Planet of the Apes thread

Finally watched the trailer.



Oh man. Interesting that the first film with the biggest budget of the series is comprised of dialogue and a few foot chases. Then you get to the last film going for huge battles and it has 1/8th the budget. Why even bother?

Yeah the best thing about Burton's APES is Rick Baker's Ape make-up effects.

In Burton's re-envisioning, watch for the cameos from Linda Harrison (Nova) and of course Chuck himself.

The only time I tried watching the Burton film I made four minutes into it. Not going back even for Heston :)

UUUUGH!!!!

Netflix just informed me that BATTLE was not available from the location I get discs, so one is being sent from another part of the country. Dunno how long that'll take. Instead I'm only getting the Burton film along with MAGNUM FORCE as compensation.

Hell, I'll just watch the Burton flick tonight anyway.

Got BATTLE last night.

Now gonna watch it. If my heart can take it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2BGsqtY1o0&feature=related

Sigh.

What was the point of BATTLE? Ebert is dead on about the series being more than exhausted by this point. If they threw money at this and had a better script (a full blown war between man and ape), this might have been an epic conclusion. Instead it's like a big "so what?"

And the Trek comparison works again. Yeah, TNG S1. That awful scene with the human teacher being touched because a student intentionally wrote "Abe" instead of "Ape". Aw, a student saying he doesn't want to kill him. WTF?!

Then we get to the proto-mutants. Whatever curiosity I had in this flick dropped the moment they showed up. I couldn't care less. Even when I looked at the time and saw it was only 30 mins left it seemed too much. It's like they shot this "battle" in someone's backyard. At least Heston got to blow up the world.

See, and that's the thing -- BATTLE ends up feeling completely unnecessary. As it is, we should've gotten the nuclear war for world supremacy. But instead, we get BATTLE, which feels like the six movie epilogue in a series that ended in an unmade fifth movie. Nothing in BATTLE, none of its story or reveals, really matters or establishes anything new -- we know from the end of CONQUEST that humanity will freak out and nuke itself into oblivion and that an ape society with arise from the ashes. We know that a group of humans will survive as mutants worshipping a doomsday bomb. So the only new info BATTLE gives us is that for a time the Apes wanted humans to be equals with them (and supposedly so did the Lawgiver, suggesting the Sacred Scrolls had some redacing done to them) and that the Apes once fought the proto-Mutants.

Screenwriter Paul Dehn said that his intent was to craft the Apes film as a circular narrative, so that you'd loop back to the first film at the end, which is a cool conceit, but BATTLE is so cheaply slipshod that I think you can largely go from CONQUEST to the original POTA.

My idea for a prequel was always to do a story about Earth pre-ESCAPE, showing the beginnings, funding, and goals of Taylor's mission, having them go missing at the end of the second act, with Brent's mission hastily scrambled to rescue them, and then the ship to return, everyone all excited but to end with the opening scene of ESCAPE, which in the context of that prequel would be just as much as WTF ending as the series tradition demands.

OOH! Which reminds me, BATTLE also sucks because it has the weakest ending of any film in the series. All the preceding films have stonecold hardcore endings:
1. It was Earth all along, and we blew it up.
2. Everyone dies, Taylor literally blows up Earth.
3. Everyone dies, even a baby.
4. Ape revolt, civilization is doomed.

What's the ending of BATTLE? A skirmish comes to a halt, things largely go back to the way they were when the movie started, in the future Caesar's statue cries because he knows ape/man co-operation is doomed.

Even the Burton movie has a better ending -- albeit totally nonsensical.

This is why Franco needed to die at the end of RISE, that movie has no punch to the ending.

Yeah, Franco getting shot on the bridge should have happened. I was actually expecting it when the whole thing went.

On the special features there's a deleted/alternate scene where it's Cesar (not that scarred faced ape) who pushes the helicopter off the bridge sending that Jacobs character to his watery death. The way the film plays out (Franco not dying), I can see why they decided to change it. However, this scene would have been perfect following the death of Franco, it's the moment that pushes Cesar to the edge and gives up his no-kill-human policy and he's the one Ape that makes the first murder (Malfoy's electric hose death was sort of an accident). That would have made a great stonecold hardcore ending.

In the middle of the Tim Burton remake. Great make up and I like that they have more apelike characteristics. Beyond that? I have no clue where this film is going. Wahlberg's character makes no sense. I wasn't expecting anything great, but Jesus this literally bores me to tears.

Wahlberg is just dull. In general I see him as a supporting actor at most, but as the lead in the remake of a film that starred Chuck Heston?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoEgNW1kb0

Finished it. So yeah, great make up work. Tim Roth steals the whole film. Um. Hmm... Nothing else I can think of. Budget? That's what puts it above BATTLE for me I guess.

I like Tim Burton, but this movie is wrong for him. I like Mark Wahlberg, but he is not movie star material.

I looked into the history of this flick. I didn't know it had been in development hell since the 1980s. I kinda wanna see some of the earlier projects than what we got. Apes in their Roman era with humans serving as gladiators for the Apes amusement. Though it retcons BENEATH, but I don't mind that. Overall, Burton's flick feels like a whole lot of nothing. Why was this made? What was the point? What is this even about? Man crashes on Ape planet. Humans fight an ape army. Tim Roth is a scumbag, so now everyone hates him and decides to make peace with hew-mons. Marky Mark returns to Earth but for... WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ENDING ABOUT?

I always assumed that the Ape planet seen throughout the flick was Earth's future, but it's a whole different planet. So somehow Thade not only went back in time but he also somehow escapes his planet and went back to Earth and.... It makes no sense. :| Feels like a tacked on ending because they didn't know how to top the original film's shock ending. Reading the wiki page, other endings were considered, which tells me this ending doesn't serve any purpose other than to fuck with everyone's head.

So yeah, looking at the franchise as a whole, BATTLE and the Burton remake come off as inconsequential. There's no reason for them to exist.

PLANET OF THE APES
CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
ESCAPE THE PLANET OF THE APES
BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES
PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
BATTLE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Heh, put RISE above BENEATH and you've got my ranking.

Watched RISE.

Yeah, this could count as ENT S4 in the Trek comparison scale. Unlike the 2001 remake, it's obvious RISE is actually made by people who are fans of the original films and as I watched it I could feel the love and enthusiasm much like I felt the ENT writers love for TOS pour out, for better or worse.

As far as rebooting/re-imagining the series goes, I think this works. I like that they take a couple of things from the APES mythology and rework them. Like the story of Aldo told in ESCAPE (an ape that finally stands up and says "no" to a human) now being Cesar's story.

I'm really glad that RISE not only turned out well but that audiences dug it. It's nice to have this series revived and welcomed by many. So from what I've read DAWN will take place about 8 to 10 years after RISE, so by that point Cesar won't be the only intelligent Ape with the ability of speak. This should be fun.

PLANET OF THE APES
CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
ESCAPE THE PLANET OF THE APES
BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES
PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
BATTLE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

I put it below CONQUEST, because as far as "Apes revolt" stories go, I prefer the ending with Cesar's shocking speech and execution of that Governor. As said earlier, RISE should have had Franco's character die on the Golden Gate Bridge, then have Cesar push Jacob's off the bridge with that helicopter as he was originally supposed to in the deleted scene. I suspect FOX demanded the change, wouldn't be surprised.

Makeshift Python wrote:

I put it below CONQUEST, because as far as "Apes revolt" stories go, I prefer the ending with Cesar's shocking speech and execution of that Governor. As said earlier, RISE should have had Franco's character die on the Golden Gate Bridge, then have Cesar push Jacob's off the bridge with that helicopter as he was originally supposed to in the deleted scene. I suspect FOX demanded the change, wouldn't be surprised.

I smell a future alternate version. Or not.

Only trouble I suppose with killing off Franco, besides the fact that studios tend to have no balls like they had in the 70's, is that Franco really is the anchor for this series at this point. Caesar is CGI, even if he's played by Serkis. I guess they need to have a real face on the series.

Franco isn't featured in any of the posters and neither is his name featured, I dunno. I think they could have brought more actors in human roles throughout this new series. I guess Franco will sort of be the MacDonald type for the new series, on the sidelines rooting for Caesar and such.

True, he's not on posters. But I guess he's a name.

Its enjoyable how many homages there are to the original Apes film in Rise.

Check the credits. The Brian Cox character is named John Landon, after Taylor's astronaut sidekick. And Landon's apekeeper son, Dodge, is borrowed from Taylor's other astronaut sidekick.

Then there's all the ape name homages. Most notably Caesar and of course, Bright Eyes, Cornelia, Maurice the Orangutan, named after Maurice Evans.

Plus many scenes are direct homages to scenes from the original film. Some are obvious, such as the waterhosing of Caesar in his cage. Also the ape at the lab, sticking his hand out of his cage, begging for food, just like the dumb humans being tended to by Zera.
There are probably others. According to the extras, the gorilla guard chomping-on-the-cigar scene from Original is homaged, but I don't quite see it. Will look for it in next viewing.

These little summaries from IMDB going forward are very encouraging. This reboot/remake has the potential to be a very smart retelling of the mythology.

What will the next film be about?

On the day of the film's release, director Rupert Wyatt revealed ideas for the next film. It may take place eight years after the end of this film, showing the next generation of apes who are the offspring of the intelligent apes. These young apes would be going into war. Caesar would be leading the revolution, but Koba (the chimp who killed Steven Jacobs) would be leading troops and committing genocide. Maurice the orangutan would be Caesar's adviser. The humans would be living underground to protect themselves from the virus. This may be what "dehumanizes" them. From the sounds of it, this story would be somewhat in the vein of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Koba would lead troops and express his hatred towards humans like Aldo the gorilla. Maurice would be helping Caesar like Virgil the orangutan did. The humans would begin living underground, much like the humans living below San Francisco in the 1973 film. Whether they will become like the mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) is currently unknown, though that's unlikely as those humans were mutated due to radiation fallout. Supposedly titled Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, it is scheduled for release in 2014.



Will this film eventually lead to a sequel that includes some aspects of the Liberty 1 expedition from the original "Planet of the Apes"?


The director and producer have already talked about Rise of the Planet of the Apes laying the foundation for a film series by including several clues to the sequels. However, none of the sequels will specifically focus on retelling any one film but try to combine different aspects of the overall mythology in a modern way to tell new stories. Halfway through the movie, characters watch television coverage of the launch of Icarus 1, intended to be the first manned space mission to Mars. Near the end of the movie, newspaper headlines detail NASA's having lost contact with the Icarus, laying the groundwork for a sequel in the vein of the original Planet of the Apes.

I actually enjoyed RISE.

I wasn't going to watch it but I went to the theater one day when I had some extra free time to kill and it wasn't planned;

RISE was the only movie that was playing next so I bought a ticket for it and I am glad I did watch it.

When is the next one?

2013?

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is slated for a 2014 release, it's currently in script development.

I hope they get Lithgow back to voice an orangutan. Or Kelsey Grammer. Seriously.

Brian Blessed would make one awesome, dare I say epic, ape.

j7wild wrote:

I actually enjoyed RISE.
I wasn't going to watch it but I went to the theater one day when I had some extra free time to kill and it wasn't planned;
RISE was the only movie that was playing next so I bought a ticket for it and I am glad I did watch it.

You appreciate a good primate film J7! Bravo!

Hilly wrote:

Brian Blessed would make one awesome, dare I say epic, ape.

I wish the guy worked more. Any time I write a Welles-like character, I find myself actually hearing Blessed instead (which is weird, since Welles often played under, whereas Blessed, well y'know.)

I've got a long treatment for one of my TNG pitches that was built around the idea of Stewart vs Blessed, kind of Henry IV vs Falstaff, story. Actually two different ones, one with Beverly in the middle, one with Wesley. Also figured it'd be fun to see him as a Mckern-ish Number Two if somebody ever did something like shooting the Christopher McQuarrie script or the David Peeples script (which I notice he never talks about in interviews.)