The Problems
-- Earl Holliman plays the ship's cook. For a movie that pays so much attention to details, it seems incongruous that 250 years from now, a deep space mission that has limited room and resources would need the services of a cook, especially one wearing an apron. But the real problem with the character is that he's meant to be comedy relief. It's always bad news when, instead of the humour coming out of the characters naturally, it's embodied in one character. It seems far too contrived. Plus, the cook just isn't funny.

-- In A Case of Conscience, James Blish examines a interesting situation: the discovery of an alien species that had no conception of a god. Forbidden Planet also introduces us to a highly advanced alien civilization in which a god is never mentioned. Yet the filmmakers felt it necessary to have Doc comment on how "God sure makes some beautiful Worlds", and to conclude a burial with "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" (Commander Adams is also holding a Bible in this scene). This may have been the result of a Christian writer not bothering to imagine the state of religion (and of the burial process) 250 years from now. Or it was a deliberate attempt to reassure the predominantly Christian viewers of 1956 that their god was alive and well in the hearts and minds of future humans. Either way, the religious aspect has a taken-for-granted attitude about it.

-- The other quality that hasn't dated well is the all male, white crew. It's a little unfair to judge a film in this manner, especially in retrospect. But it's still unfortunate that SF writers and filmmakers can be so progressive, so forward-looking, when it comes to science and technology, yet be so bound by their era that they can't extrapolate social changes. The writers must have had some inkling of how different our culture would be in the future when they created a federation of planets referred to as the United Planets. A multicultural aspect is implicit in that title.

But these criticisms don't take away from the film. Forbidden Planet is a classic of the genre and remains one of SF's most intelligent films.