The Author dismisses Forbidden Planet as a B Movie?
It was made in 1953 and the Special Effects were spectacular for the day.
The storyline, outside of the Astronauts wanting to nail Ann Francis (what guy wouldn’t), was very thought provoking.
The power of the unconscious mind given the ability to run amok and destroy thanks to technology developed to improve an entire civilization, wow. Way ahead of its time. It also had Leslie Nielsen. LOL
It’s still one of my favorite Sci Fi Movies.
“The Author dismisses Forbidden Planet as a B Movie? ...”
SFGate author Mike Moffitt noted “Forbidden Planet” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man” as two of the “few decent sci fi dramas” made before “2001: A Space Odyssey”. According to imdb, Forbidden Planet was released in 1956 (Anne Francis was assuredly attractive as the female lead of Forbidden Planet, but was more than mere eye candy; she was a child model at age 6, worked in TV before WW2, made her stage debut at age 11, and earned award nominations for TV work - in addition to her many films. She remained extraordinarily attractive until the end of her career in the 1980s).
Despite very early efforts by Kepler, Swift, Verne, and Welles, science fiction as a literary concept came out of the shadow world of pulp fiction only in the late 1940s. Serious film treatments lagged television, in attempts to bring it to the screen: The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek predate 2001: A Space Odyssey, which did indeed mark a departure, as author Mike Moffitt noted (Star Wars has been a step backward - George Lucas himself admitted to Gene Rodenberry it was only “space opera”).
The film makes more sense if one reads Arthur C Clarke’s book first. In his own way, Clarke was as much a quirky visionary of his genre as Stanley Kubrick was, in film. Understanding the work of either requires real thought.