Today on TCM, two of my favorite sci-fI movies air, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Forbidden Planet. They approach their aliens from distinctly different angles but share characteristics that have always kept them at or near the top of my favorite sci-fi movies list. The fact that I saw both of them for the first time in 1977 might be one of the reasons I have always thought of them in the same breath but there are other reasons, too, and I believe that both exemplify the best that science fiction cinema has to offer.
It was in 1977, when I had the luck to be a regular movie goer at just the moment special effects were transforming sci-fi entertainment, that I stood on line for what was sure to be one of the most visually spectacular science fiction movies ever made. I stood anxiously in line staring at the lobby posters that explained the first, second, and third kinds of alien encounters (sighting, physical evidence, contact) with the photo of the mother ship, the now iconic mother ship that appears at the climax. You might think showing a picture of that would spoil the effect but no way. When that mother ship comes up on the massive screen, there was and is still nothing like it. I don’t say this often but if you have only seen Close Encounters on your TV, you have missed out, truly. I can still remember how the way Spielberg framed the final action, to be viewed in a theater, made it feel as if you were there in the landing zone behind Devils Tower (see picture below).
Later that year, I saw Forbidden Planet on TV for the first time. What with Star Wars and Close Encounters proving so popular, local stations were pulling out whatever sci-fi prints they had and running them, in my case, on the Saturday afternoon “Popcorn Theater,” a favorite weekly tradition by the local ABC affiliate that introduced me to a lot of great movies. It was the small screen but I could instantly see that the special effects were extraordinary and I immediately wished I could see it on the big screen too. I figured it must have been as powerful an experience to some kid in 1956 as Close Encounters had been to me. I loved every second of it.
Slowly, with the advent of cable, then VCRs, then DVDs, both movies became staples of my sci-fi viewing and with time I began to pick out similarities that connected the two in my mind. In both movies, the aliens are a mystery. Although we see the aliens in Close Encounters at the very end, we don’t get to know them in any real way, either by connecting personally, as in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or by understanding their need to conquer and/or destroy us as in any hosts of movies, from War of the Worlds to Independence Day. In Close Encounters, we simply know that, for whatever reason, they want to make contact with us and certain ones of us, like the Richard Dreyfuss character, Roy Neary, are specifically called upon, telepathically.
In Forbidden Planet, the alien race, the Krell, who were the original inhabitants of that titular off-limits planet, are also a mystery. We know about as much about them as we do the aliens in Close Encounters. We know their technology far exceeded ours and that telepathy, or some system of directly transmitting their thoughts electronically, was something that had clearly been put to use with much of their machinery. In fact, using this machinery was where Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) ran into problems, as he was not advanced enough to know how to control it. Perhaps, it is hinted at, neither were they. Maybe that’s why they’re gone.
And, of course, both movies have at their center a man obsessed, in one movie it’s Roy Neary and in the other, Dr. Morbius. It ends up better for Roy Neary, we think (who knows what happens after he gets on that spaceship), but at least Dr. Morbius sees the error of his ways in the end. Neary, on the other hand, completely abandons his family to go meet up with the aliens. And he even gets a last minute training on the mission where he knows, and sees, that others have been abducted, some for decades. So he knows this isn’t some weekend jaunt. He’s abandoning all of his responsibilities as a father and a husband. It’s honestly the one part of the movie that doesn’t sit well with me. Apparently, even Spielberg later had his doubts, as this quote from a 2005 interview reveals, “Now, that was before I had kids. That was 1977. So I wrote that blithely. Today, I would never have the guy leaving his family and going on the mother ship. I would have the guy doing everything he could to protect his children.” I feel like getting Neary there as a witness is the most important thing. Getting him to meet them and share some deeper connection. After all, the whole thing is set up as an intergalactic meet and greet. They’re just introducing themselves. No need for a sleepover just yet. Had the climax simply been the musical communication and the aliens coming out to make physical contact with the earthlings, among them Roy Neary, I think it would have worked better. And he could have gone back to his family afterwards.
Of course, that didn’t bother me in 1977. That only creeped into my head years later when, like Spielberg, as a husband and father, I thought, “Geez, what a selfish bastard this guy is.” Dr. Morphius does do everything in his power to protect his daughter and when he is presented with the evidence that he is responsible for the disasters that have occurred and for isolating his daughter unfairly, he puts an end to all of it. Had Dr. Morbius been the guy called upon by the aliens in Close Encounters, when he got to the landing strip and they asked him to come along, he would have said, “Thanks, but I have a daughter that needs me.” I think that’s why these movies coalesce in my mind as well. There’s an opposite approach to responsibility that I find intriguing in both.
Forbidden Planet is famously based on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest but I never look at it as a simple adaptation. It feels like its own story, a movie where another basic outline allowed for a whole new tale to arise. Both Forbidden Planet and Close Encounters of the Third Kind present fascinating looks into the lives of obsessed men, grappling with an alien consciousness seeping into their own. In one movie, we go to the aliens, in the other, they come to us. In both, they’re a mystery. The two movies came a little over twenty years apart but they’ll always be linked in my mind to one year, 1977, when I saw them both for the first time. They were a great double feature then and they’re a great double feature now. If you have time today, I highly recommend a close encounter with both. It’s not like it’s forbidden or anything.