...with minor reservations, I'd say Forbidden Planet remains one of Hollywood's better sci-fi accomplishments.
But despite elements that can seem clichéd today, "Forbidden Planet" has a strong sense of maturity about it, a kind of moral imperative that "Star Trek" episodes would often emulate years later. The movie asks the fundamental question raised by "The Tempest": If you had all the power in the universe, how would you exercise it against your foes? Besides that, the film is still pleasant on the eyes. It's best to enjoy it for what it is and not for what you might want it to be.
Video:
MGM spared no expense on the production, filming in 2.35:1 ratio CinemaScope and Eastman color. Likewise, Warner Bros. spared no expense digitally restoring the film and transferring it to disc in a widescreen ratio that measures about 2.20:1 across my TV. The high-bit-rate, anamorphic reproduction does a good job with black levels, natural hues, and object delineation, but it tends to make the images emerge a tad dark, too, and it points up the film's inherent grain. The result is free of age but not so smooth as a more-recent film might look.
Audio:
Like many older films in stereo, this one has voices that follow the characters realistically left and right across the sound stage rather than being anchored out in the center channel. Nonetheless, the Dolby Digital 5.1 remastering doesn't display a very wide front-channel spread, and there is little surround activity beyond some small musical and noise enhancement. Otherwise, the sound is fairly quiet--a little hiss at volume--and well balanced, though somewhat limited in dynamics and frequency extremes.
Extras:
The set's two discs contain a goodly assortment of bonus materials. Disc one contains the feature film, plus thirteen minutes of deleted scenes, a series of eleven "work prints," actually, often quite rough; and nine more minutes of lost footage, rare test scenes that have spent the last fifty years locked away in a film vault.
After those items are a couple of excerpts from the "MGM Parade" television show, with host Walter Pidgeon telling us about "Forbidden Planet" and Robby the Robot. Then, speaking of Robby, there is "Robot Client," a 1958 episode of "The Thin Man" TV series with Peter Lawford, Phyllis Kirk, and Robby; and that's followed by a science-fiction theatrical trailer gallery that includes trailers for "Forbidden Planet," "The Thing from Another World," "The Time Machine," "Them," and four others. The extras on disc one conclude with twenty-five scene selections but no chapter insert; English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Disc two contains, first, an entire movie as a bonus, Robby the Robot's follow-up film from 1957, "The Invisible Boy." The ninety-minute, black-and-white, widescreen motion picture is quite juvenile, as you might expect, and it was the first of many subsequent appearances by the celebrated robot, one of his most recent being a cameo in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" (2003). You might want to proceed through "The Invisible Boy" at your own risk, but the transfer is very clean, if slightly soft.
Accompanying this second feature on disc two are three newly made documentaries. The first is the TCM original, "Watch the Skies: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us," fifty-five minutes long and divided into twelve chapters. Mark Hamill narrates, and it contains comments by directors Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron, among others. The second documentary is "Amazing: Exploring the Far Reaches of Forbidden Planet," twenty-six minutes long with film-specific commentary by Anne Francis (looking as lovely today as she did fifty years ago), Leslie Nielson, Earl Holliman, Warren Stevens, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, John Landis, and various other filmmakers, writers, and film historians. The final documentary is "Robby the Robot: Engineering a Sci-Fi Icon," thirteen minutes on the famous, walking-talking mechanical device.
Parting Thoughts:
Nothing is probably as good as one's memory makes it, so if it's been a while since you last saw "Forbidden Planet," you could be a tad disappointed. However, taken in the right spirit, and despite the rather silly tone it sometimes strikes, the film does delve into some intelligent issues, and Pidgeon's acting elevates the proceedings well above the ordinary. Visually, the film is no match for today's computer-graphic extravaganzas, but it holds up in its own way, too. So, with minor reservations, I'd say "Forbidden Planet" remains one of Hollywood's better sci-fi accomplishments.
Video:
MGM spared no expense on the production, filming in 2.35:1 ratio CinemaScope and Eastman color. Likewise, Warner Bros. spared no expense digitally restoring the film and transferring it to disc in a widescreen ratio that measures about 2.20:1 across my TV. The high-bit-rate, anamorphic reproduction does a good job with black levels, natural hues, and object delineation, but it tends to make the images emerge a tad dark, too, and it points up the film's inherent grain. The result is free of age but not so smooth as a more-recent film might look.
Audio:
Like many older films in stereo, this one has voices that follow the characters realistically left and right across the sound stage rather than being anchored out in the center channel. Nonetheless, the Dolby Digital 5.1 remastering doesn't display a very wide front-channel spread, and there is little surround activity beyond some small musical and noise enhancement. Otherwise, the sound is fairly quiet--a little hiss at volume--and well balanced, though somewhat limited in dynamics and frequency extremes.
Extras:
The set's two discs contain a goodly assortment of bonus materials. Disc one contains the feature film, plus thirteen minutes of deleted scenes, a series of eleven "work prints," actually, often quite rough; and nine more minutes of lost footage, rare test scenes that have spent the last fifty years locked away in a film vault.
After those items are a couple of excerpts from the "MGM Parade" television show, with host Walter Pidgeon telling us about "Forbidden Planet" and Robby the Robot. Then, speaking of Robby, there is "Robot Client," a 1958 episode of "The Thin Man" TV series with Peter Lawford, Phyllis Kirk, and Robby; and that's followed by a science-fiction theatrical trailer gallery that includes trailers for "Forbidden Planet," "The Thing from Another World," "The Time Machine," "Them," and four others. The extras on disc one conclude with twenty-five scene selections but no chapter insert; English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Disc two contains, first, an entire movie as a bonus, Robby the Robot's follow-up film from 1957, "The Invisible Boy." The ninety-minute, black-and-white, widescreen motion picture is quite juvenile, as you might expect, and it was the first of many subsequent appearances by the celebrated robot, one of his most recent being a cameo in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" (2003). You might want to proceed through "The Invisible Boy" at your own risk, but the transfer is very clean, if slightly soft.
Accompanying this second feature on disc two are three newly made documentaries. The first is the TCM original, "Watch the Skies: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us," fifty-five minutes long and divided into twelve chapters. Mark Hamill narrates, and it contains comments by directors Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron, among others. The second documentary is "Amazing: Exploring the Far Reaches of Forbidden Planet," twenty-six minutes long with film-specific commentary by Anne Francis (looking as lovely today as she did fifty years ago), Leslie Nielson, Earl Holliman, Warren Stevens, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, John Landis, and various other filmmakers, writers, and film historians. The final documentary is "Robby the Robot: Engineering a Sci-Fi Icon," thirteen minutes on the famous, walking-talking mechanical device.
Parting Thoughts:
Nothing is probably as good as one's memory makes it, so if it's been a while since you last saw "Forbidden Planet," you could be a tad disappointed. However, taken in the right spirit, and despite the rather silly tone it sometimes strikes, the film does delve into some intelligent issues, and Pidgeon's acting elevates the proceedings well above the ordinary. Visually, the film is no match for today's computer-graphic extravaganzas, but it holds up in its own way, too. So, with minor reservations, I'd say "Forbidden Planet" remains one of Hollywood's better sci-fi accomplishments.
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[release]19609[/release]