Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon Movie 5: Forbidden Planet (1956)

I am officially halfway through the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon and it is half way through the month of May.  I’m right on schedule.  So far, there have been ups and downs to the marathon.  There are more to come.  Right now, however, I’m going to write about 1956’s Forbidden Planet.

Forbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film based on the Shakespeare play, The Tempest.  I don’t know too much about The Tempest, aside from people crash onto an island where a man and a woman have been stranded.  That very basic description is similar to Forbidden Planet’s description of some people land a spaceship on a planet where a man and his daughter live by themselves.  Forbidden Planet probably has more killing, however, since a monster is killing the newly stranded men.

There isn’t much bad to say about the movie.  For something made in 1956, it looks spectacular on the effects side of things.  Everything works about the look of the film from these effects to the costume design to the sets.  It was exactly what it needed to be.  It wasn’t overdone, and it wasn’t beneath the material.  I was pleasantly surprised by this since the early science fiction I usually see looks cheap and cheesy.

The acting in the movie is solid too.  I don’t know anyone’s actual names, outside of Leslie Nielsen.  But they were all good.  I especially liked that I saw Leslie Nielsen not in a comedic role.  It was something different.  I know he began his career in more dramatic roles, but I’ve only ever known him for his comedy.  Now I know he was able to do both and succeed at both.

Like the majority of the films in this marathon, I cannot truly compare Forbidden Planet to the source material.  I can however discuss how well the adaptation worked as a film in terms of the reaction I had to it.  I thought that this was an excellent way to change the source material into a new genre.  I know that the original Shakespeare work was not science fiction.  I don’t think too many Shakespeare works have been transferred to a science fiction setting.  That is part of what gets me interested in Forbidden Planet.  Not only does the story work for the setting it is given, the movie is entertaining and of quality.  The same can’t be said for other adaptations I have seen, in and out of the genre.  Forbidden Planet has done what many have tried and failed to do.

There isn’t too much more to say on the subject.  Will Forbidden Planet be one of my favourite films ever?  Probably not.  It will, however, be a movie I think highly of as an ambitious idea that succeeded at what it intended to do.  I can’t say the same for some other movies.  Forbidden Planet is an example of creativity gone right.

The next movie in the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon is West Side Story.  If you don’t know what West Side Story is, you live under a rock.  If you haven’t seen it, you are me.  First time watch.  It should be fun.  I haven’t watched a musical in a while.  I don’t think so, at least.  Unless you count the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, but that’s just...yeah.  I’m happy to get a musical into this marathon, and what better way than West Side Story.