Dec 1, 2008 01:50 PM
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With The Day the Earth Stood Still bowing next week, you'll want to brace yourself for more epic re-imaginings of iconic 1950s scifi: J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Shakespearean alien melodrama Babylon 5, is hard at work on what he mysteriously calls "not a remake, not a reimagining, not exactly a prequel" of Forbidden Planet. Now he's dropping some hints about what we might see in this contemporary adaptation of the classic that brought us Robby the Robot and Leslie Nielsen as a scene-chewing captain dealing with strange alien tech.
While it may not be a prequel or remake, it sounds like Straczynski's flick will tell us more about the Krell aliens who made the ultra-powerful psychic tech of the original film. He told MTV News:
[When coming] up with the Krell backstory and who they are, I sat down with some of the nation’s best minds in astrophysics and planetary geology and A.I. and asked them — based on what we know now — what will a million years from now look like? The goal is to put things in there you’ve never seen before.
Also good to know he's got some science consultants on board. I would love to see a movie about the Krell civilization and what happened to them.
Thankfully, the remake will also remain true to the spirit of the original by trying to look as cutting-edge as possible. No retro stylings, says Straczynski:
At the time it was made it was cutting edge. They weren’t trying to be ‘retro’ — they thought they were right on the cutting edge. People that went to see that film saw things they had never seen before. What we have to do now is have this one be as innovative now as the original was then.
Forbidden Planet is one of those great, generic adventure stories that could get remade a million times and still be fun. You've got robots, an alien world, seriously scary alien tech, a vanished civilization, plus a mad scientist and his nubile daughter. What could go wrong?
J. Michael Straczynski Promises Something No One Has Thought Of [via MTV News]
Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.
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