Following the recent Hollywood trend to take a classic and remake it for today's audience (The Day the Earth Stood Still) it looks as if Forbidden Planet is next.
Warner Bros have hired J. Michael Straczynski to write the remake of Forbidden Planet. The original saw a group of Earth scientists who are sent some 17 light years away to investigate what happened to a colony of settlers on Altair-4. They find a man with a secret and his daughter who somehow survived a hideous monster attack on their planet.
Loosely based on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the movie was nominated for best special effects Oscar, and was noted for its groundbreaking use of an all-electronic score, and the first appearances of Robby the Robot and the C-57D starship. The movie’s poster was listed as the fifth best Movie Poster ever created by Premiere Magazine.
Forbidden Planet is one of my all time favourite films. It just works so well for so many reasons - great effects, brilliant story, Robby the Robot, Leslie Nielson with brown hair, Walter Pidgeon being all frosty and mad scientist as Dr Morbius, Anne Francis playing with tigers, Creatures from the ID, the vast underground city of the Krells, and the bit where you see the invisible beastie's footsteps in the sand as it approaches the ship while the electro theromin music works its magic. It is just excellent. Go watch it. Go now. Do it.
When I watched it with my son (he was 8 at the time) he explained to me how, because the spacemen were travelling at the speed of light, time would move slower for them than it would for the people on Earth. Quite a big concept for an 8 year old and it made me proud. He also loved the film and thought Robby was cool.
However, I'm not sure if this film should be remade. There is just no need and I'm not sure if a remake could add anything new to the mix. Although if you look at it as a work based on Shakespeare then a remake is not that unusual as the Bard's tales have been doing the rounds in all forms forever. What do you think of the news?
1 comments:
I hope they get Leslie Nielson to reprise his role, LOL
Actually, I hope they don't disrespect the original too much. The sound track was ground breaking and the fact we never see the monster makes the suspense unbearable! I'll cringe like nothing if Hollywood CGI's up some stupid crazy mind-induced monster.
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