's true, it will remind us that we are after all not God."

Tom von Alten, June 21, 2014