Conquest of Space

When it came out, the New York Times' review said "There is very little doubt who should receive a generous amount of credit and praise... They are the special effects artists, John P. Fulton, Irmin Roberts, Paul Lerpae, Ivyle Burks, and Jan Domela.... They created top-flight effects such as 'the wheel,' a self-contained station orbiting around earth, rocket flights in space and a horrendous near-collision with an asteroid. These facets of the Paramount production—and fortunately they are many and frequent—are much to marvel at. But then," it says ominously, "there is a story."

The film credits say that it is based on The Conquest of Space, a 1949 book which itself has unusual credits: it is by "Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley," the first-credited Bonestell being the illustrator and Ley the writer. Bonestell is the artist famous for his photorealistic paintings of views from outer space. His vision (in the most literal sense) probably helped launch the space program by making space travel look real.

The film itself also incorporated material from Wernher von Braun's book, Mars Project.

Judgements of the quality of the special effects vary. As noted above, contemporary reviewers were thrilled. Today's audiences are apt to notice the presence of visible matte lines. Reviewer Glenn Erickson says that "the ambitious special effects were some of the first to garner jeers for their lack of realism." Paul Brenner says "Pal pulls out all stops in the special effects department, creating 'The Wheel', rocket launches into space, and a breathtaking near collision with an asteroid." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "The special effects are quite ambitious but clumsily executed, in particular the matte work." Paul Corupe says that often "the overall image on screen that inspires awe: the Martian landscape, the General's high-tech office and the vastness of the cosmos. The film's budget is certainly up on screen for your entertainment, but it's just spectacle for spectacle's sake." He too complains of matte lines but acknowledges that "the composites are convincing enough for the time the film was made in."

The film contains a single moment in which weightlessness is depicted convincingly, in which a visitor transferring from Earth shuttle rocket to space station tumbles head over heels through space, as well as comically bad efforts by actors to mime weightlessness or G-force. A space-eye view of a rocket climbing toward the viewer as it leaves Mars is impressive. While the effects do not brook comparison with those in , there are detectable similarities in overall "look" of the space scenes.

But as the Times says, "there is a story," and one that has come in for almost universal disparagement.

The books on which the film was supposedly based, Bonestell and Ley's The Conquest of Space and von Braun's Mars Project, are straight didactic popular science, with no story line. Except for their speculative element, they are nonfiction pure and simple. Thus, Willy Ley:
:If we assume that the average acceleration of a moonship amounts to 4 g ("gravities"), which is something we are sure the pilot can stand, it would require about 500 seconds of acceleration to get the ship to a velocity of 7 miles per second. Then the ship would coast upward against the pull of earth's gravitation which wuld slowly reduce its velocity. Zero velocity would be reached after 300,000 seconds...
Had Pal followed the book (or von Braun's), he would have produced a documentary, much like some of the Disney "Tomorrowland" television episodes featuring von Braun. Instead, writers Philip Yordan, Barré Lyndon and George Worthing Yates, credited with "adaptation," created a story out of whole cloth.

The central theme of the movie probably reflects a controversy of the early 1940s. By the time the film was produced, this controversy was so utterly outdated that audiences were baffled. The British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933, was perhaps the earliest space advocacy group, promoting the then-fantastic notion that space flight via rockets was technically feasible and that it ought to be attempted. Their ideas found opposition from a number of intellectual British Christians, notably C. S. Lewis. He wrote three books, superficially in the science-fiction/fantasy genre, intended to counter the views of the British scientific establishment.

In Perelandra, a fictional account of a trip to Venus, he referred to "the vast astronomic distances which are God's quarantine regulations." Lewis believed that God intended humankind to stay on Earth, and that attempts to leave it were blasphemous. He thought that the very word "Space" was wrong, charged with the notion of emptyness, and maintained that it should be thought of as "Heaven," inhabited by higher beings which, in his fantasy novels, he calls by names other than "God" or "angels." In the 1940s and 1950s it was common to justify spaceflight as a parallel to the great sea voyages that led to colonization: a means of finding fresh territory, literal "new worlds," more lebensraum for humanity, and, of course, a source of valuable raw materials (like the "asteroid mines" of science fiction). Lewis was outraged by the idea that humankind, having overexploited the Earth, would proceed to colonize and overexploit the rest of the universe.

Pal's adapters present a dramatic controversy that closely parallels the Clarke-Lewis debate. The overarching story turns, in fact, on the question of whether or not God has given humankind no more than the Earth, or whether God has also given humankind Mars and the rest of the universe.

En route to Mars, the captain's son spots the captain General Merritt, reading a Bible. The captain says "Man's every move, every thought, every action is in there somewhere, recorded or predicted. Every move except this one. According to the Bible Man was created on the Earth. Nothing is ever mentioned of his going to other planets. The Biblical limitations of Man's wanderings are set down as being 'the four corners of the Earth.' Not Mars, or Jupiter, or infinity. Are we explorers? or invaders?" "Invaders? of what, sir?" asks his son. "Of the sacred domain of God. His Heavens. To Man God gave the Earth, nothing else. This taking of other planets is like blasphemy." His son argues that "It couldn't be just an accident that at the very time when Man's resources on Earth are reaching an end, Man develops the ability to leave his own world and seek replenishment on other planets. The Universe was put here for Man to conquer."

As they approach Mars, the General becomes increasingly disturbed, and as they come in for a landing and the "space speed indicator" approaches zero, he suddenly says "We haven't the right!" and puts on full throttle. His son struggles with him, wrenches his hand from the throttle, and brings the ship in to a rough but safe landing. The General makes a further sabotage attempt. In a fight with his son they struggle for a gun and it goes off, killing the General.

The crew discovers, apparently to their surprise, that Mars is inhospitable and that that it is going to be a severe struggle to survive with their limited water for the year it will take for Earth to reach the right orbital position for a successful return. Despite the absence of water on Mars, like the child in Ruth Krauss's book The Carrot Seed, a Japanese crew member plants a seed hopefully in the Martian soil.

The crew celebrates Christmas on Mars glumly. A crew member plays Christmas carols sombrely on a harmonica while the other actors chew the scenery. The wisecracking Brooklyn-accented crew member complains they are on "a lousy dried-up ball in the corner pocket of nowhere." The Irish-accented crew member opines that "the General wasn't crazy, he was right. There's a curse on this ship and everybody in it." The Brooklynite argues that this isn't possible because "that stuff don't operate beyond the thousand-mile limit." The ship can't be cursed, apparently, because only God could curse it, and there can't be any God on Mars because "only God can make a tree. Okay. Where is it? Where's the trees? The flowers? The grass? Where's the water? You hear me? Where's the water?" Just then, the Japanese crew member, who has been staring out the window yells "Look!" It is snowing! On Christmas day! The crew is saved. In due course the seed the Japanese planted sprouts into becomes a tiny flower. The viewer infers Mars has water and can grow flowers; "only God can make a tree," ergo God is present on Mars; ergo God must intend for humankind to exploit not only the Earth, but Mars and the rest of the universe.

As the movie closes, the Irish crew member, who had threatened to accuse the General's son of murdering the General on their return, changes his mind and decides that it would be better to forget about it, and let the world remember the General, not as a nutcase who tried to sabotage the flight, but as a brave man "sacrificin' his life as he did to bring his ship and his crew to a safe landing on the rocky desert of a new planet... a fittin' end for a grand soldier." The General's son nods and adds, "For the man who conquered Space." The Irishman invites him to "share a cup o' tea," the General's son says "thanks," the music rises to a climax, and the rocket glides off into a starry firmament behind the words "THE END."

If the theological debate on the Man's right to explore space had ever made much impression on the public, by 1955 it was long forgotten. The General did not strike viewers as thoughtful, but as a nutcase with a bizarre obsession.

The best the Times reviewer could say is that "as plots go... it is not offensive." He is relieved that there is "nothing on Mars but red dirt and rock. There are no things, thank heavens." But "To have the water-less spacemen saved on Mars by a heavy snowfall on Christmas day was stepping on the toes of incredulity." The "spatial excursion should not bore anyone," he says; not high praise. The public was even less kind. Erickson calls the movie "a flop that seriously hindered George Pal's career as a producer." Corupe describes it as the "first big flop in Pal's career. It was a major setback that saw him abandon science fiction filmmaking for five years, including a planned sequel to When Worlds Collide." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction remarks "A truly awful film, The Conquest of Space is probably George Pal's worst production."

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