The Movie Poster (Source)
Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film based on the play “The Tempest” (1611) by William Shakespeare. The following blog post asks about the visual conceptions of “space”, their cinematic compositions and attributions of meaning, as well as the narratives that can be identified. Due to the complexity of the source genre “film” – the level of production, content and effect/reception – not everything can be discussed completely here. I will show how the props and the built spaces and costumes shown in the film interact with the content shown, thereby laying the foundation for the genre of “science fiction” as early as the 1950s. A specific film genre that defines the cinematic imaginary space of “outer space”.
Context: materiality, props and design
Shakespeare’s work was, as already mentioned, reinterpreted: The island became Altair 4, Prospero became Morbius, Miranda became Altaira, and Ariel mutated into the robot “Robby”. According to the original story, the film was supposed to be set in the (then still distant) year 1972. However, since the makers thought it unrealistic to have such technology in the 1970s, they moved the action to the 23rd century.
The film was the first film ever to depict a human-piloted spaceship as a flying saucer. A model of the C-57D cruiser, approximately 51 metres tall, was built for the film. This was surrounded by a large studio-built surface of Altair IV, which blended seamlessly into a painted representation of the planet’s horizon. There were three different sized models for long shots in which the spaceship was visible, for example for shots in space or landing approaches to Altair IV. The models were 50, 110 and 220 cm tall. So all the scenes set on the surface of the planet were composed of several special effects. The robot Robby was the most expensive effect of all time at the time: at a cost of 4,900,000 US dollars for the film, the portrayal of Robby alone swallowed up 125,000 US dollars.
MGM had originally been lured into making the film cheaper because the monster was invisible. When it was decided to suggest the creature’s outline by animation, help from illustrators at the Walt Disney Company had to be used, since MGM no longer had its own animation studio at the time. As a result, production became much more expensive, which contributed to the commercial failure and discredited the science fiction genre with financiers for years to come. However, the film was to inspire many subsequent films and thus represents a milestone in the science fiction genre.
The film was released in German cinemas in 1957, the year the first satellite Sputnik 1 was launched. There was no space travel at the time, nor was there any usable knowledge about space. Alarm in Space had a great influence on science fiction, especially Star Trek. Its creator Gene Roddenberry claimed to have been inspired by the film. One example is the synthetic production of food and commodities. Whereas in Alarm in Space Robby the Robot was responsible for this, in Star Trek there are so-called replicators. In addition, there are, among other things, the communicators, the “simple ray weapons” and the “United Planets”. Furthermore, there is a preliminary form of “beaming” (dematerialisation of the crew) when changing to sub-light speed, which is similar to the later beaming. It is also similar that here as there the captain, the ship’s doctor and the first officer take part in external missions. The story of the submerged alien civilisation, with threatening energy beings and the captain’s obligatory love affair, also resembles some later Star Trek episodes. Like later Star Trek, the film predicted the end of the Cold War; the ship’s doctor, Doctor Ostrow, is from Russia.
George Lucas was also inspired by the film and its visual effects. For example, the Krell’s machine shops provided the model for interior shots of the Death Star in Star Wars and for the generator hall in The Dark Menace. The melting tank doors at the end of the film can also be found here. Furthermore, the robot Robby, who can speak a variety of foreign languages, is reminiscent of the droid C-3PO with similar abilities. The trailer for Alarm in Space began, like the Star Wars series later, with a yellow scrolling text.
Robby the robot, the pinball machine Twilight Zone, who first appeared in the film, became a cult character in his own right and continued to make guest appearances in films and series for years after, including SOS Spaceship, Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, Love Boat, Columbo, Gremlins and, as a drawn version, on The Simpsons. In 2004, he was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame. The Id Monster was created based on the well-known Looney Tunes character Gossamer. The aliens’ underground facilities were the model for the “Great Machine” in the television series Babylon 5, which appears from the episode Attack of the Aliens onwards. The two facilities are almost to a hair’s breadth alike.
The plot – Imaginative utopia, space adventure and technical wonders
The space cruiser C-57D is on a search-and-rescue mission to the 4th planet of the Altair system. Twenty years earlier, the spaceship Bellerophon (named after the eponymous hero of Greek mythology) had disappeared there with a group of colonists on board. However, the crew of the cruiser under Captain Adams only meets a scientist named Dr. Morbius there. He and his daughter Altaira, who was born on the planet, are the only survivors.
Morbius explains to Adams that the presence of the rescue team is not necessary, as he and his daughter are supplied with everything they need by the robot “Robby” constructed by Morbius himself. The colonists had all been killed by some inexplicable force. Only Morbius and his wife, who died of natural causes a few months after giving birth to their daughter Altaira, were immune to this force. While Morbius insists that the soldiers leave the planet again, Adams senses a secret behind the doctor’s strange appearance and the inexplicable technical achievements that Morbius demonstrates to them. Adams soon sees this confirmed when important parts of the spaceship are destroyed and the ship’s propulsion system is sabotaged. Adams wants to confront Morbius and discovers his secret research documents and a secret passage, which is located in Morbius’ laboratory.
Reluctantly, Dr Morbius gives an explanation: the planet was once home to the Krell, who were technically and ethically superior to humans, but whose civilisation was inexplicably destroyed in one fell swoop. No signs of their civilisation remain on the surface – but beneath the planet’s surface are huge functioning machine systems, laboratories and massive libraries in which the Krell’s knowledge is stored. Morbius has managed to acquire some of the Krell’s knowledge and operate the machines.
One of the protagonists of the movie (Source).
While Adams urges Morbius to share his findings with Earth, the crew of the space cruiser is attacked by an invisible creature. The crew can only with difficulty resist the attack; several crew members die. Adams decides to leave Altair 4 and take Morbius and his daughter, who has fallen in love with him, with him for their safety. When Morbius refuses and Altaira decides to leave her father, the invisible monster attacks Morbius’ house. Adams figures out that the monster is the professor’s raging unconscious, unwittingly released when he used a machine that can materialise thoughts, which also explains the destruction of Krell culture. Only now does Morbius recognise the repressed truth, admit his guilt and thus defeat his own monster, which, however, fatally injures him beforehand out of anger at his actions.
Morbius then activates the self-destruction of Altair 4 with his last strength, which is to take place 24 hours later, and then asks Captain Adams to save his daughter, which he does. 24 hours later, the spaceship with the remaining crew, Altaira and Robby on board watches the explosion from a safe distance. Adams wants to ensure that Morbius and what happened on the planet are not forgotten for the sake of humanity’s future existence.
The description of the story, the actor-constellations and the social relationship in the film point to specific ideas of “space”. In this way, processes of distinction between us, the people in the present and those of the future can be discerned. Even though living beings such as humans, animals and others show similarities to those on Earth, there are differences in their appearance, abilities and capacities for action. How psychologised interpretations of an unconscious are packed into the figure of Morbius and the invisible creature can also be seen very well in the film.
Conclusion and Outlook
I have tried to show what role the film “Forbidden Planet” (1956) plays in the cinematic production of space imaginaries due to the story but also the requisites used. Further detailed studies must follow here and work out comparatively which references can be made between “Forbidden Planet” and films that appeared in the following years. It is also exciting to see how contemporary films take up imaginary worlds of space and which lines of connection can be drawn from the 1950s to the present, the year 2021.
Literature and other sources
Mark LeFanu, The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (1987); chapter on Solaris, pp. 53-68.
Thomas Myrach, Science & Fiction: Imagination und Realität des Weltraums (2009).
Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (1986).
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1616).
Asif A. Siddiqi, The red rockets’ glare: spaceflight and the Soviet imagination, 1857-1957 (2010).