I love telling people that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is just “THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL with zombies” and watching their faces.

I would say what I think would happen, if a remake of FP, were made today, but all I’d need is some wanker to see it and decide I’m evil. (sigh). But I think those of us with an IQ above room temp all know *exactly* what would happen, who would be the BAD GUY (Morbius, straight white guy) and…all the usual.

Hell, look what they did to TDTESS. That was pretty bad all by itself. And I don’t think that they were even really TRYING to “wake it up.” I think they put all their eggs in the “you have too much technology and are killing the planet” message.

sigh.

For all the ways it guessed wrong about the future (particularly the all-male crew; Planet of the Vampires and Star Trek more rightly guessed space-faring explorers of the future would want to have women in their crews too), I’d say at least Forbidden Planet had a fairly cerebral plot in having the characters gradually discover how and why the titular planet’s super-advanced civilization (with matter replicators something like the ones in Star Trek: The Next Generation and all further series set in that era) accidentally destroyed itself. Also, while the story does draw a very clear line between protagonist and antagonist (Commander John J. Adams and his honorable-if-somewhat-lusty crew vs. the rather arrogant and cantankerous Doctor Edward Morbius), it’s not a simplistic hero vs. villain conflict. In fact, had the protagonists immediately managed to gain full access to the ancient Krell technology over the antagonist’s protests as they wanted, it might well have destroyed them all just as it did its previous users, and this would have been a horror movie with a downer ending reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

The three main flaws I see in Forbidden Planet‘s writing:

1. In terms of “Yeah, that didn’t age too well,” I’d say the most egregious error the writers made was assuming that the spaceships of the future would be exactly like the military ships of the present: a (mostly) all-white and (definitely) all-males-in-their-physical-prime crew who would all naturally start trying to get their grubby mitts on the first pretty girl any of them have seen in some thirteen months at sea (though courtesy of Hollywood’s Hays Code, the men in this story are decidedly more polite in their seduction attempts than any real military naval crew on shore leave ever was back in the day).

2. In terms of “Yeah, way ahead of you on that one, old-timers,” probably the most hilariously erroneous prediction about future technology was the ancient Krell civilization’s technology being based on what looks to be a planet-sized underground computer network (while the flying-saucer-style human ships seem to be able to operate with little to no computer technology at all); but we’ll cut them some slack, as apparently just about nobody predicted the invention of solid-state transistors and then microchips leading to the creation of personal computers and then laptops and handheld computing devices in the decades between then and now.

3. Finally, there’s the “Why does that technology even exist?” nitpick, for which the prize definitely goes to the planetary self-destruct mechanism the late Krell civilization casually left lying around for the likes of Doctor Edward Morbius to find (and ultimately use; that’s not too much of a spoiler, I hope): while it’s understandable that a planet-sized network (which was apparently intended to be a planetary power plant as well as a regulatory computer system) could potentially be rigged to cause a chain reaction large enough to blow up the entire planet, what kind of highly advanced, peaceful, rational, and politically unified species would ever consider it a good idea to build a trigger for that right into their system? (Maybe those Krell weren’t as morally advanced and politically unified as Morbius supposed after all?)

Bottom line: Forbidden Planet definitely deserves both all the praise and all the criticism it’s received ever since its release. All the same, I agree with Hitch that I wouldn’t really want to see a remake of it in our time, as any such would inevitably be a preachy morally myopic virtue-signaling woke-fest, just like what happened to the Star Trek franchise it inspired (and so many, many other franchises). Again, I also recommend seeing Planet of the Vampires as a kind of spiritual successor to this movie (and another early prototype for the original Star Trek series).

(Warning about Planet of the Vampires: as with Forbidden Planet leaving you to wonder what’s so “forbidden” about the titular planet for most of its run time, Planet of the Vampires will probably have you asking “Where the heck are those vampires the title mentioned?” As with Forbidden Planet revealing that the Krell technology is pretty much what’s “forbidden” in its ending, who the vampires are is also only revealed near the end of Planet of the Vampires in its final plot twist.)

See, there’s your problem. There was only one MATRIX movie.

Ah, TDTESS – *that* one should have been the best SF movie up to “now” (i.e, then).

It’s very hard for me not to talk up Alien, of course; you are absolutely right to include BR and POTA.

Matrix…now, I get very ambivalent there. The first one? You betcha,but the movies’ plotlines and gist and thrust meandered all over the place on the ensuing two, er, three if you wish to be generous.

Hmmm…gotta think about this one. I’m a huge fan of TDTESS, too (original only, Michael Rennie, yum…) and a few others. I do admit, I tend to lean toward the classics. And what about 2001?

Hitch

The original PLANET OF THE APES is right up there. Maybe BLADE RUNNER and THE MATRIX, too. (Note: I’m defining them as “the best movies that show up under the SF genre,” not “the movies which best exemplify SF.”)

Hmmm….that’s an excellent question. I mean, if we start defining limits (pre-1980’s) or the like, we are artificially messing with the bar. So…I guess, from early sci-fi silents, right up until…NOW.

Hitch

Up to NOW-now, or up to THEN-now?

Yabbut…..drum roll, please:

What *does* make your shortlist of “GREATEST SF MOVIE UP TO NOW”, eh? And how narrowly are we conscribing (limiting) this? Does it have to be a theatrical release, a movie of two, say, three hours? And can it be a miniseries? Or “limited release” series, as they call them now?

Dang. I would really have to think HARD about this question, even if limited to theatrical releases only.

Hitch