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The ID monster - is it fair to critique the creature design all these years later?


First of off. Yes I admire and love Forbidden Planet for expanding my mind and ID, but now many years later as an adult I watched it again and was disappointed by the creature design.

I am wondering at the time of release, if an adult watched this - does the ID creature look like a Disney cartoon character (they did actually get a Disney animator to draw it)? To me it looks like a bulldog. Why not make it more malevolent looking?

To me it was only so impactful and scary because I was a child, and the sound effects were so freaky and you could only see it because of the blast outlines of the force field or energy weapons. But it looked too much like a cartoon to be taken too seriously.

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I remember being 5 years old watching that in the early 90s and thinking how cartoony it looked.

Although to be fair, that was the best they had in the 1950s in terms of special-effects. At least with an animated monster, they could have it move more fluidly than a clunky puppet, which would have looked even faker. You'll also note how it's only visible in one scene, and the rest of the time, it's invisible and doing damage to different things, such as walls, doors, and buildings. Nice work on the budget, huh?

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I'll take the other side here - I thought the effects were ground breaking for their time and still stand up today. They were similar to the wonderful, budget friendly, yet terrifying banshee in Darby O'Gill.

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I agree with you.

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I saw it as a kid and thought it was badass. Still think that.

What shall we compare it to? Today’s garbage CG that can be produced on a smartphone? And they charge 200 million for?

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