Forbidden Planet

[StrangeDevice]

The longer you look at it, the deeper that well seems to go...

I'm not sure rebooting Forbidden Planet would be a good idea, especially by current Hollywood. As a crowdfunded independent project, maybe, but it'd be like redoing Ben-Hur if coming from the major production houses. It just doesn't seem to be worth the melted film stock and screams of outrage. There doesn't seem to be enough kitsch in today's modern world for Buck Rogers to work either sadly, the days of Indiana Jones style adventure stories have apparently faded with the nineties.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Put me in the "remake could work" camp. Identity politics might actually help. One easy way to show it's the future is to have characters in groups that are, in the current era, underrepresented.

One aspect from the original I'd like to see fleshed out more is the budding relationship between the ship cook and robby the robot. That could be fun as long as they didn't make the mistake of a humanoid-looking Robby. No face, no recognizeable features, but still somebody you might want to , ahem ahem, with.

The Garden of Eden motif would work better with alien animals instead of random transplants.

Although CGI could work, I think it might be really neat to include a Krell corpse. There's a quality of visceral realness to dead creatures.

I think it would really depend on who was involved in the project. There are some people you can trust with this remake and some you can't.

[MadAmosMalone]

Maybe they were creations of Morbius' subconscious brought to life just like his id monster?

Nah, don't buy it. They're about when he's awake, and solid.

Morbius mentioned the animals at play registers, even if only slightly, on one of the gauges in the Krell lab is the only reason I put forth that idea.

I do not believe that any effects done for a hypothetical remake could be as ground-breaking, or impressive for their time. I'd also admit that, as we're inurred to CGI visual amazment that it'd be tricky if not impossible to really blow people's socks off.

That's what I mean by "improved." The original was a ground-breaking movie for the genre. They would hafta invent new ways of making special effects to rival the impact of the original on audiences today.

Sure the new effects could be a lot less hokey but, by today's standards, that's just to be expected. For a remake to have the same impact as the original they'd hafta go well beyond what is expected.

I do agree the Id Monster would be a critical cornerstone of the movie.

Good suggestions, otherwise, like more reaction to the earlier expedition's fate, spending more time on the psychology of the situation (and the defenestration of focus group members.)

That reminds me, I would like to add that I think the movie should be more "atmospheric" than "action packed." One aspect of the original that I loved was that it was a real feast for the eyes, not just because of Anne Francis. The viewer has time to take in the whole vibe of the place. This is one thing I think would be lost in a modern remake. Another poster suggested just remaking The Tempest in Space again and leaving this property alone. Probably a good call there.

Mine had dropped to zero after the Farce Awakens, until Rogue One, then it came back up to 'a teeny tiny slice'.

I definitely agree Rogue One blows the doors off Force Awakens.

But, yeah, I'm saying it could be done well, but I wouldn't have confidence that it would be.

And I guess that's all I'm really saying too.

And they wanna reboot the Matrix.

The MATRIX.

Not Saturn 3. Not The Black Hole. Not even Buck Rogers.

And not the old Canadian TV series, Starlost. That one just screams for a remake. Though I suppose movies like Pandorum and Passengers can be seen as sorta spiritual successors to that one.

[Rocketboy1313]

Generally speaking when it comes to remakes it is a good idea to remake something that had a good idea and a poor/lacking execution. Here is a debatable example.
"Clash of the Titans" was a special effects focused film of its era, it drew upon Greek mythology (in a way remaking ancient Greek blockbusters) but put twists on it to either make it more accessible.
"Clash of the Titans" was remade emphasizing special effects. It would have been smart of them to put a little more effort into the story but that really isn't what it is about.

When it comes to good movies that were executed well in their era I would say it is better to draw on them as inspiration and make your own thing following their example. The previously mentioned (by me) example of "Forbidden Planet" becoming "Star Trek". You can see the inspiration, but you can see the clear deviations from the source.

[Nessus]

My own go to examples of "how to do a remake" are The Thing and The Fly. Both eschew just doing a polished-up copycat of the original in favor of tearing the premise down to the bone and building it back up again. The sort o thing that marketing dinguses would later coin the asinine term "re-imaging" for so they could proceed to do in crappy cynical ways, unfortunately.

That's kind of what I'd like to see done well, if anything. Same premise, different plot beats, characters, and themes to make a movie that stands on it's own as an equal to the original, or surpasses it. No detail should be sacred, as long as the end result is good in its own right. That's dreaming big though.

Saying that ALL movies in the past 20 years have been crap is utterly absurd, but the good stuff is most often found in the mid to lower budget brackets these days because the business side has become so bloated that nothing less that an international mega-hits can sustain it anymore, so anything with even a moderately a larger budget gets minmaxed into oatmeal.

[J!!]

i agree with ^this^ 100%. all too often, i think fans get overly fixated on 'faithfulness' of an adaptation, as though any change to the original is an act of violence against the object of their affection. but the thing is; if the new version is exactly like the old version, what's even the point of making it? if they were to perfectly recapture the experience of watching the original movie, then why should anyone bother watching it when they can just watch the original again?

in my opinion, the most important thing any adaptation needs to do is establish a unique identity for itself, so that it can stand on its own as a unique work.

[Dindu]

Morbius mentioned the animals at play registers, even if only slightly, on one of the gauges in the Krell lab is the only reason I put forth that idea.

Ah, yeah. I always thought that was an indication of what's happening - the Krell machine doesn't need to be accessed through the hat - it's firing because Alta is unconsciously using it to keep the animals docile. Probably reading too much into it, but of all the 50's SF classics I think FP can withstand some…
Alta's distracted by the 57D crew by dint of their simply being there, but also her development into being a woman and perhaps a subconscious desire to be rescued by Captain Drebin. (I didn't write the thing, people, no need to shoot the messenger).

That'd be another aspect you could explore in a remake - were ALL the Belerophonies killed by Morbius? Might some or most of them have been killed by their own subconscious dark urges? Certainly it seems Morbius only holds himself to blame, but, hey, there's more character stuff you could put in instead of, oh, I dunno, Alta's having a conversation with Robbie about how stripperiffic she can get her costume without upsetting Dad.

I think the movie should be more "atmospheric" than "action packed."

Of course. Though the action sequences, I think, punctuate the plot rather well; the battle with the IdMonster is all the more nerve-wracking because it's in the middle of a atmospheric plot. I mean, converted, I'm Father Obvious, but this is a Star Trek crew of scientists having to kick-ass against something they do not understand, can't find any real data on, and have no way of stopping, so, not action free so much as action lite.

My own go to examples of "how to do a remake" are The Thing and The Fly.

Well said that man. Officer thinking.
Although I prefer the originals in both cases I certainly cannot say the remakes were bad, unnecessary or inferior, and yes, I know I am the only chap alive who thinks that. Good examples. I'm just a sucker for Vincent Price and the shot where they work out the 'airplane' is saucer shaped. I mean, seriously, that shot is spooky-good.

Saying that ALL movies in the past 20 years have been crap is utterly absurd

There's the last good book thing (or film in this case) where the older you get the odds on watching something as good as or better than what you've already seen diminishes. (It'll happen to you).

[Admiral X]

Put me in the "remake could work" camp. Identity politics might actually help. One easy way to show it's the future is to have characters in groups that are, in the current era, underrepresented.

No, I don't think identity politics ever help anyone, as they are based entirely in stereotypes and prejudice based on those stereotypes. Plus, I'd like to think in such a far off future of interstellar travel that humanity would be over the whole racism and sexism thing.

My own go to examples of "how to do a remake" are The Thing and The Fly. Both eschew just doing a polished-up copycat of the original in favor of tearing the premise down to the bone and building it back up again. The sort o thing that marketing dinguses would later coin the asinine term "re-imaging" for so they could proceed to do in crappy cynical ways, unfortunately.

I agree with this idea, but I disagree about The Thing (2011) meeting that goal. The Fly was a good remake for that reason, but honestly The Thing was a pale imitation of the 1982 version, which fails as both a prequel to it, or a reboot of it. Oh... Wait, you meant the 1982 version as a remake. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that as well.

Saying that ALL movies in the past 20 years have been crap is utterly absurd, but the good stuff is most often found in the mid to lower budget brackets these days because the business side has become so bloated that nothing less that an international mega-hits can sustain it anymore, so anything with even a moderately a larger budget gets minmaxed into oatmeal.

I'm actually kind of wondering if the studios could be convinced not to pile so much money into movies, hopefully making them more willing to take risks on movies that will actually succeed at being good art as well as being a commercial product that they can make money off of.

[Nessus]

I'm actually kind of wondering if the studios could be convinced not to pile so much money into movies, hopefully making them more willing to take risks on movies that will actually succeed at being good art as well as being a commercial product that they can make money off of.

Problem is there's a sort of ascending economic feedback loop in play. Big businesses in general are under constant pressure to keep profits growing. This is healthy within certain parameters, but eventually the volume of money needed to maintain this becomes so huge that one has to focus on quantity above all else. It's like an animal that keeps growing the more it eats, and the more it grows, the more food mass it needs just to sustain it's bulk, and if it ever stops growing, it dies. Eventually it has to give up the tasty foods in favor of just hosing cornmeal directly into it's stomach non-stop, because no matter how tasty (or healthy, in the long term) actually eating tasty stuff is, every non-cornmeal morsel, every item that has to actually be chewed represents a momentary drop in intake which it ever increasingly cannot afford.

On top of this, the product is a creative one (i.e. difficult to engineer, especially if you're a career businessman with little real background in the arts), and one centered on constantly producing new items (unlike, say, a soda company, which can sell a single item to the same people for decades). This produces both a huge incentive to search for formulas that don't require one to understand the product (a bit silly, as anything that actually works will be equally challenging for map vs. territory reasons, and anything of lesser complexity will be unreliable for cargo-cult reasons), and an incentive to focus on bigger short-term hits at the expense of long-tail profits.

The result is an ascending spiral of budgets, as studios try to brute-force as many hits as possible, the bigger the better. Bigger budget = a more flexible production process, and when you're a studio trying to micromanage everything into a hit, having the flexibility to change direction in mid-production according to the latest bean-counter theory or test audience score is strongly favored over planning. Planning is super efficient financially, and tends to produce movies with a better long tail, but to a suit outside the core creative team it's a "black box" process and therefore scary. Short term hits don't have to be good movies, they only have to be good enough to distract the lower 3/4 of the audience for a week or two.

Add to all that the newfound importance of the export market (China in particular), which actually punishes movies for relying on anything deeper than superficial action and childishly simple stories (because the more complex or deep something is, the harder it is to translate*), and you've got a juggernaut of incentives to be big, loud, expensive, and vapid.

That's how you end up with crazyness like rushed timetables to meet release dates that were locked down in preproduction, or movies with budgets that are 5 times the cost of what actually ends up on screen, or the apparent obsession with franchises and remakes, or the rise of blockbuster directors and writers who seem almost dadaist in their rejection of coherent storytelling.

The same thing is happening in other entertainment industries as well. Most notoriously in video games.

*Far from untenably hard. Good films do fine outside their native cultures often enough. But that's still small fry to companies who need to dredge the sea Mr. Burns style to keep their stock prices stable.

[J!!]

additionally to what i said above, any 'faithful' remake would lose all the mystery of the original, since everyone would already know what was going on & what the monster was. the most obvious solution to this (& thus the one most to be avoided) would be to change the Id-Monster to being generated by the innocent seeming daughter, rather than the sinister seeming father.




i think the best way to go about it all would be to take the WestWorld rout; a tv series, expanding on areas of the story that were glossed over in the original.


have it be about the first expedition; exploring a seemingly barren planet only to find the remains of an ancient and powerful alien civilization that fell into chaos and ruin for unknown reasons. they gradually piece together the history of the krell, experimenting with remnants of their technology. meanwhile, strange things are happening: people claim to feel as though they are being watched, others claim to see things moving out of the corner of their eyes. as time goes on, the manifestations gradually become stronger; they begin to physically effect the world in small ways (think poltergeists). the creatures are not always hostile, many are benign or even benevolent. nevertheless, it all eventually escalates to the point where people are attacked and killed, but only ever at night, when people are sleeping and the creatures are strongest.

the idea is to add a new layer to the original mystery. viewers familiar with the movie will know immediately what's going on with the seemingly 'haunted' planet, that still leaves the question of who is dreaming what. it becomes a sort of murder-mystery, where even the killers don't know who the killers are; nobody knows who to trust, or even if they can trust themselves. it also adds a degree of horror, as the characters gradually piece together what's happening, and come to fear the act of sleeping, which they must nevertheless inevitably do. it also allows Robby to be a more important character, as being the only member of the crew without a subconscious mind makes him the only one that can be fully trusted.


a second season might take place 20 years later, with the crew of the Bellerophon, investigating the fate of the original expedition. to their surprise, they find a thriving colony. though it's all a bit off: none of the original expedition members have visibly aged in the intervening decades, there are several or them walking about who should be dead, and every single one of them is acting strangely compared to how they were in the first season, like exaggerated versions of themselves. eventually it's revealed that the entire colony is a psychic projection from one man, the last survivor of the original expedition; over the decades he's mastered the Krell telepathic technology, learning to control it through conscious intent rather than subconscious desires. the problem is that over the decades of isolation and repeated trauma, the mind that controls this great power, has gone completely mad.