Capsule Reviews – Battle for the Planet of the Apes

December 24, 2010

Battle for the Planet of the Apes – US, 1973

Battle for the Planet of the Apes will likely be remembered as one of the more disappointing series finales in film history. This is a film that seems to be trying too hard to offer hope when it should be trying to bring the series back to the world we first saw in the original Planet of the Apes. The film is essentially a history lesson told to a group of children in the year 2670. Through the story, we see a not-so epic battle that took place more than six hundred years earlier between man and ape, as well as a power struggle between chimpanzees and gorillas. The film takes places a few years after the supposedly great nuclear apocalypse that wiped out much of the population. In this time, Caesar (again played by Roddy McDowall) has achieved an almost mythical status among his people. He is both a benevolent ruler and a dictator denying equal rights to humans. In one of his sillier decrees, Caesar has banned the word no because of the negative connotation it has for apes. Is that even possible? In addition, he is still trying to figure out how humans and apes can co-exist as equals. Perhaps a small skirmish between humans and apes is what is needed to help him clarify things.

Caesar’s leadership is being challenged by General Aldo (Claude Akins), a gorilla who wants to seize power and fight against both the humans and Caesar. Is this the Aldo we heard so much about in the third film? Maybe not, for nothing he does could be described as revolutionary or beneficial to all apes. The battle itself, fought by men who arrive in cars that barely work and an old beat-up school bus, is extremely clunky, and a few shots are used several times due to budget constraints. Nor does the battle that takes place resolve any of the series’ outstanding questions. Just how did humans lose the ability to speak? When did they revert back to a more animalistic state, one in which they are ruled by their instincts rather than their minds? Are we meant to believe that the events in the fifth film have prevented the events in the first? The first film resolved nothing. The world was still a mess, and it was hard to see where hope would come from in the future. The fifth one also resolves very little, yet there is a difference. While the first one left viewers shocked and amazed, the last one will probably leave them sighing with disappointment, wondering how a series that had so much promise ultimately amounted to so little. (on DVD)

2 stars

Capsule Review - Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

December 23, 2010

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes – US, 1972

The fourth film in the Planet of the Apes series takes place twenty years after Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and much of what Zira and Cornelias said would happen has happened. Cats and dogs are extinct, wiped out ironically by a disease the two chimpanzees inadvertently brought with them from the future, and humans have begun forcibly using apes as servants. To “train” them, the apes are frightened, threatened, and tortured. In addition, they are “educated” to obey simple commands such as no and do. After witnessing numerous acts of cruelty towards apes, Caesar (Roddy McDowall), Zita and Cornelias’s child formerly known as Milo, has seen enough, and he decides to lead the apes in revolt.

The film is an interesting, yet unsettling one. It’s possible to empathize with Caesar in the first half of the film, but it is much more difficult to do this by the end, for contrary to what Zira and Cornelias said about chimpanzees being pacifists, Caesar is now the persecutor, and as he explains, the masters are now the servants. The film starts out being plot-driven and then gets slightly bogged down by a long, drawn out, violent battle inspired by the Watts Riots in 1965. It’s not a particular pleasant thing to witness. The film tries to score points by adding a late message about mankind hating apes because they represent man’s darker side, but the message falls slightly flat. When one embraces violence, regardless of the circumstances, one runs the risk of losing popular support. Perhaps this is what was intended. However, if neither side is to be cheered, just how is an audience supposed to respond at the end of a battle when one side has its arms raised in victory? After all, we know from the first film the atrocities that follow. Ricardo Montalban returns as Armando, and Don Murray gives a good performance as Governor Breck, a man who has overcompensated for his fears by creating the very conditions for the rebellion he sought to prevent from occurring. Hari Rhodes is also good playing MacDonald, an aide to the governor who is sympathetic to the apes. (on DVD)

3 stars

Capsule Review – Escape from the Planet of the Apes

December 22, 2010

Escape from the Planet of the Apes – US, 1971

Let me see if I have this right – While their planet is erupting in civil war and their friends are in grave danger, those lovable pacifist chimpanzees Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter) go on an experimental space joyride with Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo) aboard Col. Taylor’s magically restored spaceship. From outer space, they witness the destruction of their planet and are sent back in time by the force of the explosion to 1973. On Earth, they are eventually taken shopping for new clothes, Zira gives a speech to a women’s group on the need for equality at home, and Cornelius is taken to see a boxing match. These parts of the third film in the Planet of the Apes trilogy can perhaps best be described as ridiculous.

Fortunately, mixed in with the silliness mentioned above is a rather interesting film in which people discuss the correct response to the news that their society is going to be completely turned upside down. They now know what future awaits them, and they debate whether it is proper to attempt to change it given the opportunity to do so. Moreover, who’s to say that the events that are unfolding are not what led to that future in the first place? In the film, people fall into are two camps: those that subscribe to the views of Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Breaden) that they must do whatever is necessary to prevent the ape’s future from occurring and those like Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman) and the President of the United States (William Windom), who are deeply troubled by the moral implications of what attempting to do so would entail. This is made even more ambiguous by the news that Zira is pregnant. The conversations in which the president and the scientists discuss the best course of action are insightful and thought-provoking, making it clear that neither position is without merit. Watch for the scene in which Cornelius and Zira explain how apes eventually evolved. It’s quite fascinating. Also fun is Ricardo Montalban as Armando, the head of a traveling circus. He has some interesting views on the notion of changing your destiny. Escape from the Planet of the Apes does not match the greatness of the original, but it is certainly a step in the right direction after the disappointment of the previous film. (on DVD)

3 stars

Capsule Reviews – Beneath the Planet of the Apes

December 21, 2010

Beneath the Planet of the Apes – US, 1970

In the category of “what were they thinking,” I can now add the follow-up to the 1968 science fiction classic Planet of the Apes, a clunky film that is more like a bad episode of Star Trek than the continuing adventures of Colonel George Taylor. In fact, the film removes Heston’s character rather quickly – apparently on Heston’s request - and focuses on yet another captain, John Brent (James Franciscus), who has been sent to rescue Taylor. With a new captain come the same discoveries that Taylor made – that the apes can talk and that the planet he is on is in fact Earth. It’s not nearly as interesting the second time. The film has a few fairly interesting subplots – there’s apparently a food shortage despite the abundant presence of lush green forests, and the gorilla army has started what amounts to genocide against the humans. A gorilla general even shouts the chilling hate-filled line, “The only good human is a dead human.” In addition, we get a glimpse of the dissent that exists between the chimpanzee population and the apes when a group of young chimps stage a sit-in while holding signs and shouting, “We want freedom! We want peace!” – a clear allegory to the anti-war protests of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

However, none of these subplots go anywhere. Instead, the film focuses on the supposedly strange events that are taking place in the Forbidden Zone and the impending war between the apes and whoever is causing them. As part of this storyline, the film introduces a small underground colony of humans that can somehow both communicate telepathically and speak. Just how long they’ve been down there and why they’ve done nothing to help their fellow humans is never explained. Instead, we get strange prayers to an atomic weapon and speeches about how they are peaceful people as they prepare to set off a nuclear weapon. The song they sing in church consists of truly bizarre, smirk-inducing lyrics that I have to believe were intended to be chilling. And of course Nova (Linda Harrison) finally speaks – at just the right time, too. I guess all she needed was the right emotional moment for her vocal chords to finally function properly. I won’t give away the ending except to say that when I saw it, I wondered aloud how there could possibly be three more films in the series. And yet there are. However, Beneath the Planet of the Apes will probably not make anyone excited about watching them. (on DVD)

2 and a half stars

Review – Planet of the Apes

December 20, 2010

Planet of the Apes – US, 1968

Where are we? Where are we heading? What is the consequence of our present course? These questions are often at the core of science fiction. On the one hand, science fiction can offer an optimistic view of the future. In the world of Star Trek, humans have resolved problems related to racism, sexism, and classism, and have learned to live with the other inhabitants of the earth. Relations with their galactic neighbors however are a work in progress. On the other hand, science fiction can also offer viewers a rather bleak outlook of the future, one that shows what may happen if mankind doesn’t address its problems or change its present course. The Day the Earth Stood Still, the recent reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, and Minority Report all ask viewers to reflect upon what mankind is doing right now and to think about how it will impact our future. Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1968 film Planet of the Apes falls into this latter category, and it is an example of science fiction at its best.

From its opening scene, in which astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston), jaded by mankind’s belligerent nature, wonders aloud whether the world he and his three crew members are returning to is one where mankind is still fighting wars and refusing to help those in need. He doesn’t hold out any hopes that the situation he’ll find upon his return will be any different from the one he left years earlier. Later, we learn what Col. Taylor’s motive for taking this mission was – He hoped to find something better than mankind, and space, with its seeming infiniteness seemed a logical place to find it. This hope, that outer space holds the answers to mankind’s earthly problems, is still with us, even after Stephen Hawking’s warning that space exploration would not likely be started with peace in mind.

As a result of a computer glitch, Taylor and the other surviving members of the crew, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton), crash on a mountainous, desert planet filled with stunning dry landscapes. According to their computer, the year is 3978, and based on their surroundings, they surmise that they are on an alien world. Following the tradition of countless explorers before them, Dodge plants a small American flag in a pile of rocks; Taylor just laughs. With just three days’ worth of supplies and food, the men then begin to explore this new world. They eventually find plant life, a lush lake, and a group of humans who cannot speak and are dressed in clothing traditionally seen on wax models of cave men. Soon, something rather unexpected finds them.

Planet of the Apes has at least four broad themes, one of which I will not reveal. The first is inhumanity toward animals. In the film, the animals are the humans, and they are hunted with as much indifference as many people hunt deer or lions. In one scene, a group of apes, each smiling proudly, pose for a picture while standing over the dead bodies of the “animals” they have just shot. Later, we see a different perspective, as a female behavioral scientist argues for more humane treatment of the humans. One thing she is against is the Minister of Science’s “experimental brain surgeries.” Later, we see just why she would be so against them. Second, the film includes a running debate between believers of creationism and believers of evolution, between the laws written in the ape’s ancient scrolls and scientific evidence that may contradict the ideas spelled out in these old texts. How one views the humans depends upon which camp one belongs to. The film also makes a brief reference to racism. We learn from a chimpanzee scientist that chimps have a lower status that apes, despite the fact that they have the same education and experience.

The screenplay for Planet of the Apes was written by Michael Wilson, whose credits include The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and 1954’s underappreciated Salt of the Earth, and Rod Serling, who is best known for The Twilight Zone, but who also wrote the screenplay for Seven Days in May, a film about an attempted military coup in the United States. Wilson knew about persecution first hand. He was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Commission and had to write under a pseudonym for many years. It was not until 1984, six years after his death, that his work on The Bridge on the River Kwai was fully acknowledged.

Recent science fiction films have spent so much time and money dazzling viewers’ eyes that they seem to have forgotten that the best science fiction stimulates the brain, makes people see the real world differently, and challenges common perceptions and values. Too many films lead up to a big finale that ends up saying nothing of importance. The original Planet of the Apes is different. It takes its time. We see the alien world and wonder at its beautiful vast emptiness. We get to know the characters, both good and bad, and we come to empathize with them, even those keeping secrets from their own people. We keep expecting a climactic battle, but instead we get a mesmerizing conversation in a cave that reveals much about people’s willingness to accept scientific facts that contradict their long-held beliefs. This is the way science fiction should be. It should be about the story, not just the spectacle. And you have to admire a film that has the courage to end in a way that explains everything yet resolves nothing. (on DVD)

4 stars