MovieChat Forums > Forbidden Planet (1958) Discussion > Explaining 'Monsters from the Id' explai...

Explaining 'Monsters from the Id' explains Forbidden Planet's greatness.

posted 11 years ago by jacksflicks
11 replies | jump to latest

You know a movie is great when it gets better as you grow up and wise up.

When I was a kid, "Monsters from the Id" went right by me. Then, as I grew up, re-watching the movie every chance I got, I began to understand, and the phrase started to make sense.

The Krell had built a machine that transformed thought into material. The machine would read a thought and create it instantaneously, "without instrumentalities," as Morbius put it. To accomplish this, enormous energy must be expended. That was was the purpose of the gigantic Krell power plant: to feed the machine.

Now, conscious thought can be controlled. A benevolent consciousness will never use the machine for evil. But what about the subconscious, particularly the Id -- the beast in us all? This is what the Krell did not reckon with. It is what killed them off, in some horrible orgy of mass murder.

Morbius's problem was Freudian. He loved his daughter, but the latent sexual attraction of a father for his daughter made Commander Adams a rival and therefore an adversary. Morbius's subconscious antipathy harnessed the Krell machine, which dutifully created a monster of Morbius's Id to destroy Adams and all the other men who were potential rivals.

It was the same lethal harnessing of subconscious hostilities amongst the passengers and crew of the Bellerophon -- or, horrible thought, by Morbius against them -- which caused their demise.

Don't know if others will agree with this, but it works for me.

By the way, the 7.7 IMDB score Forbidden Planet gets is a travesty, a reflection of the mediocrity of the audiences who don't get it and move on. 8.7, which the slicker but inferior Star Wars and the Matrix get, would be far more fitting.

[–] Askur 11 years ago

I wonder if Jack L. Chalker's Well of Souls series was inspired by the Krell in Forbidden Planet.

[–] jacksflicks 11 years ago

Well, the premise of a machine that continues to function after its creators have died isn't unique. But there certainly are parallels between the two. Great authors feed off each other.

[–] Askur 11 years ago

I was thinking more about a dead race who invented a technology able to create whatever you desired or needed, located under the surface of the planet, still operating after its creators are gone and still replying to other people's desire, but in a different way (spoiler: instead of making objects they desire, it open up portals that swallows space faring persons who no longer have the will to live, and gives them a new body, life and purpose).

But of course, it could also be a coincidence. It is fully possible to give birth to similar ideas without any connections between the writers. I have never written any stories myself, but I do have come up with some ideas which I later have found in stories written by others. The latest example was one called Redemption Cairn, written in the mid 1930s by Stanley G. Weinbaum, many decades before I was born. The idea was "what if a world lacks an atmosphere over most of its surface, and the atmosphere that do exists can be compared to lakes, rivers and oceans on earth, and there are some organisms who have learned to crawl out of these lakes of air and move around in vacuum."

[–] jacksflicks 11 years ago

Right, I had those parallels in mind, too. But, as you say, "in a different way".

You have the right instinct for writing, especially a film pitch, which always starts with "What if...." My What if is what if we took Google Glasses to the optic nerve level -- as implants -- so that all humans (if you wanted to be bizarre, then you could include animals) were networked visually, so that, at will, we could see through others' eyes or be the visual host for others. The same could be done for hearing, so that we could "experience by proxy". If we wanted to be a cosmonaut on a moon of Jupiter, then we just dial him up. Or fly with an eagle. If we want sex with our favorite movie star, then we dial up her partner...for a price.

What our What ifs have in common is that they create worlds only. Now, the hard part is developing stories to play out in them. My sex with a movie star example has intriguing short-story possibilities. ;)

Like you, I think, I prefer off-world stories, set in the cosmos, long into the future. James Blish wrote the classic Cities in Flight tetralogy. The final story, called The Triumph of Time, was what I'd call the ultimate What if. What if the universe were about to end due to a mirror-image anti-matter universe about to collide with it?

Back to Forbidden Planet and Well World.... I guess they both boil down to What if someone (or in our original examples, some thing) could make anything they wanted just by thinking about it? Actually, a Star Trek episode, "Charlie X" (1966), made that What if into a story.

[–] Askur 11 years ago

That's right, if turning ideas into stories was only as easy as getting the idea.

The Google glasses could work, but what if you instead had a brain implant that was directly connected to the main nerves (sight, hearing, touch and smell), which was transmitting these signals to a data storage device, and which possibly was connected to a network similar to cel phones? Or if nothing was around, the ability to store a certain amount of data in the implant itself till it could be uploaded somewhere, or one could have a transportable SSD or something.

The final James Blish story sounds like grand scale space opera. After being away for many years, I have a feeling the big epic space opera may be having a comeback (space opera itself never went away). At least I hope so, and that we will be able to see it in theatres one day.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] jacksflicks 11 years ago

Good point. I thought Morbius hadn't ruled out others from the Belerophon (besides the captain, fatally) using the machine. But Morbius spoke of how devastated he was when the crew voted to leave the planet, so his resentment at this provoked his monster to kill everybody else off.

Fitting it into the bigger question of what happened to the Krell, I'm assuming that what happened to Morbius provides the answer. Neither had the Krell anticipated that the machine would unleash their own "monsters from the Id." So, one apocalyptic mass murder accounts for their sudden disappearance. I thought that might also account for what happened to the Belerophon crew, but you're right, the finger seems to point to Morbius alone.

By the way, this suggests a possible weakness in casting Walter Pigeon. Pigeon's type had always been thoroughly wholesome and scrupulous. That threw me off for a long time. I wonder what Fredric March might have done with the role. I suppose the whole point -- as in Jekyll and Hyde, which March had done -- is that even the best of us have the beast within, something to make us pause before abolishing "instrumentalities" between thought and deed.

[–] zod9992000 11 years ago

Quote: By the way, this suggests a possible weakness in casting Walter Pigeon. Pigeon's type had always been thoroughly wholesome and scrupulous. That threw me off for a long time.
......................
I thought that was part of the point - the corrupting ability of power.

Walter Pidgeon went rogue in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea to save the world.

[–] graham-167 10 years ago

It's not about how power corrupts - remember, Morbius didn't even know the machine was responding to him. It's absurd to think he could be corrupted by power he didn't even know he had.

Rather, the point is that we ALL have these demons inside us. Pidgeon may be a wholesome type, but even the wholesome types have death and mayhem at their heart. They're just in control of it, maybe even in denial of it. But that dividing line between our better natures and our beasts runs through every single human who ever lives.

[–] melnar1 10 years ago

By the way, the 7.7 IMDB score Forbidden Planet gets is a travesty, a reflection of the mediocrity of the audiences who don't get it and move on. 8.7, which the slicker but inferior Star Wars and the Matrix get, would be far more fitting.

Well, seriously, we can't all be as clever as you, jacksflicks. I do thank you most sincerely for your elucidation.

Before I watch it again, I'll have to go over it a few times to prevent being totally perplexed again.

It works for you; and it'll work for me too. Thanks again.

Ignore Twitter’s incessant, mindless chatter.

[–] jacksflicks 10 years ago

There'd been a nice exchange of ideas going on until the cockroach skittled in. Oh well, nice while it lasted.