Poll Position: "Forbidden Planet" (1956)

 This last poll was bittersweet, even though I had no problem watching all of the movies listed. I knew that there could only be one winner, such a shame. And our winner was “Forbidden Planet” by one vote and Jim and I got to watch it. But I did have few unnerving thoughts on my mind, primarily will the outdated special effects just ruin the moment for me and will the 1950’s style of cinema be too different for my liking? I wasn’t too sure but there is only one way to find out. All the details of what I discovered with the “Forbidden Planet” after the jump.



We start off in the 23rd century with Commander J.J. Adams (A very young Leslie Nielsen), Lt. Ostrow M.D and Lt. Jerry Farman leading their ship into the farthest reaches of space, 16 light years from Earth to be exact. Their mission is to investigate the sudden silence from the planet Altair, which was colonized 20 years ago. When they reach the planet, Dr. Edward Mobius (Walter Pidgeon) warns the ship not to land on the planet. But the crew ignores Mobius’ orders and lands anyways. Dreadfully this might be their last mistake, as a deadly monster lurks the near lifeless planet.

Look at that set up?! How awesome does that look.

Right off the bat, I had no idea Leslie Nielsen was in this movie. I couldn’t recognize his face, voice or even his mannerisms; he is like a whole different person.  But this kind of makes sense now, because I found this movie to be surprisingly funny. Not the traditional comedy I am use to of course, but the old school witty comedy. You know with the subtle sexism, quick witty humour and of course ol’ timey lingo. I had a surprisingly a good amount of fun with this movie, and the best part was I found none of this all too cheesy.

Now if the humour is the bread of the movie, the delicious meat is Robby the Robot. Besides the fact that it is obviously played by a human in a ridiculous suit, I found him to be one of my favourite characters to watch on screen. He wasn’t just this monotone robot, he had personality and character. He even throws in a few zingers, intentional or not. When Adams first makes contact with Altair, Robby is first to greet him. Adams compliments the planets climate because of its high oxygen content. Robby shoots back with a snarky, “I seldom use it myself, sir. It promotes rust.” BAM in Adams’ face! I think to this day, Robby is my favourite robot. Sorry R2 and C3PO, but Puneet’s got a new favourite robot and none of your ‘ro-bro-sexual’ feelings for each other can make up for Robby’s charm.

Robby, you've captured my heart like no other robot has done before.

But the humour isn’t the only part of the movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. I did find the special effects of the laser beams, weird force fields and the monster to be wickedly cool. Now I might be spoiling the movie a bit, so skip this part. But the monster reminded me of the red bull from “The Last Unicorn”. But the monster is only truly cool ‘till you know what it exactly is. The use of Id and the subconscious mind to symbolize the monster was freakin’ neat. I haven’t seen something this profound since the Matrix/Inception (pick whichever is brought up in philosophy class more). It just blew my mind into a million pieces.

What really astonished me were the musical score and the neato backgrounds of the movie. The score seemed to be all electronic music (something I am a fan of) and really sets the mood for this movie perfectly. And the backgrounds were so nicely done and gave my eye a huge boner because of it. It set the mood (hence the boner) of this weird Sci-Fi world that I’m not accustomed to. This entire story was something I wasn’t ready for, even thought it would seem that Sci-Fi movies nowadays would use "Forbidden Planet" as inspiration like they do with “War of the Worlds” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.

THOSE SPECIAL EFFECTS. Be right back, need new pants.

I would be called a liar if I told you I enjoyed this movie any less than a lot. I was truly surprised on how much and why I liked this as much as I did. The humour was there, the Sci-Fi elements were present and more importantly the movie did not feel outdate at all. It somehow captures this weird universe that I wasn’t use to, and that was the fun of it. You see Sci-Fi movies nowadays and they almost feel redundant using ideas from older movies. But somehow this 50’s era film shows me a tone I’ve never seen before. And because of all that, I think this might be my favourite Sci-Fi movies ever. I guess sometimes you fine folks can pick out some great movies after all.