Did you know?

[Elphaba]

Posted: 10/19/05 at 5:31pm

I didn't......and I love this movie, was just on again last weekend

Forbidden Shakespeare

The classic 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet was inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest. It is set in the year 2257, on the planet Altair IV, which substitutes for Prospero's island. The crew of the space cruiser C-57-D arrive on Altair, searching for survivors of an expedition that was lost some twenty years before. They find the planet inhabited by Dr. Edward Morbius (Prospero) and his daughter, Altaira (Miranda), who are attended by their robot, Robby (Ariel).



While numerous reviewers noted the similarities between the movie and Shakespeare's play, they were divided over the degree to which Forbidden Planet should be viewed as an "updating" of The Tempest. In particular, they disagreed whether the murderous Id Monster is a stand-in for Caliban. No less a critic than Pauline Kael, however, saw a connection between the alien creature and the "deformed and salvage slave," declaring that in the film version "Caliban has become a marvelously flamboyant monster out of Freud."