Forbidden Planet: Space Age Epiphanies

One day, I was talking to an American friend I occasionally keep in touch with about our favorite movies. He told me that his favorite movie is "Forbidden Planet." I knew it was a classic science fiction movie, but I had never actually seen it, so I decided to watch it.

Forbidden Planet was released in 1956, the same year as Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel and five years before the start of the Apollo program. In this era, when the affluent American lifestyle had become the norm, people believed that prosperity would continue indefinitely through the power of omnipotent science, and that civilization would eventually expand into space.

The film is set on a desolate planet and features a relaxed sci-fi feel. Specifically, it combines art design featuring 50s-style curves with extensive use of moss green and gold, simple special effects, adorable robots, and a desolate, deserted planet where only silence prevails.

Here's the synopsis. The story is set in the 2200s, a time when space migration has become a reality. After losing contact with a group of immigrants who had settled on the planet Altea IV 20 years earlier, the spaceship C-57-D, led by Captain Adams, sets out in search of them. Upon landing on the planet, the crew encounters Dr. Morbius, his daughter Altea, and Robbie, a robot created by the doctor. The doctor and his crew then inform them that they are the only surviving members of the group.

The story, which unfolds with only the sailors, the two surviving immigrants, and a single robot, feels disproportionately simple compared to the sci-fi setting and the sense of scale of the production. But these elements come together organically, with a strange sense of floating. We are drawn into the quiet performance, which unfolds alongside electronic sounds and beams of light.

The story has been noted to have similarities to Shakespeare's "The Tempest," which is classified as a romance in Shakespeare's classification of works.
Romance plays contain elements of both tragedy and comedy, and are characterized by supernatural elements, family separations and reunions, and a combination of civilized and pastoral elements.

In other words, "Forbidden Planet" is a work that drags a timeless classic into a setting befitting the space age. The strange sense of travel evoked by the fantastical world, detached from reality, created through visual expression, makes the contours of the story, modeled after a master, all the more clear.
The aphorisms and thought-provoking storytelling are beautifully rendered through the cinematic experience, and this space-age fable remains sublime today precisely because it was projected onto a brilliant screen.