A professor came to me the other day and said that her students watched the excellent 1956 sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet after reading the Shakespeare play The Tempest. The movie is very loosely based on the play: technology substitutes for Prospero's magic ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to quote Arthur C. Clarke), Robby the Robot is Ariel and obey's Dr. Morbius, and the forbidden planet itself is Propero's island, etc. It's one of those fun exercises in film and literature that happen rather often. For example, the Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut shares a lot of similarities with the Hawthorne shorty story "Young Goodman Brown". It happens across literature too, again with "Young Goodman Brown" but this time using the Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness is retold, set during the Vietnam War, in the film Apocalypse Now!. It's a fun little exercise, spotting the similarities in plot, setting, or theme between literature and film.
Apparently though, according to the professor, the students didn't seem to enjoy the movie! What a shame! It's such a great movie! And not great in the way that Plan 9 from Outer Space is great. No, Forbidden Planet works on two levels. The comparison with The Tempest is one level and the second is as a way of discussing the Cold War and fear of nuclear weapons.
Let's start with the year the film was released (1956) as it'll provide a good point on a timeline regarding the Cold War and nuclear annihilation.
Robert Oppenhimer was the "father" of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, during the Second World War. The traits of Oppenheimer and Morbius are closely related according to one film critic. It would make sense than that Morbius is aware of the infinite power of the Krell machine and facilities and is, therefore, wary of others obtaining such power. It's fitting that after witnessing the successful test of the first nuclear bomb Oppenheimer said "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer most definitely knew this weapon would defeat the Axis powers and, possibly, any other country that might find itself in a war with the U.S. Morbius too, finally, began to realize his own responsibility for the death of his crew mates. "Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!" Morbius screams as his Id monster tears through the once-believed-impossible-to-bust-down Krell doors.
It's also fitting that one of the often told stories regarding the first nuclear tests is that one of the scientists working on the bomb, Edward Teller, feared that detonating the bomb in the air would, basically, set the sky on fire. After some of the other scientists did some testing and calculations that scenario was deemed highly unlikely. But the point, of course, isn't what could or couldn't happen. No, the point is the fear of the unknown. After all, a nuclear bomb had never been detonated before. One scientist recalled later that while watching the test he fear the sky had been set on fire.
Not long after the U.S. defeated Japan, thanks in part to the dropping of two nuclear bombs, that the Soviet Union (and former U.S. ally) tested their own nuclear bomb in 1949. Not long after that, and in a speech delivered the same year Forbidden Planet was released, USSR premier Nikita Khrushchev promised to "bury" the capitalist nations. In 1957 the USSR would launch the first satellite, Sputnik, and prompt a wave of fear through the U.S.
In 1954 the U.S. conducted the Castle Bravo tests in the Bikini Atoll. A purposefully remote set of islands that was still, basically, irrecoverably damaged by the tests. It was with these tests the U.S. detonated one of the largest thermonuclear bombs ever. The tests were so destructive that it lead to a ban on surface testing after the public learned of the horrors and the havoc wrought on the Marshall Islanders. The bombs tested were significantly more powerful than those dropped on Japan during the Second World War and could, if used, lead to massive casualties from both the explosion and radiation fallout. In other words, they were even worse news.
There really wasn't a good way to describe the fear of nuclear annihilation until a 1962 book by Herman Kahn was released and gave rise to a new meaning to an old word: unthinkable. From there it only got worse with movies like Fail Safe, released in 1964, taking a very serious and dramatic look at the accidental use of nuclear weapons. Ironically, Fail Safe would be sort of overlooked by the much less serious (and financially successful) movie Dr. Strangelove. In the 1980s the extremely popular scientist and author Carl Sagan (along with other concerned scientists) wrote about the consequences of nuclear weapons and popularized the idea of "nuclear winter".
This timeline gives just a rough idea of how nuclear weapons came to slowly become part of Americans' everyday lives. In the 1950s of course all of this was in the future. But with the spread of Communism and the USSR's continuing tests of nuclear weapons it becomes clear that fears of nuclear destruction thanks to the Cold War had become part of the U.S.'s culture. Forbidden Planet's Id monster invades the quiet, average American household of Dr. Morbius and his daughter. Morbius had seen the terrible powerful of all that technology unleashed before on his crew mates of the Bellerophon. He knew he was the one who created the monster because he was the monster. Or at least his lustful, hateful subconscious was.
Knowing and experiencing all of this leads Dr. Morbius to tell the Leslie Nielsen's rescue mission that he "has come to the unalterable conclusion that man is unfit, as yet, to receive such knowledge, such almost limitless power." This "limitless power" that Morbius wants kept out of mankind's grasp is powered by, wait for it, 9,200 thermonuclear reactors. You had to see that one coming. Oh, and the whole planet gets blown up at the end.
Side Notes
1. The movie also has an amazing poster that set the standard for sci-fi movie posters.
2. It stars a very young Leslie Nielsen, so young in fact that he doesn't have white hair!
3. Robby the Robot failing around and going "Morbius!" is unintentionally hilarious.
4. Robby the Robot chugging whiskey to replicate (I think like 50 gallons) of it is purposefully hilarious.
5. The movie and Anne Francis (Morbius's daughter Altaira) is in the chorus of the song "Science Fiction/Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
6. Another movie about fear of nuclear annihilation this time with a nature focus: Godzilla.
**All views in this post are the author's own and do NOT represent the views of Mercer County Community College**
