ALL SCI-FI

[Captain Starlight]

I agree on all points. Coming up with a story that required a voyage to each of the planets would be next to impossible. And such a voyage would take a decade or more because of the distances involved. I suppose the story could be about eight different spacecraft, each going to a separate planet, but then the movie would have too many characters, none of whom would be central to the plot.

By the way, I always have to correct myself when I type "THE Conquest of Space", because for some dumb reason the movie was named "Conquest of Space", without "THE". It sounds wrong, but we're stuck with it.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 6 trivia items for this movie, but the only one that seemed interesting to me is the one below.
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~ After a dispute over how to depict the surface of Mars, Chesley Bonestell claimed never to have seen the final movie.

Note from me: If this is true, it saddens me. I'd hate to think that Bonestell never bothered to watch the movie just because somebody disagreed with him about how a planet which nobody had yet seen pictures of from the surface would look like!

After all, Bonestell's beautiful paintings of the lunar surface bear little resemblance to the dull photos of the actual terrain of the Moon . . . unfortunately.





So I think Mr. Bonestell was being a bit snooty to think that his vision of Mars was absolutely incontestable. This movie actually does a fine job of presenting the theorized appearance of the surface of Mars!

I realize that we all wish Mr. Bonestell's ideas of what the Moon and Mars both looked like had been actuate. But sadly, his versions both turned out to look much better than reality.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Since we watched this movie tonight in the Chatzy Room (March 24, 2023), let's see what our pal, author Bill Warren has to say about the movie in his book Keep Watching the Skies!

While it can be reasonably argued that no George Pal film has had a really good script, except perhaps for The Time Machine, none of his other pictures ever had as weak a script as Conquest of Space. It wasn't for want of trying, however; at least three scripts, completely different from the final film, were prepared in an attempt to get something that Paramount studio heads would back.

Pal's fans like to point out that he always suffered from studio interference, but while that may be true, and while Pal himself was an immensely likable, even sweet, man who always seemed to be smiling, every one of his pictures is tainted with the vulgar, no matter what studio financed them. This crassness probably resulted from his desire to create pictures which would appeal to wide audiences. Unfortunately, he mistook cliches for human interest, and there are many people who've never liked his films precisely because of this pandering.

They are affected so strongly by Pal's compromises and triteness that they can never experience the joy and wonder that come from seeing a fantastic subject treated with the respect and quality of production that Pal almost always brought to his films. There are few films I've seen that I enjoy more than his War of the Worlds. But it's also true that few films disappointed me more than Conquest of Space.

A ship is being readied for the first flight to the Moon (no one has bothered to wonder why it has large wings), when its destination is revealed to actually be Mars.

The script is scientifically rational, but it lacks vitality. In an effort to be realistic, unscientific crisis are avoided. What's left seemed to require a human crisis. But the idea of a hardened veteran of space suddenly deciding that God is against space travel is so contrived and so unlikely as to collapse the already overburdened film (did we really need that grizzled sergeant or another wisecracking New Yorker?). The father-son relationship is also painfully trite and leads nowhere; the familial relationship doesn't seem to affect either of them very much. They could just as easily be strangers. The weak script would have been difficult for even fine actors to bring to life.

The miniatures look like miniatures --- the Wheel itself is especially obvious. Smooth and featureless, it's seemingly formed from plastic, having even the glossy sheen of plastic. Everything in space is carefully back-and side-lit, totally missing the hard-edged light that really exists in space, which also serves to diminish the realism of the shots. The film also seems cramped. Granted, it's taking place aboard confined spaceships and space stations, but the camera rarely moves and the result is that the film looks even cheaper than it is. Matte lines appear around almost all figures in matte shots. The outer space burial scene for Andre Fodor (Ross Martin) is the film's most interesting scene.

Today, perhaps Conquest In Space may look a little better than it did when it was new. In some ways, it isn't all that much worse than most of Pal's other productions, and and it now has the feel of a somewhat quaint period piece.

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Sequel!
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~ A Question for the Members: Based on the startling realization the Sgt. Imoto succeeded in growing a flower on Mars, our theories that the Martian environment was totally inhospitable were wrong.

~ Here's what I came up with.: Sgt. Imoto staunchly maintained that the minerals need to grow plants on Mars were contained in the soil, even though they were in very low quantities. He somehow managed to concentrate these minerals in his Martian garden and cause his seeds from Earth to germinate.

If a lone agricultural expert on Mars could do this — even with one plant — he proved that an ambitious terraforming program could succeed on the Red Planet!





The sequel to this movies would take place twenty years later, with the offspring of Imoto among the supervisors of a vast Martian "farm" under a domed environment which existed based on their father's work.

Click on the image below and let All Sci-Fi take you to the Red Planet!

Can anybody name another message board that can offer this to its members?

I don't think so.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Maurice]

I realize I am replying to several years-old posts, but on re-reading the thread I did a double-take on several things.