Planet of the Apes = Deep Philosophy, Man!

[Vortigern99]

I woke up early this morning and watched Beneath. Man, that is one bleak, cynical, negative motion picture. It disturbed me as a kid to see my heroes trying to kill each other, and it still disturbs me to this day. The famous line from American Werewolf, "Everybody dies; it's very bloody!" certainly applies here. Good lord.

Compared to the "deep philosophy" of the original, the main thematic concern of this direct sequel seems to be: "War bad." Next up is Escape, which even though it ends badly at least has some cheerful moments when C and Z are the hit of the fashion world.

[Seeker]

They must have seen that discovery channel show on the Russian super ape Human/ape Breeding program. Those Soviets were up to all kinds of crazy stuff.

Oops Tayor... Tyler... my bad. All fixed.

Anyway just addressing the accelerated evolution here. Cant fill in all the gaps of movie logic.

[Vortigern99]

Okay, you've made a logical inference rather than relying purely on exposition from the film. I like that. BUT it still doesn't explain how no one, including the two primatologists, notices that C, Z and Milo are not normal chimps but some kind of genetic mutation, who walk on two legs and have the proportions and anatomy of human beings. Any way we look at it, there's a missing link (hah! get it?) here.

And BTW, it's "Taylor", not "Tyler". We could postulate that Tyler Durden from Fight Club was the astronaut who got sent into the future, but that would be stretching things a bit, don't you think?

[Seeker]

Logical reading in between the lines. When Ceasar is explaining the back story in front of the Memorial to Cats and Dogs and going on about the bon fires and such.

This is a future ahead of Taylors time. We are even now messing with breeding and genetics. Cloned cats, Glowing Zebra fish etc. One could imagine they are more advanced.

You wouldnt want to have a pet that could easily rip your arm off. Chimps and orangutangs can be very dangerous once out of infancy. (I love those new Discovery channel shows Chimp eden etc) These future people wanted them as house pets. Altering them would be logical.

And once they proved they could do be trained to do work you would want them bigger to do MORE work.

[Vortigern99]

Seeker, thank you for the summary of facts. I've seen the films many many times, though, and I've never heard the information that humans "genetically altered" simians to make them more tame. Can you tell me which sequel this is in? I suppose it could help explain why the apes in Conquest are human-like, but that still doesn't explain why in 1973 (which is when Escape is set), the two primatologists (Natalie Trundy and the other guy) think Cornelius, Zira and Milo are normal chimps!

But I suppose we can just chalk it up to suspension of disbelief: If we can just pretend these people in ape masks are actual chimpanzees (nevermind that chimps are 4-legged locomotors) then it all falls into place.

[Seeker]

Vortigern99 About Apes evolving into a more human shape you are missing an important bit of back story. (Before all the time travel mucked things up)

It was mentioned that a Plague killed off many species of animals Especially cats and dogs. (This might explain the few animal species seen in the movies other then primates and horses)

In the quest to fill the void left for pets future (To Taylor) humans genetically altered regular monkeys to make them more tame. More intelligent to be easily trained.

As the apes went from being pets in cages to wearing clothes and doing little tricks like simple houshold chores. Eventually humans saw a potential workforce and contuniue to artificially evolve them for size and intelligence. To understand verbal instruction.

Originally the Ape revolution was led by a Gorilla named Aldo who eventually spoke the word NO. This was before Zira and Cornelius went back in time and had Ceaser.

After the night of fire. When other human countries panicked thinking the Ape uprising might be some sort of first strike by another country and started nuking each other. You would'nt need to nuke knife wielding apes.

Eventiually both human and Ape survivors faced nuclear winter. And the stronger more able to survive primative condition apes lapped the weaker technology dependant humans to control the world.

[Vortigern99]

johnmiic: Agreed 100%. The original Apes is thoughtful, thought-provoking, challenging sci-fi of the highest order!

[Vortigern99]

The language issue could be explained, if one were so inclined, by some kind of surgically-implanted translator device -- although this possibility is undermined by the sequels, particularly Escape, in which the Court directly asks Cornelius how he came to speak English. But just taking the original as a stand-alone film, the translator device could be a Marvel No-Prize way of explaining how Taylor can communicate with what he believes to be an alien species.

The sequels, however, get more and more illogical and incredible with every film. Escape is particularly ludicrous because for one thing, any primatologist with more than an hour of acedemic credit -- as we're supposed to believe of the two human leads -- would recognize that Cornelius, Zira and Milo have neither the anatomy, proportions nor locomotive means of real chimpanzees: they are built like human beings, walk upright like human beings, and have the precise muscular and osteo-physiology of human beings. With the original film, this is explainable as the result of rapid mutation of form in the wake of nuclear devastation; though 2000 years is almost certainly not enough time for apes to evolve into human anatomical structures, we could postulate that Taylor's ship's instruments are wrong and in fact it's been something like two million years since the astronauts left the earth. By the time we get to Conquest, we're asked to believe that Caesar, offspring of the human-chimps Cornelius and Zira, could blend in unnoticed among normal chimps and other apes, and Battle, in which suddenly all apes can talk, although it must be the year 1990 at most, and no chance for vocal apparatus to have evolved has passed at all!

I don't mean to take away anyone's fun in watching these movies -- I love 'em, as cheesy and illogical as they are. But the original has an integrity the others lack, as the inconsistencies I've listed above had not yet had a chance to creep into the screenplays.

[Captain]

...and the monkeys in Apes were way cooler than the scraggly lookin' monkeys in 2001!!

[johnmiic]

Planet of the Apes is very sucessfull because it is about the "human" condition-strangely enough. Tho parallels to racism towards african- americans, themes of slavery and anti-vietnam sentiments arose in the sequels, the way the films started out were similar to Issac Asimov's Robots series. Central to it's themes are if you are sentient do you have rights? Do you have the rights above another sentient species? Are intelligent beings equal? To what lengths can you morally preserve your society? This is way beyond simple black and white racism. This is true Science Fiction. Not a film about hardware but about challenging ideas. Apes is relevant on numerous levels that compares favorably with The Prisoner, Blade Runner, Star Trek VI-The Undiscovered Country. If you compare POTA first feature with select episodes of the Twilight Zone you can see many topics tackled in TZ recur in the first film. When Serling wrote his version of the script he did so with all pistons firing.

Arthur C. Clarke was always upset that Apes beat out 2001 at the academy awards for ape-spfx but what he really should have been concerned with was how much better written Apes was. 2001 is too much of an art-house film for people to relate to it. Apes really hooks into people and always laves people begging for more answers.

[Captain]

POTA (the original) is in my opinion the best sci fi flick ever made (even over Trek and Star Wars). Great story, characters, lots of action, NOVA, and it makes you think.

As I grow older only two minor things have popped up that bug me a little about the film....1) Everybody speaks English....shouldnt that have tipped of Taylor? Easily explained away...he suddenly finds hi,self on a world of PO'ed monkeys...probably never even thought about the language issue.
2) The sequels tweaking of the astronaut story line. In the original Taylor and crew knew they would never make it back to Earth, and were aware of the time distalation. Brent mentiones he was sent after Taylor and his crew??....I suppose its possible that Taylors ship went "off radar" (or whatever) earlier than expected and the worst was assumed, forcing the launch of a second ship? (Although other remarks by brent seem to conflict with this).

Other than this....perfect!

[ctc]

>maybe there's a backstory about the mutants from Beneath blowing up the moon with another nuke.

I always thought it happened during the war.

>Nevermind what this would do to the tides;

Maybe it did. The whole area is desert; and it's right at the East coast. (Ape City is walking distance from New York.) And the Statue is on land at the end.... isn't it currently in the water?

Don C.

[Vortigern99]

Chalk up another one lost to the mysterious phenomenon known as "ape fog".

[SUP-Ronin]

I get all philosophical about classics like that sometimes, especially when watching with other fans. Then the "fog" wears off and it doesn't seem as deep as it did when we were watching it.

[Vortigern99]

^ ^ Okay, maybe there's a backstory about the mutants from Beneath blowing up the moon with another nuke. Nevermind what this would do to the tides; we'll just go with it for the sake of imaginative speculation....