Planet Of The Apes, 1968-1974: a 'good' franchise?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Siegmund, Nov 6, 2018.

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  1. bostonscoots

    bostonscoots Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    The first Planet of the Apes is a genuine landmark in science fiction - and its only gotten better with time. As a kid, I loved the premise - a planet where apes rule over man - but as an adult I appreciated the film's nuances and rich subtext. There isn't a single issue current to 1968 the movie doesn't have something to say about - race, religion, war, environment, class, and the true nature of man. Hell, there's even a little healthy distrust of the government thrown in for good measure, what with Dr. Zaius having known all along how apes managed to get the keys to Earth in the first place...and why he feared and hated man with such intensity.

    And whoa, that ending. A masterstroke of Rod Serling's genius and still one of the most haunting images in all of cinema.

    The sequels? If nothing else they're inventive as hell - each one finding a clever way to get out of the corner the previous movie painted them into. Mutants and apes blowing up the entire planet at the end of the first sequel...just leads to Cornelius and Zira escaping back in time via Charlton Heston's sunken spaceship in another (Hell, you could squeeze another sequel in between the two, explaining how apes seemingly stuck in the Iron Age manage to locate, restore, and learn to fly a sunken spaceship).

    Of the newer Planet of the Apes movies, I enjoyed the first two...less so the third and most recent. I'd prefer to forget Tim Burton's useless "reimagining" of the original, but it's included with my DVD box set (I wish I hadn't let my wife convince me to get rid of the big fuzzy ape head the movies were housed in. That was cool.).
     
  2. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    Even though it makes no sense.

    That ending has always bugged me. Sure, it's an arresting image, but...

    ...HOW is it there on a beach !?!

    In fact, where the hell did the BEACH come from?**



    Still didn't stop me enjoying the film, though :)



    (**I have a similar issue with Waterworld, The polar ice caps have melted, the oceans have risen by, what, 200 ft? - and yet when they find land they rock up on a beach - you know, which in reality would be 200 ft under water.....)[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
     
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  3. Django

    Django Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    The quality is variable but I love the original POTAs films. I grew up watching them on TV.
     
  4. Chip TRG

    Chip TRG Senior Member

    Three pages in an NO ONE has posted this yet???

     
  5. Am I the only person who likes Battle For The Planet of The Apes? I loved the fresh-mutating humans and Aldo getting outed as an ape killer. The happy ending didn't make a lot of sense in that the world was destroyed again at the end of "Beneath" and apes and humans were not living in harmony prior to that point.
     
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  6. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    [/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

    The Statue of Liberty is on a small island in New York Bay. New York City itself is mostly on islands, the Bronx being the only part on the mainland. New York City actually borders the Atlantic Ocean in small parts of Queens and Staten Island, So considering there was a nuclear war with the ensuing environmental degradation, it is not that much of a leap to envision Lady Liberty on the beach as she is currently only a few miles away from it.

    What is truly outlandish is it takes Taylor that long to realize he is on Earth. One might assume that he and the apes both speaking English might have tipped him off.
     
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  7. Timeline Man

    Timeline Man Time Traveler from Naples

    Location:
    Naples
    Great insight. You're right.

    No, you're not the only one. BATTLE is the most comic-bookish POTA movie and it's wonderful. It's my third favourite in the saga.

    The "happy ending" happens because Cornelius, Zira, Milo and Caesar altered the past and changed the timeline. Read my website.
     
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  8. [/QUOTE]

    The Statue of Liberty is on a small island in New York Bay. New York City itself is mostly on islands, the Bronx being the only part on the mainland. New York City actually borders the Atlantic Ocean in small parts of Queens and Staten Island, So considering there was a nuclear war with the ensuing environmental degradation, it is not that much of a leap to envision Lady Liberty on the beach as she is currently only a few miles away from it.

    What is truly outlandish is it takes Taylor that long to realize he is on Earth. One might assume that he and the apes both speaking English might have tipped him off.[/QUOTE]
    That's one where you just have to have a suspension of disbelief because if it were in another language that would have been a barrier in the 1960's. Arthur Jacobs had a hard enough time convincing a studio to give up the money for the films in the first place.

    A major studio wasn't likely to release it in 1968 like that. Using subtitles would certainly have been bold and daring for the movie at the time with a made up language but no one had ever done that on a large scale for a Science Fiction movie.

    Seeing it in the 1960's, it didn't bother one all that much. I mean every TV show and other movie also had aliens speaking English so that's something you just have to give up on. If it were made now, it would be different--they could start in another language and as soon as Taylor learned their language, it could switch to English for the rest of the film. It would make sense thought that language would change and develop different meanings for English words in those thousands of years.

    It was one of those parallel development planet theories you know like "Star Trek", "Twilight Zone", "The Outer Limits".

    The book that was published of the original script by Rod Serling shows that the structure was already there. For someone to make THAT film, it would have been interesting.

    There's a 4K available in late November including both the original and recent films in a single 50th anniversary boxed set on preorder at amazon.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2018
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  9. I enjoy it I just wish that it had a bigger budget for the scale it truly deserved. It felt like a TV movie particularly after what came before. It's not bad just the bottom of the barrel for me in terms of quality.
     
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  10. The 4K is available as a preorder at Amazon.
     
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  11. I was thinking about that around my first post but didn't post it. Mark my words, it will come to Broadway or off off Broadway at some point.
     
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  12. MekkaGodzilla

    MekkaGodzilla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Westerville, Ohio
    I my book, the BEST thing The Simpsons EVER did.
     
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  13. apesfan

    apesfan "Going Ape"

    Only 4k Apes are the new series of films, Rise, Dawn, and War not the original series.....yet?!
     
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  15. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
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  16. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    Actually, just read a review on Amazon UK which suggests that the 3 most recent movies are included in 4k, The classic films - and the, er, Tim Burton thing - are normal blu-ray.
     
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  17. Timeline Man

    Timeline Man Time Traveler from Naples

    Location:
    Naples
    So what's on your mind? Circular timeline or altered timeline? Just curious.
     
  18. Well that sucks. Kind of a hybrid box set. Weird. I could do without the Burton film which always felt like a stand alone movie and not a very good one at that. Mark Wahlberg is awful in it, Kris Kristofferson isn't much better. Tim Roth clearly didn't have lunch at concessions as he chews and eats all the scenery. The only thing good about that movie are the visual effects and make up. The rest is crap.

    The trilogy of newer films are pretty good.
     
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  19. As others have said, they altered the timeline and so the events for all of the other A
    The one question that never gets answered about "Escape" is HOW they got it back into orbit much less from the bottom of a fairly deep lake. Of course we have to suspend disbelief. A pity that the original opening where they see the Earth destroyed from orbit hasn't been found. It would be cool to see that sequence.
     
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  20. Timeline Man

    Timeline Man Time Traveler from Naples

    Location:
    Naples
    There are several months inbetween the events of PLANET and the ones of BENEATH. I guess 7 or even 8 months. BENEATH is set in 3979 A.C.
    During those long months, Milo salvaged the Icarus ship from the bottom of the lake, supported by a team of few "renegade" scientists. He then fixed the ship.
    Milo was a super-genius. Even Cornelius and Zira established that.
     
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  21. I thought the timeline was a continuous loop. The whole Escape plot plants the seed for the Ape conquest. No Caesar, no conquest and no ape civilization.
     
  22. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    The ending of Battle suggests that the two species can live in harmony, but that not to say the wheels can't come off at some later point.

    Truth be told, it could be either depending on whether you feel optimistic or pessimistic.
     
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  23. apesfan

    apesfan "Going Ape"

    Not really? Basically because of the Heston trip to the future and the subsequent Brent and Skipper ship to that same future, events got changed. Hence Cornelius and Zira and Milo resurrected the first ship went back in time and quickened the ascension of the Apes. This time instead of an ape named Aldo who said "No" it was an Ape named Caesar who said "Lousy human bastard" 500 years earlier.
    Of course the events in Conquest did not make the Apes rulers of the earth but the Nuclear War that man had soon after that allowed the Apes to take over. Similar to the events between "Rise" and "Dawn" from the reboot series.
    I know that an Aldo is in the next film "Battle pota" but its not the same Aldo that Cornelius explained in Escape was the ape who said "No". Or maybe simply an historical mistake or interpretation by Cornelius of the "history scrolls" he had access to. Take care, John M.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2018
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  24. Timeline Man

    Timeline Man Time Traveler from Naples

    Location:
    Naples
    The (mystical) tear on Caesar's statue could be a tear of joy, happiness and hope.
     
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  25. Manimal

    Manimal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern US
    I was so into the “after mans reign by apacolypse” concept that even if they were bad later in the series it was great. Like today (walking dead) people fantasize about the end, like “no more school” no more anything. I’ve been through hurricanes and the fun is over after about week two:)
     
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