Latest / The Kulturecast / Forbidden Planet (1956) — "We're all part monsters in our subconscious, so we have laws and religion!"

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Forbidden Planet (1956) — "We're all part monsters in our subconscious, so we have laws and religion!" · The Kulturecast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: He were in wait.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Mimbo bo bo bo bo Tombo Bombo.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Imagine yourself as one of the crew of this faster
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: than light spaceship of the future, sharing their curiosity to
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: know the unknown, their tension, their readiness for inconceivable adventures. Sir,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: we're being radar scanned United Planet's cruisers C five seven
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: d JJ Adams commanding, who are you, Warbius of the Bleophon,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Dr Morbius, My orders are to survey the situation on
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: out air for Commander.
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: If you sat down on this planet, I warn you
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: that I cannot be answerable for the safety of your
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: ship or your crew.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: When you reach the Forbidden Planet, you will meet Doctor
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Morbius played by Walter Pigeon. The doctor is sole owner
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: of this fabulous world. Anne Francis is his alluring daughter Alta,
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: who has never seen a young man till she meets
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Commander Adams played by talented Leslie Nielson. Marianne and bring
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: my bathing suit?
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: What's a bathing suit?
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Murder? You will meet a charming character in the robot
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: able to produce on order ten tons of lead or
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: a slinky evening gown. Always at your service. It must
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: be the loveliest, softest thing you've ever made for, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: lick in all the right places with lots of lots
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: of star sapphires. Star sapphires take a week to crystallize properly.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Wo diamond or emeralds too. You explore all the wonders
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: of a vanished civilization. You travel deep down into the
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: heart of the forbidden planet to discover the incredible marbles
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: of this houst genious race. These magnificent scenes in striking
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Eastman color stagger the imagination.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: Twenty miles looked out, Just what are you afraid? Seventy
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: eight hundred elevens, Yet.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: The wonders of the planet all tear four conceal a
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: strange and evil force, unknown, irresistible.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Alrighty, hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: am your host, Chris Dashu. At least that's what I'm
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: told by the people off stage, and I'm joined by
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: my good friend all the way from West Texas. Not
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: robbing banks in West Texas, though you might be mistaken.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: That's what the subject material last couple of podcasts that
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I've had him on, Your Friend and Mine the Well.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: He's a professor of media and communications over Texas Tech,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Doctor David.
• 4:47
  Speaker 6: Pro Mutter, Oh yeah, thank you, Chris.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So, David, I have just kind of turned over programming
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: for you know, when you and I work together, to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you and you you sent me a list of things,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a very long, I would say, expansive list of many,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: many different choices. Though I would say they're all kind
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of a, you know, all over the place. I don't
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: think I wouldn't even say that there's any one kind
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of thing that leads me to believe that, like, oh,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: it's like all sci fi. It's like it's all kind
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of all over the place. So while you might think,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: well that we're going to be talking about more sci
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: fi the next time we get together, this is just
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: a sci fi movie we happen to be talking about.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: But on this episode of the Culture Cast, doctor David
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Promoter and I are going to be talking about a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: film from nineteen fifty six that I'd never seen, but
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I've seen one of the actress who's in it, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of other things we're talking about. Nineteen
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: fifty six is Fred M. Wilcox directed Forbidden Planet. So
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the film is directed by Fred M. Wilcox, but they
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: screenplay by Cyril Hume. Story by Irving Block and Alan Adler,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: stars Walter Pigon and Francis but more important stars Frank
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Dreben himself, Leslie Nielsen, a very young, very pre Shirley
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: pre airplane Leslie Nielsen, and the film is a In
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the research it says it's a loose adaptation of The Tempest.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going to reveal my ignorance here and say I've
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: never seen or read The Tempest. Up until this point.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I now know the basic story of the temp after
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: having watched Forbidden Planet and in the research. But Forbidden
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Planet is someone to play on the Tempest somewhat not so.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: A crew of men from the United Planets finds a
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: planet where a ship had been sent twenty years earlier
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and they stopped getting contact with the ship, and so
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: when they got there, the scientist, doctor Morbius, is the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: only one left and he has a daughter. And throughout
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the film we figure out why the planet is the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: titular Forbidden Planet. We'll get into it. I'm very curious
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: your thoughts, doctor Promutter. But as I have done in
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the past when it is just you and I and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: you were the one picking the movie, please, oh please,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: inform me as to why, oh why in two twenty
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: twenty six we're talking about nineteen fifty six is Forbidden Planet?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Appression? Film?
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: Doctor perlmutter Well, I believe that almost all the science
• 7:10
  Speaker 6: fiction that you have been watching in movies and television
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: and video games owes a little bit of a thank
• 7:18
  Speaker 6: you card to Forbidden Planet. It in itself was not
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: radically original. As you said, that's loosely based on a
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: Shakespeare play. It takes some common motifs and tropes and
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: metaphors and allusions to Freudian psychology, and a lot of
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: science fiction from the thirties, forties and fifties you can
• 7:40
  Speaker 6: find there. But in terms of visual and story, you
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: can see, for example, absolutely Gene Roddenberry watched this. I mean,
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: you can read about the origins of Star Trek. There's
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: no question this was Star Trek one point zero in
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: just a lot of aspects. And in fact, I just
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: watched the first two episodes of The Orville, which is
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: that people say is a good start. I haven't caught
• 8:07
  Speaker 6: on yet really to it.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Somehow, the better version of Star Trek than Star Trek
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Discovery is what I was.
• 8:14
  Speaker 6: Told, Yes, and I don't see that yet. People tell
• 8:19
  Speaker 6: me it gets better, which is a true of a
• 8:20
  Speaker 6: lot of shows. They take their time to define their groove,
• 8:24
  Speaker 6: but immediately you can see, you know, the Union of
• 8:27
  Speaker 6: Planets is sending a starship with a crew of different people,
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: and there's a mystery and a planet has lost contact.
• 8:35
  Speaker 6: I mean that's fifty percent of Star Trek episodes of
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: all the Star Trek series is a planet has lost
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: contact or there's something strange going on on a right,
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: So this movie is worth watching just for like, oh wow,
• 8:49
  Speaker 6: this is like the one point zero of a lot
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: of stuff that I have watched. I haven't watched over
• 8:56
  Speaker 6: the entire seventy six seventy years since the it was made,
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: but like, I think it's interesting. Especially when I played
• 9:04
  Speaker 6: clips selective clips for students or referred them to it,
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: they go like, oh wow, was this start? They actually
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: think some of them have not seen the original Star Trek.
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: Like the original series, they've sort of as we talked about,
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: they they have meme knowledge like Kirk screaming, or or
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: Spock and Kirk fighting, or a Horta coming out of
• 9:26
  Speaker 6: the darkness or something like that. They all know the
• 9:28
  Speaker 6: entire series, but they assume that this was the pilot
• 9:32
  Speaker 6: or this was the movie that star Trek was based on,
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: So so we can learn a lot there. Plus it's
• 9:39
  Speaker 6: a really interesting movie of the time. And it's as
• 9:42
  Speaker 6: we've talked about before, you never watched the same movie twice.
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: Your attitudes can change as you evolved. And also no
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: generation watches the same movie twice, and it's interesting to
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: see what was considered, you know, a level color, big cast,
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: a lot of money on special effects and practical effects
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: of the time. This is not a junk science fiction,
• 10:06
  Speaker 6: This is not a Grade Z. The monster is pretty scary.
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: You can imagine on a giant screen in a theater
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: or drive in you're taking your date on a Friday night,
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: and it's beautiful CinemaScope and beautiful rich color. I think
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: anyone who complains about the cpization of film and television
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: today can probably appreciate that, just the popping color of
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: this movie. And so I think there's just a lot
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: to take away here. As well as being I personally
• 10:38
  Speaker 6: find it still to be a fun and interesting plot.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So, like you mentioned, it's very interesting in the now
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of sci fi that and you know I was talking
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: about this with my friend Lindsay when we were watching
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: this yesterday, And funny enough, I watched this yesterday in
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: between watching Prometheus, Alien Covenant, and then Alien. Well it's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: not called Alien in Paradise, but a fan of both
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Covenant and Prometheus edited the two films together into one
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: film as a fan edit and called it Paradise. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: so I spent yesterday watching Covenant and Prometheus, just because
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: my friend Lindsay had never seen it, just because they're
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: two of my favorite movies. And then we watched Forbidden Planet,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and then we watched the edited together kind of milonge
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of Covenant Prometheus, and so yesterday I spent a lot
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: of time watching sci fi. And what's very interesting is
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the juxtaposition of Forbidden Planet, which is of the three
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: sci fi worlds, the Covenant world, the Forbidden Planet world,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and the Prometheus world, which are all drastically different in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the way that they're presented. Even Prometheus and Covenant, which
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: take place in the same universe, are very different. Of
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: those three, the one that I would love to live
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: in is Forbidden Planet because the design and the look
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and the world that it creates is so I guess
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: now it's if they were doing it. Now it would
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: be retrofuturism, but then it was us future is. I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: think that the world of futurism, that that sci fi
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: exists with him is so much more interesting to me
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: as if you were now. And you know, I mean again, obviously,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you know when the film came out, they were probably
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: taking it for granted because and like you've already alluded to,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in fifty six, there were tons of Z grade sci
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: fi drek coming out that was you know, and again,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: like not to drag one specific author in particular, but
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I'll drag him for a whole host of reasons. L
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard is one of those authors who just wrote
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: book after book after book after book after I mean,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: he was notorious for his prolific his prolific nature of writing,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: but also his ability to just write like just I
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: mean literally They talk about it in plenty of those
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Scientology documentary that L. Ron Hubbard was a very prolific
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: writer in terms of his ability to write. And so,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: like you said, there was plenty of Z grade junk
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: floating around at the time, just like when Westerns were
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: being written, there was a bunch of junk Westerns coming
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: out as well. Not everything is going to be the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: level of a Forbidden Planet or of you know, or
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: of a Star Trek even And so what's interesting for
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: me as a film watcher is, as someone who's watching
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: this film in twenty twenty six, far removed from the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, you know, sixty years later, the world
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: that's created within the world a Forbidden Planet is so
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: much more enticing and appealing than anything created by contemporary
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: filmmakers of the last five to ten, fifteen, twenty years.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I would much rather live in Forbidden Planet or the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: original series of Star Trek than Prometheus or Alien Romulus
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: or Minority Report or anything else where. There's a level
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of futurism that is exceeding where we are now. That's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: meant to make our life easier, but it never seems
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: like it. In sci fi. A lot of the sci
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: fi is like it's meant to make life easier, like,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: you know, the ability to predict crimes ahead of time
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: should theoretically make life easier, but it's you know, it's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the it's the the sci fi twist of it all
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that it's being abused or manipulated or what have you.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And so that's what makes it sci fi? I mean, again,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: it is science fiction, but we do have this technology.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Now it's more just like taking it and pushing it
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: in a subversive or transgressive way or the way it's
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: being used. So all of that to say, I had
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a weird juxtaposition watching this movie yesterday with other things
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that were also sci fi, you know, sci fi, sci
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: fi horror. And I mean as much as I love
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Covenant and Prometheus, which I do, they are two of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: my favorite movies. And I know that's you know, sacrilege
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: among alien fans and sacrilege among sci fi fans because
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: neither of those movies were well received when they came out.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: This movie, I think, just crafts something that's so like
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: like we've already talked to where like you've already talked
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: about with Star Trek, the original series, like so appealing
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that someone else came in and was like, let's just
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: do a whole thing of this, and it totally works,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and Star Trek works because of this weird nature of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: like we have technology, but we also have peop people
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: just wearing clothes like in Forbidden Planet. It cracked me
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: up that Leslie Nielsen's just wearing like a shirt. He's
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: not wearing a helmet, He's not any of this. You know,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: they do the old sci fi trick in the first
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: five minutes of the movie where they're like gravity on
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the plane at this point eight seventy nine. So just
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to adjust your thing. It's just like adjust the thing,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: so we don't have to do anything in terms of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: practical effects to address it. Just adjust your things so
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: that you can walk around normal and it'll look normal
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: when we're filming, because that's what we want to do.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Like it's that level of just like I don't know,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: like working with what you have and not trying to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: not being ashamed that it's just sci fi with people
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: wearing clothes. I like that the sci fi setting is
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: almost secondary to the story that it's telling, because the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: story that Forbidden Planet is telling, to the Shakespeare of
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: it all, is very Shakespearean in its qualities, Like it's
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: very I would say, hetty and what it's getting at,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and not that sci fi is or isn't heady by definition,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: but like you could have told this story any anyway,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: like without the like sci fi machinations of like there
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: is a sci fi creature running around, it could just
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: be like the smoke Monster on Lost. If we're talking
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: about externalizing the it or creating something that's kind of
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: unintelligible but exists within the framework of the narrative we've
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: been presented. You could have done that. I'm glad they didn't.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I'm glad they did something a little bit more sci
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: fi trappings. But the story that the film is telling
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: is one that I think is you know, like you
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and I were talking about privately about Twilight Zone, Like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Twilight Zone is amazing because it's timeless in the nature
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: of the stories that it's telling. The best episodes of
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone, this movie's story and theme and kind
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: of nature I think are timeless in what it's asking,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: in the presentation, in what it's expecting of the audience.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And I really enjoyed it. I mean, I understand now
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: why this movie is as well regarded as it is.
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: Yes, it's a movie that has layers, and you can
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: enjoy all the layers or just one, like a cake.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: You watch it as a movie and just just as
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a sci fi movie, and that's it.
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: If you just want to watch a fun adventure, it's there.
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: I mean, there's fear, there's combat, with a monster. There's
• 17:14
  Speaker 6: the handsome guy and the pretty girl love story. There's
• 17:19
  Speaker 6: just they're all the elements of a fun, straightforward story.
• 17:23
  Speaker 6: But there's a lot of depth there. Let's let's break
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: down some of the things you've said. Nineteen fifty six
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: is Eisenhower's president. We are in a cold war, but
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: we're also in a time of great optimism. You have
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: we've gone through the apocalypse of World War two, right,
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: and I'm sorry, Chris, I'm getting a lot of feedback.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: You're good.
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: We've gone through the apocalypse of World War two, and
• 17:53
  Speaker 6: at least in the United States, people have come home,
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: they've gone, they're going, they've gone to college, and the
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: gi Bill, they've gotten married, they were having the baby boom.
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: We're in the right right there in the baby boom.
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: So there's a lot of hope about technology, all kinds
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: of technology, and nuclear technology. There's hope. You know, we're
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: going to have nuclear roads and cars and and there's
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: a lot of optimism about the future. And you can
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: see it there like these are this is competence porn
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: of a kind. Like everybody involved from the Krell, the
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: ancient alien race are super competent in fact, there's a
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: moral to that story there that I'll get to you
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: in a moment. But the crew, everybody in the crew
• 18:33
  Speaker 6: does their job, the scientist does his job. It's it's
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: a time where you could you could say that like, okay,
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: well there's not the moral complexity and shades of gray,
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: but actually this is a really brilliant film for bringing
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: out the question of morality and ethics. But in terms
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: of technology, it's futuristic, positive futuristic and also but plausible, right, okay,
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: within what they knew at the time. There's a famous
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: science fiction writer named John Christopher. He became pretty well
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: known in the sixties and seventies British writer. He was
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: the King of Ya Apocalypse. He wrote the Tripods story
• 19:14
  Speaker 6: which became super famous, influenced a lot of World of War,
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: the World's type other stories, And I remember reading in
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: like a little biographical note he made that he wrote
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: regular science fiction up through the nineteen sixties. But then
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: when we actually started sending probes to other planets in
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: the Solar System, he realized that you couldn't have a
• 19:38
  Speaker 6: civilization on Mars anymore, you know, you couldn't have astronauts
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: hacking their way with machetes through the jungles of Venus
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: anymore that the solar system was pretty much out. Now
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: there are still movies made, you know. I hope we'll
• 19:53
  Speaker 6: get a chance to watch Europa Report. There's still possibilities, but.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: They're few and far between now. Yeah, But it's this
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: kind of sci fi is gone in a lot of ways,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and I know it's a cultural change in the tastes
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and tones of the time. But I do miss this
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: level of sci fi op like. I do miss it
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: because I think it's like looking forward with a level
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of positivity as opposed to a level of cynicism. I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: think is important because I don't think that the future
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: with technology is one or the other. It's a balance
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of both. It's like that, you know, we have the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: we have the AI is going to kill you movies
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: over and over again, but we haven't had yet recently.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: The AI is helpful movie of like solving things like
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: we have the AI Minority Report movie that came out
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that looks like a movie created by AI mercy that
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Chris Prattman like it is. It is warning against the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the far reaching nature of AI. This movie is warning
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: against the human nature, not the technology of the time
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: being the problem. The human nature is the problem, which
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: is so much more of a like not like like
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a base level thing that's like they've dug down all
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the way to get to this. And I always find
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that more interesting when sci fi is used as a
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: vehicle for something as opposed to just like, the technology
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: is so crazy, we can make robots that can travel
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: back in time to kill you in the past, to
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: stop you from ever existing. Like yeah, once we get
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: past that as an idea, it kind of falls apart, huh, Like.
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: Now, yes, So that's the level of complexity that you
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: can move up the ladder. Because in a lot of
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: nineteen fifties nineteen sixties low budget science fiction films, there's
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: a scientist who's not quite a mad scientist, but like
• 21:40
  Speaker 6: gets too excited about the science and doesn't see the
• 21:43
  Speaker 6: consequences and ramifications and maybe designs something a robot that
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: goes crazy. That's a pretty familiar plot. He has a
• 21:52
  Speaker 6: beautiful daughter, there's a protagonist hero, So this has some
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: of those elements, but then it has this really interesting
• 22:00
  Speaker 6: level of thought experiment. Now, again, this is the nineteen fifties,
• 22:03
  Speaker 6: so Freudian psychology permemeates the cinema, right, we have Alfred
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: Hitchcock Spellbound, and if you had a psychological element in
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: the film in the nineteen fifties and sixties, it was
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: something Freudian. So of course they're taking something Freudian here
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: and nixing. That's pretty high level culture, right, mixing Freud
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: and Shakespeare for the nineteen fifties to science fiction movie.
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: And so the question is also is let me just
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: get to the core story a second, to focus on this.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: So we have this planet where the Orville, the Starstik Discovery,
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: the Sartor Enterprise visits. There's something wrong. An expedition, scientific
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: expedition went there, not a military expedition, the scientific expedition
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: to wearn new knowledge. And we find this scientist and
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: his daughter are apparently the only survivors of the expedition,
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: and we find that they have discovered something incredible, this
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: city that belonged to what apparently were a extremely advanced civilization,
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: maybe hundreds thousands of years beyond us, maybe millions. They
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: play around with that, but let's just say they're very,
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: very advanced. And by the way, I really like that
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: you don't necessarily see them, right, away. I mean, there's
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: the apparition monster, which I guess is a version of
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: them interpolated through the human imagination. But for example, they
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: do this, This is a wonderful practical effect. The doors,
• 23:38
  Speaker 6: the passageways are shaped to fit them right, and they're
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: they're sort of it's hard to describe unless you see
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: the movies, but they're they're crab people. They're crab shaped,
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: the crab doors.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: What the doctor says about the apparatus that he could
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: put on his head, He's like, it's clearly made for
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: something less humanoid than us. And it's like yeah, because
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the things are like eight feet in each direction. It's
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: like how big were the heads on these things? Like
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: it's and but they get a lot of mileage out
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of that, like you know, working within the framework of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: what you have and not belaboring that you don't have it,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: but working around it in a way that makes sense.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Like you said, showing a doorway that they would have
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to go through, showing a thing that they would use,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: like showing the when we finally see the monster, it
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: being kind of what they might be or adjacent to that, Like,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: you get a lot of mileage out of it, which
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you know, doesn't cost much compared to spending hundreds of
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars on CGI.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: Yes, and I really think that that's very important to
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: look at the Krall city there. I don't know whether
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: this was the first movie that established the trope of
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: advanced aliens don't have guardrails on impossibly high passageways, which
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: goes you know, a Galaxy Quest had fun with that one,
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: but like you know, you've seen all most science fiction.
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: You know, Osha would not approve of the construction there.
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: But the Krell are these super advanced and they all disappeared.
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: So this is great mystery. And of course we're not
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: giving away I hope people watch the movie.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: But elementations with spoilers on this show. The show, this
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: movie is sixty years of.
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: The mystery is solved, but it's it's solved not again
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: in the sort of simplistic, stereotypical way that a lot
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: of movies then and a lot of movies now have,
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: which is technology bad. Don't go too far with technology
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: actually saying. They're not saying like advanced technology is bad.
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: They're saying that human beings have to adjust to learn
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: how to control themselves in relation to the technology, So
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: the analogy would be nuclear power. You know, there are
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: many people I know within the environmental world who say, gosh,
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: you know, nuclear power isn't that bad as long as
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: you don't have accidents. It actually saves a lot of
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: energy compared to some other forms of energy. But the
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: point is, but on the other hand, we have nuclear weapons, right,
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: so the question is what are humans going to do
• 26:10
  Speaker 6: with this? And in terms of relevance, I think some
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: of the issues about this Krell mind expansion device are
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: extremely applicable to the world of AI and what we're
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: going to do with AI and to what extent AI
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: is an extension of humans or dumbs down and degrades humans.
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: And so this goes back the same time. Yes, that's right.
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: This goes back to something that I've I've brought up
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: a lot about my favorite literary insight by J. R. R.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: Tolkien about how good literature is applicable. It's not a
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: question of like, oh, this nineteen fifty movie, they dress
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: a little funny, and their social relations are not necessarily
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: what I approve of necessarily, but a lot of the
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: ideas and situations are applicable to our time today, and frankly,
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: they could have remade this movie. I don't want them to.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Well, but they talked about it apparently for quite some time,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and we almost got it several times. If not still.
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: Banding, they're still banding about an idea of to as
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: recently as two years ago, Brian K Vaughn doing a
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: treatment of the script.
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: I'm with you.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, like you said about Tolkien, and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you know, someone like you know, Rod Serling, you know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: like to go back to the twilight zone of it all,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: which I think is a very good example of sci
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: fi being applicable at its most successful. Like, I think
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: it's important that the things that we watch, if you're
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: gonna do something like this, be timeless, because it allows
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: it to transcend the time and place that it exists within.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the definition of timeless obviously, but like,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: as a as a creator, you should want that, and
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I know that not everybody does. Know that it's not easy.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I know that to hold yourself to that is also
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: not something that can be convenient or that may not
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: even be somebody's you know, reason for doing things.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I think of a very famous interview with as recently
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: with Stuart Copeland reacting to Sting saying that Sting didn't
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: like why Stuart Copeland played music and wrote song and
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Stuart Copeland just played music and wrote songs because he
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: just liked to play music and liked to play like
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: bang on the drums really hard. And Sting is, you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: all the music has to the song has to serve
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the music and the song. And I'm like, not saying
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: that's wrong, but two people can do the same thing
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: ostensibly outwardly for different reasons inwardly and very vastly different reasons.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: And with something like Forbidden Planet, to your point, I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: don't want to see it remade, because what else is
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: there to say other than punching up the recent the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: truly topical nature of it. So replacing Robbie the Robot
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: with a nanobot ai cloud or god knows what which,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: by the way, to go back to the War of
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the worlds of it all? That War of the World's
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: movie with ice Cube that came out last year, one
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of the worst movies I've ever seen, one of the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: worst movies ever made, and one of the one of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the best examples of what it means to truly make
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a lazy film in the time of AI. I'd like
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to point out to anyone listening if you have an
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: issue with AI, it's not really AI that you have
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a problem with. It's people and how they use AI.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: That's the problem, because AI can't do anything on its own.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: At the point that it's at now, it is not
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: sky Neet. I know everybody wants it to be Skynet,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: but it's literally not Skynet. It's destroying the environment because
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: we are using it. If everybody stopped using it wouldn't
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: destroy the environments because there would be nobody using it
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: for it to happen. And so I don't know if
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I need a forbidden Planet that's updated to the times,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: because I can just transpose an idea onto this film
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: without this film having to directly talk about it, which
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I think is what Tolkien is getting at with Like
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: it's a fplickable in one direction and technically in the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: other direction, but when it's only applicable in one direction,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it becomes very dated. Like to go back to Twilight Zone,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the most recent readaptation of the Twilight Zone, which features
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you know, such great episodes as Adam Scott listening to
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a podcast on an airplane a lah for nightmare at
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: forty thousand feet and the episode I told you about,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: which is Jacob Tremblay as a child playing the president. Hardy,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: har hard. Don't you get it. You don't have to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: do that there. You can do it from the other
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: direction and make it timeless in and of itself and
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: apply it forward as opposed to back. And that's what
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: this movie kind of.
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: I think the age comes to a real issue about
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: when we say we want to do a modern retelling
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: of something. Yeah, well, okay. Shakespeare, who by the way,
• 30:55
  Speaker 6: almost always borrowed his plots from previous you know, either
• 31:00
  Speaker 6: antiquity or histories, myths and legends and so on.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare borrowed from real life with Caesary, like what was
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: he writing it from literally what happened, But he dramatized
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: it in an interesting way, like he made it made
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: it applicable, which is hard to do. I get. But
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: it's so much more for me as a creator, rewarding
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: than just making to make That's right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 6: So if I mean, look, let's face it, almost all
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: modern retellings have as one of their motives a cash grab, right,
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: Like there's something associated with a property, and okay, they
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: think they're going to get people to come in the theater.
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: The War of the World was a modern retelling, a
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: very bad modern retelling. But part of the issue there
• 31:48
  Speaker 6: was that what were they telling the story? You know what?
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: What was the insight that the hundred other versions, the
• 31:55
  Speaker 6: orsin Wells version didn't have.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: The insight was that ice Cube could in front of
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: a computer for an entire movie and get away with
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: it and get paid. He pulled, you know, to go
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: back to the reason you and I are friends. He
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: pulled a sagal. He's just doing a sagal, a late
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: stage sagal. He's just sitting on his ass in front
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of a computer for an hour and a half and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: getting paid. Steven Sagall made an entire VOD career of
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: just sitting at a table or standing in one place
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and talking to people and then cutting away like ice
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Cubes getting paid. I don't know what the point was
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: other than, you know, as we all know, War of
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the World is you know, open, you know, it's a
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: fair use title, so anybody can adapt it openly and fairly.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: So that's really what it comes down.
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: The other point here is a takeaway which I could
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: imagine in nineteen fifty six a family going to watch
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: this movie. Right, you would go there and maybe maybe
• 32:51
  Speaker 6: the dad was in the army and had seen some
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: things right in his service. And I know the mom
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: was in a nursing corps or she was building tanks
• 33:02
  Speaker 6: in Detroit, and they were trying to live a quiet,
• 33:06
  Speaker 6: comfortable life, which you could in the nineteen fifties economically,
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: and they've got some young kids, and hey, let's go
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: watch this fun science fiction movie. And I think they
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: could watch. I mean, there's some scary parts, and maybe
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: you'd cover the kid's eyes at a couple of points,
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: but I think walking out of the theater, the dad
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: and the mom would be going for hamburger and ice
• 33:31
  Speaker 6: cream and saying, you know, kids, that was a fun movie.
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: But there was a point there. And we just went
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: through something about a decade ago called World War Two,
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: where we found out the depths that human beings can
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: go in their destructiveness, completely out of their mind in
• 33:50
  Speaker 6: the sense of like creating these visualizations of horror and
• 33:55
  Speaker 6: then making them happen. I thought this movie was a
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: great metaphor for World War Two, where you have in
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: the nineteen thirties, politicians, leaders talking about bombing cities, talking
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: about destroying entire countries, talking about just you know, conquering
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: nations and so on. And then in the early nineteen
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: forties or late nineteen thirties, early nineteen forties, they set
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: out to do it at xology. Yeah, I mean World
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: War II sort of started it. In the late nineteen thirties,
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: Japan invaded China, and the crimes committed by Japan in
• 34:37
  Speaker 6: China rival those committed by Germany in Europe in terms
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: of the horrors that they perpetuate. So it was like
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: this horrible dream where crazy evil people had machines, bombers, tanks,
• 34:54
  Speaker 6: machine guns, airplane battleships, and they made the horrors come
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: to life. So I would have thought think a nineteen
• 35:02
  Speaker 6: fifties family would would come away entertained, and like Robbie,
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: the robot was fun. It was a fun what a
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: great nineteen fifties conception of a robot, And of course
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: that that model was used again and again and became
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: the model for the robot, not the exact one, but
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: the same, very similar mannerisms and voice. You've got also
• 35:23
  Speaker 6: the robot, it has the whole Asimov's Laws right, the
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: program not to Kill. So like there's there's a huge
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: inheritance there in every movie where there's an intelligent computer
• 35:36
  Speaker 6: or a robot or something like that. So it really
• 35:39
  Speaker 6: is a masterpiece in my mind of combining entertainment and thoughtfulness.
• 35:45
  Speaker 6: And you can you could be multiple audiences coming to that.
• 35:48
  Speaker 6: Grandma and a seven year old could go to that
• 35:51
  Speaker 6: movie and come away with something besides just you know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 6: the time passed really well. And so in terms of
• 35:58
  Speaker 6: a modern retelling, if you can't say that, if you
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: can't say people will be entertained for an hour and
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: forty five minutes by a really great story and interesting characters,
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: and they'll come away with something to think about, which
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: I should add shouldn't be a clunking hammer blow.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: To the head of get it, get it, don't you
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: get it? You don't want.
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: The other thing is that this film is a masterclass
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: in how to do things without overstating them right.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Within the framework of the filmic language. I think, with
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: utilizing the language of cinema without utilizing dialogue direct and
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I think that you know, like you mentioned, by the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: end of this movie, you know you could take this
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: movie in like eight different directions in terms of how
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: you can apply it to something. You know. The thing
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: that I would say, you know, applicable wise in terms
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: of another direction to go is the idea, you know,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and we've mentioned it already. It is a ship full
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: of men that have been on a year's journey that
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: have no women on the ship, that come across a
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: father and daughter on a planet, and this is the
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: first woman that they've seen in however many years for
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: some of them. That is a direction. You could go
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: down there and take that and see where that takes
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: you and see what the you know, the text and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: subtext of the of the medium and what they've done.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Like I love that there's no in a David Lynch
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: sort of way. And I'm not saying that this is
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Lynchian in its tone or message, but Lynchian and that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: just like, take from this what you will. I'm not
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: going to give you what my thoughts are upfront. I
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: will give you plenty of avenues to go down. You
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: go down those avenues, any of them are fine by
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: me because I don't have to tell you what it's about.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I can just give you all the roads to go down.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Knowing that any of those roads you go down, I,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: in my mind have assumed is a fair interpretation of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the Soorceman. And for most things, there's like eight million
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: different ways you can go down, so you know, there's
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: like four or five ones that I think are kind
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: of overwhelmingly obvious. But for me, it's just this idea
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of you know, like you said, like we we can
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: have something interesting to say without clubbing you over the
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: head with it repeatedly. And the best sci fi doesn't.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: The best sci fi doesn't make you feel dumb, like
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: you know, having to repeat things eight million times doesn't
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: make the viewer seem smart. It feels like you don't
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: trust the views.
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: Yes, this is also a film that you know, you've
• 38:24
  Speaker 6: seen the following in movies a lot where it just
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: always bothers me. You've got a room full of scientists
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: at NASA and they're describing a scientific phenomenon and one
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: of them says, give that to me in English or
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: you know, explain it to me, and I personally like,
• 38:42
  Speaker 6: and what did this recently and very well was the
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: opening seven or eight minutes of the Pluribis television series
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: where you have not the first seven or events you
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: have nothing but scientists talking. Scientists talk, and they make
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: no compromise to like the ordinary audience, but you catch
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: on where they're going. This goes to the discussion that
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: we had about the movie Iceman, where I'm a big
• 39:08
  Speaker 6: fan of and this has been done in a number
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: of properties, including and Or and others. I'm a big
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: fan of not translating when no translation is needed. Yeah, yeah,
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: that's right. And so this film, it's simple and it's mechanics.
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: So again, if you just told the plot to somebody,
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: you go, they'd say, well, that's a pretty simple plot.
• 39:32
  Speaker 6: But the point is that it gets a story across
• 39:36
  Speaker 6: that and the moral, the ethical questions, the love story,
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: the adventure, just it. It does everything a movie can do.
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: And how many movies today really have multi generational appeal,
• 39:51
  Speaker 6: you know, multi multi ideological appeal, Like I mean, I
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: don't care what your politics are. I think you'd enjoyed
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: this movie. Now, there are some things like you know,
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: the the daughter is very nineteen fifties young young woman,
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: and the crew of the ship are yep, they're all
• 40:07
  Speaker 6: white and they're all male. And you know, they did
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: have problems back then sort of projecting diversity in the future.
• 40:15
  Speaker 6: But as I always say to my students, ask yourself,
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: you know, what were their choices at the time, And
• 40:20
  Speaker 6: then ask yourself, maybe if we watch our movies one
• 40:24
  Speaker 6: hundred years from now, what are they going to say, Like,
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: wait a minute, the cat is enslaved. You know, the
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: cat doesn't have its freedom of independence, and it's a citizen,
• 40:35
  Speaker 6: you know, voting citizen or something. What I mean, there's
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: all sorts of things which maybe the future will critique
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: in us. That doesn't mean we can't recognize some of
• 40:43
  Speaker 6: the issues. But I don't like it when people just
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: say dismiss a property and say, oh, you know, it
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: has this bad thing from the nineteen fifties. It has
• 40:53
  Speaker 6: a lot of good things which are still applicable today.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: The Jazz Singer is a Al Jolson film where he
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: wears black black face that came out what twenty thirty
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: years before this film did. Like that doesn't discount the
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: quality or nature of that movie. And I think that it's,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's important to understand when like the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: context of when things were made is important. And you know,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I was talking about this recently with Richard HadAM and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Mike White over on rank and on Bond where we
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: were talking about Ian Fleming's books, and recently Ian Fleming's
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: books have been edited for now, I guess. And it
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: really irritated Richard, and it irritates me as well, because
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: if it's that big of a deal, which I'm not
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: saying it's not for some people, it's not for me
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: because I can understand context and intention and time and
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: space when things were written. If it's that big of
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a deal, just put a warning in the book. Don't
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: change things. Don't go in and retroactively change things to
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: prove a point or to better suit the narrative of
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the way things are done now. Because at one point
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: blackface was acceptable as an art. It's not now.
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: It's a historical document, right, And the question is are
• 42:07
  Speaker 6: the historical denying history at that point? I mean, I mean,
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: whose side are you on when you deny history? Especially
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: since we will have I mean, if we edit everything,
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: then like a couple of years from now, we'll have
• 42:21
  Speaker 6: a generation of people who will not know that anything
• 42:25
  Speaker 6: bad ever happened, or anything wrong ever happened because they
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: I've never seen it. How can you decry you know,
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: negative race relations in the nineteen thirties, and and you know,
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: laws of pressing black people if nobody ever learns about
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: them because they never see them in at least in
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: an entertainment form, or they're not allowed to look at
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: historical documents that actual historical documents that use offensive language today.
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: What is offensive language today? I mean, Tommy Abraham Lincoln.
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: You know, Abraham Lincoln didn't not use politically acceptable language today. Okay,
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: right now, Pians of the time idea, we should never
• 43:09
  Speaker 6: read Lincoln.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And that's it's and again it's a it's a very
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: slippery slope with stuff like this, and I always you know,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I know people roll their eyes at that, but it's
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: you can't apply the same rules to everything. And I
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: think that, you know, to go back and look at
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: something like Forbidden Planet, it's very interesting you mentioned the
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: kind of lack of people of color. Well, you know,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: it's but then, but then contrast that with the thing
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that you've already mentioned that this inspired, which is Star Trek.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And what was one of Gene Roddenberry's like literal points
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: with that show was to show that the future in
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: sci fi is going to be democratic in the way
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: it's everybody. It's literally everybody. It's George d Kay, a
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: man of Asian descent, Walter Kanik, a man who can
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you know, do a laughable Russian accent, but a Russian
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: accent nonetheless, you know Yvette Nicol or not even Jesus,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: oh god, what's her name? The actress Nicole Nicol, the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: woman who plays Ahura like I mean again, even someone
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: like I mean Spock made to look like something else
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: but in a crew of humans. James doing is Scottish,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: like you have all of this in Star Trek, almost
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: as a response to Forbidden Planet, as like Forbidden Planet
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: was just a ship of white men going to a
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: planet with white people. And yes, you know there are
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: people that die, they just happen to be the white men,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: because that's the only people in the movie that there are.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: There is no one else. And it's interesting because Star
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Trek is a direct repudiation of that, which I think
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: is interesting. Forbidden Planet sets a sets the table well
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: for a direction of the future to take, and then
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Star Trek goes. But yes, in the future, people would
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: stop being racist, hopefully and stop caring about the color
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: of each other's skin and worry about the moral and
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the conduct of each other's characters like, and that's what
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Star Trek preaches. Like Star Trek has always preached that,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: from having a vult on a human ship to having
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: people of color on a ship when a time in
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: place is being it's being made in where it is
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: a primarily white driven culture, like those are things that
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: sci fi is hoping for. But in the irony of
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: it all, in creating content that is hoping for that,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: it affects that in turn. And that's what's so important
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: about Beside.
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: The famous story of Nicole Nichols, I think I'm getting
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: her name right, Yeah, I hope so, the great Nicole
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: Nichols at one point thinking about not being on Star
• 45:34
  Speaker 6: Trek and who talks her into staying on Star Trek
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: Martin Luther King Junior, right, because he got it. We
• 45:41
  Speaker 6: need we need you up there on the screen being
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: efficient and competent and part of the crew and getting
• 45:47
  Speaker 6: along and solving problems, you know, together. We need that.
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: And and by the way, just to go a little
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: further on Star Trek something else. It doesn't get as
• 45:57
  Speaker 6: much attention, but Jean Runberry snuck in and I I
• 46:03
  Speaker 6: think the show changed the networks, right because the networks
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: were very uncomfortable. There was basically there was this belief that,
• 46:10
  Speaker 6: especially in parts of the country, if you had a
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: mixed cast, that you would get either lower attendance, lower viewership,
• 46:20
  Speaker 6: or you would get protests or something like that. Right, Okay,
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: And that lasted through the sixties at least, maybe even
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: beyond there.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, but a Little Mermaid film that cast a
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: black actress got you know, backlash because they cast a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: black actress. So I think it's died down a lot,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: but it's still there. It still exists in pockets. It's
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: just died down so much that I think it's the
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: only people that are doing and now are considered fringe,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like off in a direction
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: that it's like sci fi. Sci fi has been preaching
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: this for sixty years, like stop stop fighting, something that
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: sci fi has been ahead of.
• 46:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, well, let's talk about that in a second, because
• 46:58
  Speaker 6: I think there's this there's a I guess a spin
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: on that that I want to discuss. But I just
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: want to point out Geene Runberry did something else which
• 47:06
  Speaker 6: he doesn't get as much attention to. At one point,
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: there's a black admiral. The current answers to right, and
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: I thought, well, you know that's what And again, I
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: watched Star Trek in the nineteen seventies as a kid, right, So,
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: so already there were a lot of TV shows, The Jeffersons,
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: they worked black cops, black detectives, black mayors on TV.
• 47:30
  Speaker 6: So there was a change occurring already. But that was
• 47:33
  Speaker 6: really interesting to have a black boss. I don't know
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: whether somebody who's a better television historian will have to
• 47:41
  Speaker 6: tell me, was that the first time in a movie
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: or at a TV show that a white man answered
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: to a black boss or not? Was that a breakthrough
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: or not. I can't believe it's the first, but it's possible.
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: It's possible. I mean, television took a while to catch
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: up just to go on what you were saying there
• 47:59
  Speaker 6: and again. And this is where I always encourage our
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: students to just it really feels good to criticize other
• 48:05
  Speaker 6: people and people in the past for not being with
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: it or up to.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Date culturally sensitive by our approximation, but it.
• 48:17
  Speaker 6: Is also worth asking what are we going to be
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: criticized for many years in the future. So I think
• 48:23
  Speaker 6: there are critiques that are legitimate when this is what
• 48:28
  Speaker 6: gets me sometimes is you'll see a cast well I mean, okay,
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: so the retconning of diversity into historical situations where there
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: wasn't right right, which is.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: A very weird. I wouldn't say weird, but it's like
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: it's a thing now that we're kind of like contending with,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: which I think is being done to subversive and transgressive effect,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: but also to just like what the hell are we doing?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: What the hell are we doing? Like what is going on?
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: He yah?
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: And I understand, and I my friends in history departments
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: will say, well, the past was a little bit more
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: diverse than our stereotypes of the past, like for example,
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: there were you know, there were black people in medieval
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: England and things like that. It isn't it isn't.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: It's not beyond the realm of possibility.
• 49:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but when it's obviously done and then no one
• 49:18
  Speaker 6: notices within the story space and it's not dealt with
• 49:23
  Speaker 6: as something, then you wonder whether again there's this issue
• 49:27
  Speaker 6: of like they're covering up the past, They're they're making
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: the past uh you know white, they're whitewashing literally the past,
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: of saying that like well, why why didn't why would
• 49:38
  Speaker 6: it be actually unlikely that mister Darcy would be a
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: black man or something like that in Jane Austen, Well,
• 49:46
  Speaker 6: let's talk about why that would be unlikely. I mean
• 49:49
  Speaker 6: to me, discussing the the unhappy things from the past
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: is part of discussing the past, and entertainment should not
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: be pretending those didn't exist. But going back to this movie,
• 50:01
  Speaker 6: just I want to maybe with this is where we're
• 50:03
  Speaker 6: wrapping up or not. But the Krell are very interesting because.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: We've barely talked about the subsuming thing of this movie
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about, which I'm sure you
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: have as well.
• 50:13
  Speaker 6: Well, you know, part of the challenge that television and
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: I watched these first two episodes of The Orville and
• 50:21
  Speaker 6: the way that television was. The Star Trek was famously
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: given this tiny budget. I think by the time the
• 50:27
  Speaker 6: show was canceled, they had only like seventy thousand dollars
• 50:30
  Speaker 6: an episode, which even in the nineteen sixties was just pitiful.
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: And so yeah, most aliens were humans with a probuscus prosthetic,
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: you know, or they had a green dye job, or
• 50:43
  Speaker 6: like a little horn or husk or something like that.
• 50:46
  Speaker 6: And it's only later with CGI sometimes that we can
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: have more different interesting aliens. These aliens were really alien,
• 50:57
  Speaker 6: you know how we complain sometimes that like aliens in
• 51:00
  Speaker 6: movies are just us right with a costume on, physically
• 51:05
  Speaker 6: or mentally right, like their their motivations don't seem to
• 51:09
  Speaker 6: be any different than the average Canadian, right, even though
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: they're from another galaxy. But these aliens cases are from France,
• 51:18
  Speaker 6: truly alien and that's a big deal.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's and what I love about it is
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: it's twofold. They're clearly like alien in the way that
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: they are portrayed through the environment on screen, because again
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: we never see them, but they're also alien. They're alien
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: in external presentation, but they're still very human adjacent in
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: their motivations and their they're machinations. And you know, you
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: you talked about watching the Orville, you know, to go
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: back to Covenant and Prometheus. In those films, the creatures
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: look human and have human machinations. I don't think they
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: needed to look human to have human imaginations. They clearly
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: thought that that needed to be the case. But you
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: don't have to have something look human to have human machinations,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: to have the machinations of someone that is greedy or
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: spiteful or wants power or any of these things is
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: understandable because I don't think that's purely a human thing.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: I think that is a characteristic of sentient beings, is
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: to want to go into business for yourself or to
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: help others, or take advantage of a situation as an
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: opportunist or not. Like, I'm not sure that that's human
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: and as much as that's just our ability to understand
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: it through our own lens of interpretation. But I love
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: that the Krell in this movie, the entire point of
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: their existence is they are so technologically advanced that they
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: did they Ian Malcolm themselves and didn't ask if they should.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: They just did, And in not asking if they should
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and only doing, they created something that they could not contain,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: which is a machine that puts the id into reality, which,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: as we all know, you know, the idea of killing
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: the ego is so wife important, especially as a creative
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it's important. But I think if you're teaching, or if
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: you're teaching or leading or in charge of people, I
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: think it's important to not have an ego. I think
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: it's important to lead without an ego and to understand
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: that having an ego can be really detrimental to progress
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: and other things. And the ID is such a big
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: like it's part and parcel with that. And to see
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: in this movie the Krell were brought down by their
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: own essentially like animalistic super id is. I think it's
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: so insane to me because I was not expecting that
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: with this movie at all. But then to have them
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: be like, well, they made such technological advances that it
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: advanced past their ability to contain it, and it advanced
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: past their understanding of their own situation, which is you've
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: turned thought into reality. I love that that is the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: one of the themes and directions that you could take
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: another hour two hours of this conversation down, because that,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: for me was the interesting conversation that he's having is
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: your ego and your manifestation of your wants and desires, uncontrolled, unchecked,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: taking over and harming and destroying things. It's like, what
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: an interesting idea for a film. Of course, it's a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: sci fi movie that's doing it, you know, like sci
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: fi is the playground for these kinds of things. Horror
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: movies are now, uh sci fi movies used to be.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that they've kind of flip flopped. Horror movies
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: used to not be a place where we would have interesting,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: heady discussions about things, but and it was sci fi.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Now it's flopped, like, you know, maybe Project Hail Mary
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: might be a step in the right direction for sci
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: fi in terms of it returning to a loftier, positive,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: more optimistic goal. But now it's like horror movies are
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: where we can have these interesting conversations about human ego
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: or big emotional questions. And that wasn't the case for
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the longest time. It was almost like sci fi was
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the genre to take those ideas and run an often interesting,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: entertaining way.
• 55:00
  Speaker 6: Yes, and let me maybe this is where I want
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: to wrap up, But let me quote mister Spock. You
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: mentioned mister Spock, right, and this chain of associations, and
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: we can say Robbie the Robot led to a lot
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: of robots, including C three PO and R two D two.
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: But we can also say this idea about the mind,
• 55:21
  Speaker 6: the mind of any creature and technology, the relationship of
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: the two. And I was watching something the other day.
• 55:30
  Speaker 6: I certainly am old enough to remember when I saw
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: Star Trek the new generation that I this cube being
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: came along and I was going like, wait a minute,
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: wasn't that the same? And there's been a fan theory
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: about this for a long time, and it's turned out
• 55:45
  Speaker 6: to be one of the things where actually there was
• 55:47
  Speaker 6: a connection. The original Star Trek series had the Squire
• 55:50
  Speaker 6: of Gothos, who was this being who could just using
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: his mind and it turns out, Surprised there's a machine
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: behind the wall, using the machine to make whatever was
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: in his mind come into reality.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite episodes of the original series, by
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the way, literally one.
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: That I've seen a million times, and anyone who wants
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: to can go look at the story of like how
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: Q came from that? But there's a fantastic quote which
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: again you're thinking in nineteen sixties science fiction producing such
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: depth of intellectual insight and really things to think about
• 56:28
  Speaker 6: as a young person watching the show, because the Star
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: Trek original generation, just like today, a lot of young
• 56:34
  Speaker 6: kids watching, a lot of older people watching. Spock says
• 56:38
  Speaker 6: to the Squire of Gothos, this child who has a
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: lot of power and is like using it for humiliating
• 56:45
  Speaker 6: people or destroying things. Spock says, I object to you.
• 56:51
  Speaker 6: I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: without constructive purpose and what a beautiful insight which really
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: could be the moral of Forbidden Planet, but has carried
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: to the present day about our relationship with technology and
• 57:11
  Speaker 6: also our relationship with power within the story space of everything,
• 57:16
  Speaker 6: including science fiction, and so that idea of intellect must
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: be coupled with discipline and must be for a positive purpose.
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: The Krell, no matter how advanced they were, missed that
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: the film was about humans being reminded of it and
• 57:33
  Speaker 6: then like, what would they do with that knowledge? Will
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: they use it effectively or not?
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting is where the film leaves us is, Oh,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: by the way, humanity will get here too. And it's
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: like and what I find to be interesting is you
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: can read that one of two ways. You can read
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: it as humanity will get to the point with with
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the where the crawl did where they just wipe themselves
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: out by unchecked power being used in an unchecked way,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: or humanity will get there too, or like your Earth
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: will get here too, as in they will get to
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the point where they understand this and are able to
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: do something with it as opposed to just letting it
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: run rampant. The movie I think leaves it up to
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: interpretation as to where it things things are going to go.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, just to go to like you said, how
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: modern day times have evolved, like the need for checks
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: and balances and corrections on power, overwhelming power and absolute
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: power I think are important and I think you know
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: this movie shows that again in a world of unchecked balances,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: things that often you know, one small thing, one small
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: missed detail that you know. Oh, by the way, your
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: supercomputer can tap into the subconscious id oops, like it
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: can make everything real, including your thoughts and notion can
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: be turned real. And then those thoughts and notions can
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: not only be turned real, but then can be at
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: the hands of the controls. Is again like go back
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: to having you know you talked about Star Trek, to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: go back to the you know, Covenant and Prometheus of
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: it all. We have a movie about creators creating a
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: creation that is then yearning to create as well, which
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: puts into the universe problems of reasons for creation and
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: intention behind creation and need to create an ego. And
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: if you just don't allow the thing that you've created
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: to create, you can cut that off completely and it's
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: never a problem. But again, to go back to the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: idea of forbidden Planet, where we forget the one thing,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: or we overlook the one thing it contributes to the
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: entire downfall. And in Covenant, I want to say, Walter,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: one of the two characters David or Michael Fassbender plays, says,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: you know, in a symphony, one discordant tone will overtime
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: ruin the entire melody. And it's like, that's true, because
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: one discordant tone is the only thing you can focus on,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: and in that by definition, destroys your ability to in
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: enjoy it at all, because that's all you're focusing on.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: And it's that same thing here. They overlooked the one
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: thing they should have been focusing on, which is their
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: own egos. And I don't think they need to remake
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: this movie, just like you know, another movie, because you'd
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: send me a list of things to talk about. One
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: of the other movies on this list is The Day
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: the Earth Stood Still, which I would contend also did
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: not need to read for the same reason that this
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: one doesn't. It can be applicable forwards and backwards, and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: I think that that is truly the sign of a
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: timeless piece of film or TV, or literature or music.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: That transcends all capable rational thought and cements itself as
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: something worth talking about in nineteen sixty six, nineteen seventy six,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, nineteen ninety six, and so on. And
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: every time you reappraise it, the way you reappraise it
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: will probably change just a bit, if not a lot,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: oftentimes depending on you, but sometimes it's depending on the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: world you're in, because the questions and comments that this
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: film is having are always going to be applicable to
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: any time and place, because what they're asking and talking
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: about is just human emotions at the core of it.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Even though the Krell are aliens and we see that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: they're aliens, they still have a human emotion or what
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: we perceive is human emotion at the core of it.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Though I think we, you know, uniquely having our hands
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: on emotions, I think is kind of amusing Star Trek shows,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: as that's clearly not the case. You know, the Vulcans
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: don't have human emotions, but the Klingons have all kinds
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: of emotions, So are those Klingon emotions or human emotions.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate, doctor Parromutter, that you have ReLit the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: fire underneath me to watch more sci fi because I
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: feel like it's one of those things where it's like,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: you know, an old friend. I'm coming back to it,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know. I mentioned to you my dad growing up
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: would give me Ben Bova and Isaac Asimov and Peers
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Anthony books, which is like of a certain kind of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: sci fi and of a certain time and place in
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: sci fi. That's a very high watermark. And this movie,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I think think is similarly a very high watermark for
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: a very specific kind of sci fi, which is to say,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: well made sci fi. Thank you for introducing me to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: this movie and also for pushing me back kind of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: into the realm of sci fi, because it's not something
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: I had been really watching for a very long time,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: but the needle's been swinging back towards it a lot,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: and there have been a couple people pushing in that direction,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and you're one of them.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: So thank you, well, thank you. I think, as going
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: back to what you said originally, I have my favorite
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 6: genres and subgenres, but I'm willing to watch anything and
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: ask questions about its intentions, its successes, its methods, and
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: all movies are television, show, digital games, books, I guess
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: whatever media we have in the future are of interest
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: because they're the best like this one. We can take
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: away these applicable, not necessarily lessons. It's not necessarily like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: and so this is what we must do in these
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 6: situation relations. It's questions we should be asking ourselves. The
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: Krell destroyed themselves because they weren't stopping to say, now
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: we can do this, should we do it? Let's let's,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: as you said, let's think about this. What are the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 6: scenarios where this could go wrong? Do we know ourselves
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 6: as much as we should know ourselves? So asking good
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: questions is what movies do besides providing answers, And I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: think science fiction has always served as this template for
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 6: asking questions about what would society be like if we
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: change this, or if we did that, or if we.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Had if we had unchecked access to scientific marvels that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: we could only at this time dream of. And now
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: we're you know, so far past where this is, you know,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, but still nowhere near where
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: this wants us to be, which I think Star Trek
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: and the best kind of sci fi really preaches, like,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: when we have access to all this technology, why aren't
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: we using it to make things? Better, why are we
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: using it for other things? And it's like, well, because
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: human beings are involved in human beings are complex, and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: human beings are multifaceted, and that everybody has a different
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: reason for doing things, whether or not they tell you
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: is a different story. And like you said, unchecked power,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: if you sit there and you don't ask questions, and
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: if you're not being introspective about things, you can forget
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the minorist of details and the minerst of details. You know,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: sometimes that's enough. So thank you, doctor Promutter for introducing
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: me to this film. I really enjoyed it. You know,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: we could probably talk for another two or three hours
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: about it. You know, maybe down the road when they
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: remake it, maybe we can cover their remake and we
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: can get Richard on here and the three of us
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: can bemoan how the remake is all of a sudden
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: an allegory about what was the daily authors stood still
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: ended up being about like green change, climate change, So whatever.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the the the idea DuJour would
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: be uh for this one at the time. Whenever they
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: remake it, you know, maybe it'll probably will be ai little.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the aliens are going to come and tell you know,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: don't destroy your world with data centers.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. So but as always, thank you
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: so much for programming this episode, Doctor Promoter. I've obviously
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: enjoyed it. If you want to hear more of doctor
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Promutter and I talking not exclusively just he and I,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: but so far it's been he and I and a
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: couple of guests from time to time heading over to
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: the culture Cast where he joins me from time to
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: time to talk about movies and maybe Aaron TV show
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: in the future. Maybe we can do like a Patreon thing,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: because I know you keep there are trees that you
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: keep barking up that you want me to climb, So
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: maybe I'll climb them. We just have to incentivize people
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: to listen to it in a financial way. Speaking of
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: the financial way of incentivizing people listen to things, patreon
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: dot com slash culture Cast is where you can go
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: to do that. Five dollars or more gets you access
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: to bonus episodes, and ten dollars and more gets you
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: access to ranking on Bond, which is me and Richard
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: HadAM and Mike White. Yes, I know I used to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: poor grammar talking about James Bond movies and we're almost done.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: We're like literally like one or two movies from the end.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: So that's the thing you're into. Go do that. Otherwise,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: culturecast dot com and Weirdingwaymedia dot com is where you
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: can go and find this show and so many other shows.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: So go do that.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: Doctor Parmutter, thank you so much for joining me. This
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: has been fun as always, and as always, we'll catch
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: it on the next episode.