Planet of the Apes

By now there are no less than 8 films, a novel, and two TV series on this.  We even had the “action figures” (they’re not dolls!  They’re action figures!) in the 70s.  With the series recently rebooted and due to continue, why not talk about this?

The Planet of the Apes (1963), by Pierre Boulle.  This is the original novel which started it all off.  I read it in English, although French is a language I don’t have much trouble reading.  None of the movies follows the plot exactly from start to finish, though the 1968 film gives us close to the beginning, and the Mark Wahlberg remake of recent vintage (2001) gives us the closest to the end of the novel; so the rest of the movies are original stories but based on the novel as an origin story.   The author was the same guy who wrote Bridge Over The River Kwai.  The novel is fairly short and easy to read, so there’s really no excuse for an ApeHead not to read it.  You can read, can’t you? 

Planet of the Apes (I) (1968).  The original 1968 film with Charlton “Ben Hur” Heston as Taylor.  This first movie establishes the general plot of the series.  In fact, it’s such a classic than anyone interested in the series should consider it to be the key film, possibly the most important film, of the entire series. 

            A trio of US astronauts (Taylor, Dodge and Landon) lands on what they believe to be an alien planet, after having been in stasis for several hundred years of space travel.   However, Taylor warns the other two astronauts that due to time dilation, thousands or millions of years have passed on Earth in the time they travelled mere centuries. 

            Upon arrival, the three find themselves caught in a hunt – intelligent gorillas are rounding up scantily clad, mute, humans.  Dodge is killed outright, Taylor is wounded in the neck and captured, and Landon’s outcome is only discovered later.  Taylor is put in pens with other humans, none of whom can talk, although he hooks up with a native female, Nova, who is pretty damn hot.  According to the novel, they’re all naked, but the movie obviously can’t do the same.  Too bad.  The society consists of intelligent chimpanzees (scientists), orangutans (elders) and warriors (gorillas).  So far as the apes know, humans are not intelligent and cannot talk, read, or write. 

            Although humans are treated roughly – as animals – one of the handlers, a chimp named Zira (Kim Hunter, aka “Stella” from “A Streetcar Named Desire”) – is actually very compassionate.  Taylor tries, and eventually manages to convince her of his intelligence.  Unfortunately his intelligence is a rude rebuke to the apes’ worldview.  In the original novel, Merou (the Taylor equivalent) addresses a collective assembly, basically the Ape Congress.  In the movie Taylor simply appears in front of a three-judge panel of orangutans. 

            I liked how Taylor eventually establishes a dialogue with Dr. Zaius, who reminds me of Rick Wakeman.    Clearly the “incompetent ape elders” are well aware that humans can be intelligent and that the fossils from the Forbidden Zone support the theory that human civilization predates the apes’, which of course is incompatible and thus unacceptable to the ruling class.  But of course this is all a secret from the rest of the apes, even from Cornelius, whose research points him in that direction.

            Although Taylor, Dodge and Landon all assume they’re on another planet, the landscape and atmosphere should have been a tipoff.  Even in 1972 we knew that there were no habitable planets anywhere near Earth.   The logical conclusion, even before seeing the Statue of Liberty, is that the spacecraft was programmed to return the ship back to Earth if its fuel would run out before reaching any suitable destination.  Anyhow.  

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (II) (1970).  Taking place immediately after Planet.  Another astronaut, Brent (James Franciscus), comes to the same planet, in search of Taylor.  He meets up with Nova, gets briefly captured by the apes, talks to Cornelius and Zira, then follows after Taylor (Heston), taking Nova along.  It turns out the humans did in fact survive the nuclear holocaust – which apparently destroyed human civilization and allowed the apes to thrive and develop their own - but have a small society buried deep in the ruins of NYC, worshipping the ICBM as a god.  They have an elaborate illusion system set up to protect them, but Taylor gets through it anyway.  Soon after escaping from the apes, Brent and Nova also breach the illusion barrier and find the cult – and Taylor.

            For their part, the apes also decide to invade the Forbidden Zone.  Although at first shocked and horrified by the illusion barrier – images of crucified apes and a bleeding Lawgiver – the sheer horror of the illusions finally convinces Zaius that it must in fact be an illusion.  [Seriously, their illusion system didn’t seem to fool anyone, at least not in these two movies.]

            Finally there’s a showdown downtown, as the invading ape army is far larger and stronger than the remaining Sithrak cultists.  The apes shoot Brent and Taylor.  Taylor manages to activate the last remaining nuke device before he dies, presumably destroying the entire city and/or planet, and the apes along with them.  

Escape From Planet of the Apes (III) (1971).   Zira, Cornelius and Milo (Sal Mineo) manage to escape from Earth just before Taylor detonates the nuke buried in NYC, but the resulting blast not only destroys Earth, it plunges the spaceship – actually Taylor’s ship – through time to L.A. in the early 70s.  Then it becomes “Planet of the Apes” in reverse, with Z & C (Milo dies almost immediately – just like the third astronaut in “PotA”) trying to convince skeptical earthlings of their intelligence.  Actually, unlike the apes on “PotA”, the humans of L.A. quickly realize Zira and Cornelius are intelligent and treat them as such.  And so they enjoy celebrity status until…

            Yep, the only snag comes when Zira, who can’t tolerate falsehood lets it slip that they’re actually from the future, and that the apes will eventually take over and a war will destroy the planet.  Sleazy scientist Hasslein (Eric Braeden) schemes to kill off Zira, Cornelius and their unborn baby.  Taking the equivalent roles of Z&C on Earth are human scientists Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman) and Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy), who help Z&C escape just as Z&C helped Taylor and Nova escape.  Even Khan – sorry, Armando - (Ricardo Montalban) has a role in this, as a sympathetic circus owner who – briefly – allowed Z&C to hide in his circus.  And quite conveniently, the chimpanzee in his circus also just gave birth to a baby chimp!  “Mama!”

Conquest of Planet of the Apes (IV) (1972).   It’s 1991 in L.A., and the “mama!” baby of Cornelius and Zira is now a grown chimp, Caesar, under Armando-Khan’s protection.  By this time gorillas and chimps are badly abused and oppressed, mainly because the humans know that they’re supposed to rebel and take over.  Self-fulfilling prophecy, no?  Guess what?  Caesar does in fact rally the chimps and gorillas (no orangutans here, though – where are they?) and takes over.  Big surprise. 

Battle For the Planet of the Apes (V) (1973).  This takes place soon after Conquest.  Caesar is still alive, as is MacDonald, the sympathetic black guy from the last movie.  Humans are somewhat subservient in ape society, but well-treated.  MacDonald tells Caesar that the archive tapes in the ruined, forbidden city may have footage of Cornelius’ and Zira’s testimony before Congress (from “Escape”).   Along with Virgil – aka Little Enos from “Smokey and the Bandit” (Paul Williams) – Caesar and MacDonald infiltrate into the ruined depths of L.A.  They do in fact find the footage and watch it.  However, the remnants of the human dictatorship remain in the city and chase out the trio.  

            Soon thereafter, the leader of the human dictatorship, Kolp, decides to take an expedition outside to wipe out the ape society.  A big battle ensues.  Given what we know – and the fact that the apes are the good guys in this series – the outcome is to be expected:  despite initial setbacks by our simian friends, ultimately they prevail and defeat the evil humans.  We learn that Caesar himself is the Lawgiver. 

** This fifth movie ended the series – for the time being.  Note that all the apes in these films, whether chimp, gorilla or orangutan, were human actors in makeup and costumes.   A live action TV series lasted one season, as did an equally unsuccessful animated series immediately thereafter, in 1974 and 1975.

 

Planet of the Apes (VI) (2001).  This was the reboot by Tim Burton with Mark Wahlberg as Davidson, essentially the Taylor (Heston) character.  I saw it in the movie theater when it came out, but only now, after having read the original novel and watched the 1968 original, do I see how they altered the story.

            In 2029, Davidson is an astronaut on the Oberon, a spaceship orbiting Saturn.  The ship encounters an anomalous space storm nearby, and sends off a probe with a chimp inside, Pericles.  Disobeying orders, Davidson takes a pod himself and chases after Pericles into the storm.  He crash lands on a planet, which seems to be inhabited by wild – but intelligent and speaking – humans, but dominated by apes.  Naturally he’s captured.  A female chimp, Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) (essentially Zira) befriends him and ultimately helps him escape to the “forbidden zone”.  The nemesis is General Thade (Tim Roth) whose ailing father confides in him the secret that humans used to be much more advanced than apes.   Inexplicably for a Tim Burton film, Johnny Depp is MIA.  Well, HBC is here.

            Davidson leads a small group of humans and a smaller group of sympathetic apes, to the forbidden zone, where he finds the wreck of the Oberon.   Eventually Thade is captured and neutralized, Davidson finds his way back to Earth.  And instead of Taylor beating his hands down on the beach recognizing the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the sand, Davidson finds Earth to be….very different.  “God damn you all to hell!”

            At the time I originally saw this, I hadn’t read the novel or seen the 1968 film.  With the benefit of that background I can recognize a major issue which may have doomed the remake to irrelevancy.   Leaving aside Wahlberg’s failure to match Heston’s acting, the biggest problem with this is that the humans can talk and are obviously intelligent. 

** No one seemed to like Burton’s version, so they gave it another shot.  This time around, the apes are computer generated, except for Caesar, who is Gollum’ed by Andy Serkis, Smeagol himself. 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (VII) (2011).  This is somewhat of a remake of “Conquest”, though not exactly.  Lab scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) is trying to develop a cure of Alzheimer’s for his father (John Lithgow) and naturally the lab tests the serum on chimps first.  One test subject, a female chimp, Bright Eyes (Taylor’s nickname for Nova), shows promise, but then has to be put down after she goes BSI – it turns out she was simply protecting her baby, later named Caesar, who inherited the serum’s effects. 

            After the project is shut down and the apes “put down”, Will brings Caesar home and raises him there, also bringing some serum home to test on his father.  Good results initially, but eventually Will Sr’s body stops accepting the serum and he goes back to being old and befuddled.  Caesar attacks the neighbor, and he’s sent off to an animal sanctuary full of chimps + one gorilla and one orangutan (Maurice).   The sanctuary director (Brian Cox) isn’t so bad, but his son Dodge (poor Tom Felton, aka “Draco Malfoy” from the Harry Potter films) is kind of a jerk.  These poor apes can’t catch a break, can they?

            As you can imagine, Caesar eventually takes command of the apes in the sanctuary.  By the end of the film, he’s managed to break them out of the sanctuary, AND liberates the apes in Rodman’s lab AND the apes at the local zoo.  There’s a huge confrontation on the Golden Gate Bridge, and of course Caesar and all the apes are killed and the series comes to a screeching halt.   Oops, no, alternate ending.  No, although a few apes die, the rest manage to break through and establish a new community in the redwood forest.  And there was much rejoicing…

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (VIII) (2014).  After the deadly virus wipes out the majority of Earth’s human population, one of the last surviving enclaves, in San Francisco, makes contact with a society of chimps, gorillas, and orangutans – the group started up by Caesar in Rise.  The human leader, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) has no particular bias against the apes, but he does want to reactivate the hydroelectric plant located within ape territory. 

            A team of peaceable humans negotiates the right to reactivate the power supply, thanks to an uneasy truce with the ape leader, Caesar (Andy Serkis).  Naturally, even among their small advance group, the humans have the poor judgment to bring along an obvious troublemaker, Carver (Kirk Acevedo, aka Agent Charlie Francis from “Fringe”) who does his best to antagonize the apes and sow mistrust – yet doesn’t seem to have any useful skills.   For their part, the Beta male, Koba, claims to mistrust the humans – sensibly enough – but is really using that as an excuse to seize power from Caesar himself.  As you might expect, he does accomplish that, shooting Caesar with an M4 carbine and leaving him for dead [why not finish him off?  “Sharks with friggin laser beams!”] 

            Led by Koba, the apes attack the human settlement and succeed in taking over, but also enslave their own kind, which naturally sows discontent among their own camp.  And since Caesar did survive, it’s only a matter of time before he recovers, reveals himself as still living AND a failed assassination attempt by Koba, and reasserts his control over the apes, hopefully resolving issues with the humans in the process.

            While restoring electricity to the human community might be otherwise innocent and not an inherent problem, the real reason they wanted the electricity restored was so they could re-establish contact with other human communities in the country and the world.  And doing so would most likely pose a definite threat to the continued existence of the ape society.  So, notwithstanding the peaceable intentions of Malcolm (Clarke) and the other more enlightened humans in the short term, this was not a situation which could be indefinitely sustained with peaceful coexistence.   

FYI:  this film did well enough that they’ll be making another one, due to be released in July 2016.

Themes.  “Ape shall never kill another ape”.  Generally a good idea, but Koba discards it in Dawn much to his discredit.  Commenting on this business of chimps, gorillas and orangutans collaborating, biologists scoffed at this, arguing that in real life such cooperation would be impossible, the three types would be fighting each other constantly. 

The Lawgiver.  A stylized chimp in statue form who serves as the apes’ Jesus/Aslan (“Monkey Jesus” – maybe that’s what she was going for).  Later we learn that it was Caesar himself.