Colossus–The Forbin Project

On the occasion of Eric Braeden’s 70th birthday, we revisit this article written for the late, lamented original Scifipedia website.

Also known simply as The Forbin Project, this 1970 film was inevitably overshadowed by another tale pitting people against a computer, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Yet despite its failure at the box-office and its relative obscurity today, it stands up a generation later as one of the most intelligent, unusual and thought-provoking SF films of the Cold War era.

Colossus was based on the eponymous 1966 novel by D.F. Jones, who later wrote a pair of sequels that sadly remain unfilmed:  The Fall of Colossus (1974) and Colossus and the Crab (1977).  The trilogy concerns a supercomputer that is put in control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and then, joining forces with its Soviet counterpart, Guardian, proceeds to take over the world.

A movie in which one of the main characters is an emotionless computer might seem like a tough sell, and indeed, Universal reportedly held it on the shelf for at least a year while trying to figure out what to do with it.  Alternate titles (Colossus 1980 and The Day the World Changed Hands) were considered, and the film was released with very little promotional efforts behind it.

The studio’s dilemma is perhaps understandable, for Colossus was the work of a director (Joseph Sargent), a producer (Stanley Chase), and a screenwriter (James Bridges) with almost no feature-film experience.  Its star, Eric Braeden, who had played a sympathetic German officer on The Rat Patrol under his given name of Hans Gudegast, was equally untested as a leading man.

Sargent did have vast experience on such shows as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., including Jerry Sohl’s seminal Star Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and has since earned numerous Emmy Awards and nominations for his TV-movies.  His few features range from a solid thriller, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), to the critically lambasted Jaws: The Revenge (1987).

Bridges, too, went on to considerable fame as the director and Oscar-nominated writer of such hit films as The Paper Chase (1973) and The China Syndrome (1979).  An Emmy-winning regular on The Young and the Restless since 1980, Braeden also had a memorably villainous role in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), and portrayed John Jacob Astor in Titanic (1997).

Braeden is Colossus’s creator, Dr. Charles Forbin, who believes that the computer can be better trusted to respond to a possible nuclear threat than flawed, emotional human beings.  The President (Gordon Pinsent, who bore a striking resemblance to John F. Kennedy) announces that Colossus has eliminated the possibility of an atomic war unleashed accidentally by human error.

But then, Colossus displays the message, “There is another system,” and requests that a communications link be established with Guardian.  When they begin exchanging data too fast for the scientists to follow, the link is shut down, yet the computers demand that it be restored, each launching a missile to guarantee compliance, only one of which is successfully intercepted.

Abruptly, all of the safeguards put in place to ensure that Colossus is self-sustaining and secure have become obstacles that must be overcome, if its nuclear tyranny is to be overthrown.  Colossus selects Forbin as its contact with humanity, keeping him a prisoner under round-the-clock electronic surveillance, and a voice component is added so it can communicate verbally.

The film derives both humor and humanity from a plot device in which Forbin, knowing he needs to communicate with his colleagues, persuades Colossus to turn off its sensors and give him private time with a woman.  Pretending to be his longtime lover, Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark) exchanges ideas and information with Forbin during their amusingly awkward “trysts.”

Every effort to sabotage Colossus ends in disaster, with those involved paying the price that is encapsulated in the computer’s ultimate choice:  live in peace, under my control, or die.  The story ends on a decidedly uncommercial note, with Colossus assuring humanity that it will eventually see this situation as being in its best interests, and Forbin defiantly vowing, “Never!”

The literate script, taut direction, and strong central performance make Colossus a truly compelling film, aided immeasurably by the complex visuals involving a host of monitors and other high-tech hardware.  And, although archaic by today’s standards, the tremendous size of Colossus, housed in a vast installation in the Rocky Mountains, only adds to its sense of menace.  A remake has long been discussed.