taring, as he did in the original film. At one point in the script, Robby actually goes into battle, and it's awesome.

Morbius is the movie's villain, if there is one, in much the same way he was in the first film. This time he's more knowingly involved and much of what he does won't really fit with the character you know from the original movie, at least until the end when JMS snaps all the pieces together.

The real heroes of the story are the Bellerophon captain, Stearns, and Morbius's soon to be ex-wife Diana. I know, in the 1956 movie Morbius gives his wife a different name, and I'm somewhat at a loss to explain why they'd want to change it, but just roll with it. Though the movie's mostly faithful, little details like that get tweaked and you can't really nitpick over them when JMS seems so determined to connect the dots everywhere else. A bold decision really when you consider how few people have actually seen the original Forbidden Planet and most who see the new one won't really care.

The script's strength is the fast pace at which it moves and its willingness to tackle hardcore science fiction. It's incredibly original too, not just the story but in the little details JMS works into the screenplay. One of the big problems a lot of science fiction fans had with Avatar was how generic all the technology felt. JMS really tries to push the envelope in that respect coming up with new ideas about the way the inside of a spaceship should look and work, as well as incorporating some of the old (and never again used) ideas from the original movie, like the green stasis pods used before jumps into hyperspace. JMS, as the creator of one of the greatest sci-fi shows in the history of television in Babylon 5, knows a thing or two about creating an original, unique science fiction universe.

But at times the characters seem a little thin and it's hard not to read it and think of it as a lot like the failed Lost in Space movie, only with bigger set pieces and more brains behind it. It also commits the sin of using amnesia as a key plot device, always a dicey decision in any storytelling endeavor. The ending, the one that fits all the pieces together to connect to the 1956 version, also feels a little rushed. In fact a lot of this early draft feels like it needs some of the cracks filled in still, and maybe that's something they'll do as the go along, or maybe not.

Yet the script for Avatar suffered from some of those same problems too and that seemed to work for Cameron. Maybe that makes Forbidden Planet his kind of movie. It's like Avatar with more originality. Or maybe Straczynski will do another pass, flesh out those bare spots, and work enough of his proven sci-fi genius into the script that it'll fill in the places where Cameron usually misses something. If he does, this could be the perfect filmmaker/writer partnership.
 

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