‘‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes” 50 years later.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by wayneklein, Apr 29, 2021.

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  1. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    This has always been my second favorite of the original films in the series. While it’s comedic touch with it’s fish-out-of-water story is fun, there’s a very dark analogy about howded ANYONE different can be threaded, demonized, etc.

    your thoughts?
     
  2. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    I've always enjoyed the film, though I wish it had better production values.
     
  3. yamfan

    yamfan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    I wish for a longer version of Planet of the Apes, the musical by the Simpsons.
     
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  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    we love this and all of the Apes movies...my wife and I are long time fans of the franchise...I still can feel the impact of the ending in the first Planet Of The Apes movie...it was chilling and terrifying for a youngster or anyone! we watch the series every few years...
     
  5. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    I generally watch them every year or so, the TV series and the animated series as well...

    Not too long ago, I watched the first three films, except in reverse order-No rhyme or reason to doing it that way, just did it :)

    Back to "Escape" specifically, I really wish they had done the "primitive" apes better-I mean I know they were on a lower budget and all, but that gorilla in the zoo scenes is just horribly bad. And Armando's chimp isn't much better.
     
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  6. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    that was the times...they weren't perfect, but it was all in fun! I have no complaints. Actually, I wouldn't change a thing...
     
  7. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    As a child I loved them all fairly indiscriminately (although I felt Conquest was pretty weak). When you see all those toys in the 'Behind the Planet of the Apes' documentary, it's almost embarrassing how many of them I had. But you know how, when you're an adult and you revisit movies you loved years before, you suddenly see them in a different light. Sometimes you appreciate them on a whole new level, and sometimes you learn to dismiss your childhood likes.

    When I watched this series again as an adult, late 80s I'd guess, I realised that only the first movie had a story to tell. It was no longer 'Come on, show us the apes already!' I really appreciated the pacing of the first act. The rest of them, however, were just episodic 'further adventures of' installments. Escape was really just a retelling of the first movie with the characters and setting reversed, but nonetheless, it has charm, and the ending packs a punch.

    Now closer to the border of old age than to middle, I've mellowed a bit, but still, the only reason I'd watch Beneath or Battle is because I'm watching the whole series or I just happen to catch them while channel surfing.

    I still bought the blu-ray box though, and Conquest was a huge surprise because somehow the news of the restoration of the original ending escaped my attention, and suddenly events were folding differently than the version I knew. Being more aware of world events, my appreciation for the movie was already growing, and the new-old ending cinched it. This was a movie with a story to tell.

    But Escape is an enjoyable piece of, well, escapism. The music, while very different from the rest of the series, is nice, almost Bond-like at times. I just really wish they could have set up the storyline of Milo finding the spacecraft because that part really doesn't fit in with the chronology of the second and third movies and offers an awful lot of disbelief to suspend.
     
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  8. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    I didn't buy into it as a "franchise"; for me, the film based on the Boulle novel told the only story needed to make his point, and once I'd read the book, I came away satisfied. And after that, of course, Logan's Run (face it, once you've seen Jenny Augutter in the altogether as a teenager in a darkened room...what else of a story is there to tell..? ;) ) made a singular statement. The two Charlton Heston sci-fi films afterword, needed no sequels to underscore their points.

    Star Wars of course, was a work that screamed for a continuing story, and that was a different animal. And it brought us into the age of a different sort of looking at films, always first a "property", and then as "franchise"...even the cynicism of the presumed Commemorative Glass From Taco Bell for every big release, didn't dim our expectations, that no longer could you expect a film to just BE a film, unless you could expect the studios to exploit the plot further.
     
  9. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    Funny as a kid (I was 8) when I saw it in theaters I wasn’t surprised at all. I told my dad I knew they were on Earth. He asked how I knew. ‘They all spoke English”. ‘2001” blew my mind and I didn’t need drugs.
     
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  10. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    I actually felt that POTA had the perfect opportunity for expanding the story. Although the first sequel was undermined by a smaller budget and the director’s (and Paul Dean’s original script) vision for the film was compromised and repetition in the first half, the third film and fourth both told compelling stories.

    There was only one film with Heston after the first.
     
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2021
  11. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    I'm referring of course, to Soylent Green and Omega Man, both self-contained plots driven to the points they needed to make, without the need to expand their storylines. Sure, maybe you could extend the I Am Legend continuity a bit further as a "property", but not make any more compelling conflict as in the first (if you're the "last man", there ain't no "next" one). And once you figure out what Soylent Green is...show's over. What's the sequel: endless hearings of some futuristic Food & Drug Administration in Congress, as broadcast on CSPAN-12...?

    Whether the stories that stretched the Apes franchise further were valid stories or not, none had the salient points intended Boulle made in his book, that gave the first one such resonance for me.
     
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2021
  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    lots of laughs....
     
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  13. Zep Fan

    Zep Fan Sounds Better with Headphones on

    Location:
    N. Texas
    Only the original for me.
     
  14. Conquest is pretty darn good too (and dark, especially the director's cut) -- the one set in 1991, in a world beset by glorious brutalist architecture!!

    It's nearly entirely humorless, that I will grant -- but I love the dark tone of Conquest.
     
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  15. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    When I used to go to Century City (where it was shot and what used to be, as I recall, part of the Fox backlot sold and turned into condos and businesses) I used to have a little moment cause, you know, I was at the place they spot the movie. Sort of the future but not quite.
     
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  16. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    I get that but Boulle had his points to make and the sequels found a nice parallel to the civil rights movement that continues to resonate today. There were themes that Boulle never even thought about pursuing in his novel that were adopted or expanded upon in the films. I’m not going to claim all of them are classic but the best ones,outside of the first film, are really good.

    Soylent Green is a terrific movie even more relevant today than in 1973. The Omega Man, not so much. It’s not, ipen(ng sequences aside, a very good movie IMHO.
     
  17. Yeah, I used to work in Century City and would often cross that cement walkway bridge on a lunch break stroll over to the mall.
     
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  18. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    I'm *not* singling you out by saying this, but I've seen/read others saying the same thing-But going by that logic, then one would have to assume that all the aliens featured in film and on TV are really Earthlings, because they too speak English.

    "Star Wars" must take place in our universe, because the main characters speak English. The Klingons and Romulans on "Star Trek" are really people of Earth, because they speak English... And on it could go :)

    They toyed with the idea of having the Apes start out speaking a language of their own and gradually turning the dialog over to English as Taylor learned their language, but that idea was scrapped pretty early on, for simplicities sake if nothing else.
     
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  19. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    Very true...

    Boulle's novel was a good basis for a film idea, but the movie was deeper than what Boulle had to say in his original movie.


    I love them all to an extent, I just wish they had kept up the high production values they had while making the first film. As director J. Lee Thompson had said, it's a shame they cut the budgets of each subsequent film, instead of trying to go bigger and better.
     
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  20. Avenging Robot

    Avenging Robot Senior Member

    There were indeed some pretty sweet Planet of the Apes toys back in the day.

    [​IMG]
     
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  21. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    The revived Mego Toys Corporation has secured the rights to the "Planet of the Apes" license: So far they're only did reissues of Dr. Zaius and Cornelius, and the next round is supposed to include Urko and Caesar*. Some Walmarts, Targets, and Meijers carry the new Megos, but it seems like their availability is pretty spotty. They can also be ordered from online sellers.


    *Regarding Caesar: I hope it's Caesar from the original films, not the reboot trilogy. But, since their license includes both the original franchise, as well as the new stuff, it's not 100% as to what version of Caesar they'll be making.
     
  22. wayneklein

    wayneklein Forum Fool Thread Starter

    It’s 8 year old logic. Yes, I know about the idea of another language and it being rejected. The problem with Star Trek and other series is that it was possible with aliens they had encountered before that they had learned English whereas, that wasn’t the case in POTA.

    it’s a little different to understand the conceit of the characters speaking English when you’re a little older. At 17 it was kind of clear with Star Wars plus theh didn’t interact with anyone from our planet and it was ‘a long time ago ina galaxy far, far away’.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2021
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  23. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    Not necessarily. Star Wars has no Earthlings (I assume--I haven't seen them all), so they're presumably speaking alien languages. It's just translated for the viewer's benefit.

    And Star Trek (like Doctor Who) has an explanation for translation.

    The issue in Planet of the Apes, however, is very distracting. Bothered me a bit as a child, and then went on to get a degree in linguistics which makes it harder to ignore.
     
  24. bluearmy78

    bluearmy78 Living in real gangster times.

    Location:
    England
    I enjoy the whole franchise. Yes 3-5 suffered from lack of finance, but they are fun. The original series is good, as is the animated series. And the new trilogy is done brilliantly. I won't say what l think of Burton's attempt, it's really not worth a mention.
     
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  25. Philip Airtime

    Philip Airtime A Shiver in the Dark When You Call My Name

    Location:
    United States
    Escape was the first film in the Apes series that I saw, at the tender age of six. I caught installments three through five on their original theatrical release, and saw the first two films on CBS. Escape utterly enthralled me. I was deeply affected by the killings of Cornelius and Zira. Their death scenes remain one of my most primal moviegoing experiences, along with the naked motorcyclist in Vanishing Point and Charlton Heston’s crucifixion in The Omega Man. What a memorable year 1971 was!
     
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