Conquest of Space is a 1955 American Technicolor science fiction film from Paramount Pictures, produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, that stars Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, and Mickey Shaughnessy.
The story concerns the first interplanetary flight to Mars, carrying a crew of five, and launched from Earth orbit near "The Wheel", mankind's first space station.
The general's undiagnosed and growing space fatigue is beginning to seriously affect his judgement: reading his Bible frequently, he has doubts about the righteousness of the mission.
The general fires the engines, barely managing to avoid a collision, but the planetoid's fast-orbiting debris punctures Sgt.
As their launch window arrives, they hear low rumbling sounds, then see rocks falling, and feel the ground shake violently.
This would later be incorporated into the 1956 Viking Press book The Exploration of Mars by Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and Chesley Bonestell.
[2] In addition, according to director Byron Haskin, "We had Wernher von Braun on the set all the time...as a technical advisor".
[16] Film authority Roy Kinnard says, “In examining the plethora of 1950s science-fiction movies which deal with the theme of man's journeying to other worlds in order to advance his own knowledge, George Pal’s production of Conquest of Space stands head and shoulders above the others.... [I]n a ... genre overburdened with cheap and shoddy productions that are all too deserving of scorn, Conquest of Space rises above the tide of mediocrity.
... [T]he special visual effects in Conquest ... are outstanding for their time ... and they are the well-tailored work of one of Hollywood’s most gifted craftsmen, John P. Fulton.
Besides the massive, graceful spacecraft shown in this film, it was Fulton who was responsible for parting the Red Sea in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.
It is true that the blue screen mattes in Conquest are crude [from our perspective] ... but this is hardly a technical flaw unique to this picture.
In fact, Fulton’s remarkable and iconic Parting of the Red Sea sequence is a great hodgepodge of intersecting blue fringe lines".
Drama in the shape of a religious maniac at the helm detracts little from the essential narrative, and some of the detail is clever, such as the space burial with the suited corpse sliding slowly on a long fall into the sun".
[19] Paul Brenner said, "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".
[21] Paul Corupe said 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.
[21] Academy Award winner Dennis Muren offers a memory of 1955: “[M]y pal Bruce and I hurried into the Hawaii Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to see a new color movie, Conquest of Space.
While Kubrick planned his space epic, he made a point of viewing virtually all science-fiction movies to understand what the genre had done before, and also to learn what tropes to avoid.
[26][27][28] Principally, Kubrick was on the lookout for particular and specific images and themes that referenced or reflected the infinity of space—its inherent magic and beauty—in other words, its ability to spark a sense of wonder.
Of the myriad early science-fiction productions that Kubrick must have viewed, most were certainly earthbound B movies that shied away from the sorts of expensive special visual effects and matte paintings that would ordinarily inspire awe or wonder in casual audiences.
Kubrick’s goal was to create a space tale that was thought-provoking and that included numerous images that were truly awesome (in the proper sense of the word); thus, it was his intention “to pull out all the stops”.
.” The goal of this exercise of viewing dozens of earlier science-fiction movies had little to do with plot elements; Kubrick simply ignored Conquest of Space's highly-criticized story line and character development and instead focused on the film's remarkable design.
He sought high-quality, well-crafted images that would stimulate himself and his creative staff to reach higher to find the look and design of his own film.
It is a well-known fact that before he began work on 2001, Kubrick watched virtually every science fiction film ever made, and it is not unreasonable to assume that he not only saw Conquest, but also found quite a bit of inspiration in it.” Then Kinnard points out a number of similarities between the two films (illustrated with photo stills from the movies)—some obvious and others not so obvious.
[26] Regarding Kinnard’s expression “quite a bit of inspiration”, insofar as the film’s two-minute title sequence was designed by Paramount’s consummate special visual effects professionals to stimulate our senses, especially sight and hearing, by concentrating evocative imagery of space and nebulae within the titles so as to induce an impression of “the infiniteness of space,” it may be that that sequence in part satisfied and fulfilled Kubrick’s requirements.
[34][35] Additionally, the frontispiece illustration to the introduction of Douglas Brodie’s 2015 Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents shows a photo still of an astronaut floating in space from Conquest juxtaposed with an equivalent image from 2001 and bears the caption: “The highest form of flattery: As in other genres, science fiction filmmakers often include homages to earlier works.