Why does the tiger (spoilers)

Oh, I agree discussing stuff like this is fun, but sometimes people look for or assert much more meaning or explanation in things than is warranted.

You had mentioned the book (or novelization) of this film before, and the scene you describe about Ostrow dissecting the monkey sounds really intriguing, and would clearly indicate these were Morbius's creations. In a way this makes much more sense than expecting there to be living specimens of Earth animals brought back millions of years earlier, which had evidently evolved exactly as their counterparts had on Earth.* But the fact is that, from everything we've read about the making of the movie, none of this was in the film or the original screenplay. In short, none of this was left on the cutting-room floor because it was never filmed, and therefore it's not relevant to the movie. In fact, this is just the kind of thing that sounds a bit too complicated to have been introduced into the screenplay, whereas it would go seamlessly into a book.

*(And by the way: what happened to the native Altair-4 animal life? The Krell were killed off as we learn, but unless their id monsters also eliminated all the planet's own animals but for some reason left all the alien ones -- which is, to put it mildly, sort of unlikely -- this is another lapse in plot logic.)

Dissecting your last paragraph:

I assume that Morbius' conscious creations are kept in existence by the Krell-works at his direction. We already have plenty of things that don't require any conscious thought to remain at work.

First, never assume. Second, we know that, unlike the Krell (whose conscious and subconscious minds both had access to the "big machine"), only Morbius's subconscious can operate it. Further, he is not aware of this. Therefore, by definition, Morbius could not have any "conscious creations", and neither can he "direct" anything. His conscious mind is not powerful enough to create by thought; only his subconscious mind is, and he doesn't realize this.

The Id Monster, though, was by definition outside of Morbius' consciousness and worked when he was asleep. There is, as noted above, a scene in which we see Morbius in a troubled sleep at the same time an attack is going on. As I recall he wakes up and the monster vanishes.

You remember that scene correctly, and you're right that the id monster was outside Morbius's consciousness -- which is precisely my point. As we've seen, Morbius had no conscious control over the Krell machine. But why would his (and the Krell's) subconscious creations have a limited life-span -- that is, only when he or they slept -- while any conscious creations would be permanent (unless, presumably, their creators deliberately thought to un-create them)? There is no logic to this.

The subconscious doesn't only function when one is asleep, or cease to function when one wakes up. It's there all the time. Therefore, logically, any creation of the mind -- whether from the conscious or subconscious portion -- would be permanent, unless the creator deliberately chooses to eliminate it by, in effect, thinking it out of existence. This goes for Morbius's -- and the Krell's -- monsters from the id. These would continue to exist and function unless the individual's mind somehow ended it...and since all this is by definition unknown to the individual, at least on a conscious level, the only way of destroying an id monster would be the way Morbius did at the film's climax -- confronting it, denying it, and -- hopefully -- eliminating it from existence. Morbius's id monster wouldn't just pop in and out of existence simply because Morbius was asleep or awake. Once created, it should remain, until or unless it was deliberately un-created. The subconscious mind, like the conscious one, is always at work, though one might use the conscious mind to do away with a creation of the subconscious one, provided that conscious mind was made aware of the actions of its subconscious -- which is in fact what happens with Morbius at the climax in the Krell lab.

Which leads to a final question: does the death of the individual from whose mind (conscious or subconscious) creatures or other creations sprang automatically mean his creations would cease to exist? The film certainly says so. Just before Morbius rejects his id monster the film shows Adams taking out his blaster to kill Morbius and presumably eliminate the thing, and earlier Morbius (before realizing the monster comes from him) reminds Adams that though the last Krell died two thousand centuries ago there still exists a living monster on Altair-4.

But why would a creation of the mind require the continued existence of that mind to go on itself? If a Krell imagined a building and thereby brought it into existence, would it abruptly vanish the moment that Krell died? This may be the case -- the picture more or less expressly says so -- but it would not seem very logical. Once in existence, why would any creation disappear with the death of the individual who imagined it? Why would it require the continued existence of that mind in order to sustain its own existence? This would among other things mean that the individual would have to consistently and uninterruptedly keep willing something to remain in existence, which is a virtual impossibility and in any case does not seem consistent with the purpose of the Krell machine. "Creation by mere thought" does not have the ring of inherent impermanence. Or as you yourself wrote above: "We already have plenty of things that don't require any conscious thought to remain at work."

All this, of course, is based on the movie. Anything solely in the book is interesting but in this context irrelevant.

I make no apologies for over-thinking movies that interest me. Some people are rabid sports fans; some people collect stamps; some people tie flys and fish for trout. This is my thing.

The first time I came to this board (2009?) it was because I was curious about this thread's topic, meaning the tiger attack and Adams' comment. It just so happened that, at that moment, there was a long and active thread about precisely that topic heating up the page. I learned then that the questions cannot really be answered; there will always be different camps.

Here is a quick summary of things which, to me, argue against the animals being Morbius-created machine emanations:

- The tiger attacks Alta and Adams at a moment when Morbius knows nothing specifically about their developing relationship. It's all very sudden, and M is not present. In order to believe the tiger is carrying the subconscious impulses of the good doctor, we have to imbue it with much higher-order programming than anything that is even hinted at in the film. It would essentially have to have Morbius' entire mind predictively embedded within it.

- Adams question to Alta (You really don't know, do you?) can't possibly be meaningful and on-point unless we basically buy into the existence of the aforementioned mythology in the FP universe. He most definitely can't be addressing some projection of Morbius' mind from the machine because Adams knows exactly zero about any of that - nothing about the machine's capabilities and seemingly nothing about psychoanalysis. There's always the possibility that, in the script, Adams is just meant to be expressing some misguided belief in superstition, but that seems really unlikely to me for whatever reason. Adams buys the notion that Alta's sexual awakening would nullify her power to tame the savage beast, and the film never contradicts the idea, so I conclude that the audience is supposed to buy it also.

- The discussion in the Krell lab regarding Morbius' creation of what we today would call a hologram of Alta is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that his conscious mind is taxed to the limit - to the point of visible fatigue - just doing that. Further that the Krell machine requires "microsecond to microsecond" thought and will to maintain its "true creation". (The discussion after the battle with the monster reinforces the same idea, as does the dissipation of the monster as the attack ends.)

- Conventional writing style would seem to dictate to me that if many of Morbius' pronouncements are out-and-out lies there would be some sort of revelation or reckoning of that fact before the credits roll. None is forthcoming, though. He clearly is mistaken/deluded about some things, but there is no dying confession, no dark discovery to show that he has been misleading us all. Morbius tells the audience most of what we know about Altair IV and the Krell, and the ending revelations are just clarifications of what we have been presented heretofore, in the literary fashion of a mystery. There is just not much justification for selectively dismissing chunks of Morbius' dialogue as false in order to prop up a theory about the animals which has basically no actual support in the film.

On the subject of the novelization, the way I look at is this: Forbidden Planet is not The Lord of the Rings. The latter is a case where the written work has eminence on its own which exceeds its film adaptation(s), plus an extravagant amount of detailed story work which extends far beyond the bounds of the films. In that case, if there is something in the films which is unaddressed or ambiguous, which does not specifically overturn the canon, then it seems reasonable to fill in some gaps by assuming the written work applies. FP is a different story. By far, the movie is the preeminent form. Among science fiction movies of the fifties, FP is at the top of the genre. Among SF novels of the same era, the FP novelization is little more than a footnote.





"Morbius, something is approaching from the southwest. It is now quite close."