"They need more bromide on that spaceship!"
attimes_bracing commented a little while back that she'd seen very few classic sf movies, and wondered about catching up. So, last night, we started with Forbidden Planet.
Now, I hadn't watched FP for literally decades. I have a dim memory of us showing it at a video night at the SF club at university, and I'd definitely seen it before I first went to see Return to the Forbidden Planet (the stage musical) in London in 1989 or so. So my briefing to attimes_bracing was that this was very early in the 'humans explore space' genre (1956), that bits of it would seem familiar because it had been very influential on a number of TV series, and that she should expect it to be, well, a product of the 1950s.
Ouch. I'd forgotten how much a product of the 1950s it was.
We have an all male, all white crew. Well, the C-57D is clearly a military ship (we twice see Commander Adams holding discipline sessions with crewmen) and that would have been typical for small US ship of the era. The real problems start when Altaira, Dr Morbius' daughter, turns up. Everyone from the C-57D, its captain included, immediately start drooling over her to the point of begin blatantly distracted from what they are meant to be doing, and within a very short time one of them is manipulating her into kissing on the grounds that it's meant to be good for her.
Frankly, the more interesting twist the movie could have used would have been to have it turn out that the monster assaulting the crew had been generated by the Krell Machine not from Morbius' subconscious, but from Altaira's.
(Of course, that's not how 1950s scriptwriters would have done it, and if they had it would no doubt have led to a very misogynist denouement.)
Putting that aside for the moment, FP still stands up well in some areas. Morbius' tour of the Krell Machine is one of sf cinema's great visual scenes, and was echoed by Babylon 5; the effects work is surprisingly good for the time, although I'd be interested to know how much it was influenced by pulp sf-magazine covers of the 30s and 40s. The crew's battle with the Id Monster is also done well, and I suspect that any modern CGI remake would actually be less effective by probably being tempted to show more.
Next up: probably 2001, which at least has less creepiness.
This entry was originally posted at http://major-clanger.dreamwidth.org/27864.html, where there are
comments.
Now, I hadn't watched FP for literally decades. I have a dim memory of us showing it at a video night at the SF club at university, and I'd definitely seen it before I first went to see Return to the Forbidden Planet (the stage musical) in London in 1989 or so. So my briefing to attimes_bracing was that this was very early in the 'humans explore space' genre (1956), that bits of it would seem familiar because it had been very influential on a number of TV series, and that she should expect it to be, well, a product of the 1950s.
Ouch. I'd forgotten how much a product of the 1950s it was.
We have an all male, all white crew. Well, the C-57D is clearly a military ship (we twice see Commander Adams holding discipline sessions with crewmen) and that would have been typical for small US ship of the era. The real problems start when Altaira, Dr Morbius' daughter, turns up. Everyone from the C-57D, its captain included, immediately start drooling over her to the point of begin blatantly distracted from what they are meant to be doing, and within a very short time one of them is manipulating her into kissing on the grounds that it's meant to be good for her.
Frankly, the more interesting twist the movie could have used would have been to have it turn out that the monster assaulting the crew had been generated by the Krell Machine not from Morbius' subconscious, but from Altaira's.
(Of course, that's not how 1950s scriptwriters would have done it, and if they had it would no doubt have led to a very misogynist denouement.)
Putting that aside for the moment, FP still stands up well in some areas. Morbius' tour of the Krell Machine is one of sf cinema's great visual scenes, and was echoed by Babylon 5; the effects work is surprisingly good for the time, although I'd be interested to know how much it was influenced by pulp sf-magazine covers of the 30s and 40s. The crew's battle with the Id Monster is also done well, and I suspect that any modern CGI remake would actually be less effective by probably being tempted to show more.
Next up: probably 2001, which at least has less creepiness.
This entry was originally posted at http://major-clanger.dreamwidth.org/27864.html, where there are
comments.