Planet of the Apes: The Legacy Collection (Planet of the Apes / Beneath the / Escape from the / Conquest of the / Battle for the)
by David Comtois, Don Taylor, Franklin J. Schaffner, J. Lee Thompson, Kevin Burns
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Charlton Heston, Claude Akins, James Franciscus, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowallDirector: David Comtois, Don Taylor, Franklin J. Schaffner, J. Lee Thompson, Kevin Burns
Brand: Fox
Writer: David Comtois
Writer: Brian Anthony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, THX, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 605 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-28
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Planet of the Apes: The Legacy Collection (Planet of the Apes / Beneath the / Escape from the / Conquest of the / Battle for the)
Movie Review: THE TALE OF A MISSING LINK FROM INDIANA
Summary: 5 Stars
THE TALE OF A MISSING LINK
FROM INDIANA
An analytical review of the five films known as THE PLANET OF THE APES
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Science Fiction has many supporters and we all know how people of all generations and all eras have flocked to hear about dragons and spaceships, strange creatures ruling topsy-turvy worlds.
Let us be honest, today these fans can be categorized into three groups. There are those who dress up in the clothes of their idols, speak their language and collect their items. They attend the congregations and sing the songs. Then there are those who see everything to do with it as pure entertainment, merely loosy-goosy popcorn-fun below all Shakespearian tradition. Between the two lies a group who would gladly consider themselves analytical. Their chief characteristic is looking at the real background of the piece and are beyond dressing up as Darth Vader or a Klingon. They probe into the story like a gold miner looking for a treasure.
Many films are there for entertainment, but within that entertainment one can find a very solid message intact. Some films throw the message in your face with a bang and with some stories you have to look for the message with a magnifying glass.
The original five Planet of the Apes-Films (dating from 1968 to 1973) are works where the message sometimes is so evident that it hurts. The dialogue is sometimes so strikingly a parody of all things human that it is impressive. All things civilized and racist seem imbedded within it in litmus paper and it is a wonder that the movies are not discussed at sociological seminars.
Current civilization is taught that dressing up is for fun and certainly anyone who dresses up as a monkey is not to be taken all too seriously. In one sentence: these people are wrong!
A rough outline of the story shows us this:
In the story, human astronauts from 1972 are frozen through deep space to arrive in the year 3955 on a planet ruled by monkeys. Only one survives, Taylor.
After torture and persecution he discovers that he is back home on Earth and the apes have simply taken over Earth after a nuclear catastrophe.
There are human survivors of this holocaust and they have worshipped the ultimate bomb for millennia. Taylor is witness to how the monkeys invade their underground city and ultimately destroy Earth by exploding the ultimate bomb.
Three apes escape in Taylor ship, arriving back in 1972 and find they are being treated the same way as Taylor was back home, only worse for it comes with intrigue. The one ape is pregnant and by fooling the police, she manages to rescue the baby, who grows up to start a revolt to found the Planet of the Apes.
The story is a vicious circle: A travels to B and creates havoc, which sets off a time warp that sends off A to B again. It is probably the most famous one in films. Had not Taylor decided to travel into the future, the apes would never have been able to travel to the past to found the future that Taylor discovered.
Ultimately, the proverbial dog chases his own tail until we sit there, blubbering and cooing like, well, a monkey in a tree.
But what does all this mean? It means that Man (in reality and fiction) ultimately works against himself. He discovers something that he ultimately destroys. He won't listen to truth because he is too caught up in his own desires and lack of honesty to admit that he has done things wrong.
To put this bluntly, he cannot let go of his own past mistakes. He regrets them so much that he lives not to better himself but to try to better his mistakes. If he could let them go, he would never have to fight the foes that arose from this action in the first place.
Some interesting dialogue from the film proves my point and how it is put across in a twisted manner. Take, for instance, the Gorilla General's word in the second film. Centuries of slavery ring in his words:
"I am not saying that man is bad just because his skin is White. I am saying that the only good Human is a dead Human."
It is protest in its purest form. You cannot critique humans on their own level like this (replace "Human" with "Negro" and "White" with "Black" and you'll see what I mean). But you can put a human in a civilization of a different race and see how he reacts to this, thereby letting man point his own finger at himself.
The problem is that people don't hear between the lines because the munching of the popcorn is too loud in their ears.
"Ignorance is Evil" Doctor Zira says in the same film and mirrors the kangaroo trial that occurs in the previous film, where Colonel Taylor is held before a tribunal that only exists to hang the chimpanzees (who think he is a missing link) & the court (who won't believe that he comes from Fort Wayne, Indiana). Neither side, however, is right. He is from humankind's own past. The fact that the Gorilla-Army is blessed by priests in the movie & halted by pacifist chimps should be revealing to us humans. We have two parables here: the flower-power-generation who burnt their own draught cards & finally Nazi Germany, church blessing cannons.
So, the characters in the movie have the same problem as the human beings watching the story. They don't listen. The characters in the movie are so caught up being mad at each other's folly that they keep doing the same mistakes over and over. The people paying to see what they are doing, pay their popcorn and walk out just as oblivious to the countless divorces and badmouthing and intrigues that they are responsible for, not really interested in looking below the surface because they only do so in society-approved things of shiny surface and university approved dogma. But there are signs that try to help them, if they listened.
Shortly before the fourth film there was a racist riot in a city called Watts. Director J. Lee Thompson remodelled these riots, making the leader of the riots the Monkey Revolutionary whose parents were futuristic space travellers and thereby made him responsible for the proverbial dog we mentioned earlier chasing his tail in his own never ending vicious circle.
But we find a positive energy flowing from the remaining words of film 5:
"Life is like a highway. A driver in lane A might survive whilst a driver in lane B might not. By foreseeing his own future correctly he might plan his life better and change it."
Accordingly, we see apes and humans sharing their lives at the end, giving us a possible hint that things maybe are not as bad as they look. The responsibility lies only in following your own good intuition.
It is up to you, dear reader of this article. Next time you go to a movie or a play, try to find messages within the storyline. Look closely, for you might find more than you think. Even if it is only the interesting analysis behind the bad acting.
Within everything ... lies a message.
PLANET OF THE APES: Five Motion Pictures (20th Century Fox, ©1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973) Directors: Franklin J. Schaffner, Ted Post, Don Taylor, J.Lee Thompson; Actors: Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Charlton Heston, Maurice Evans, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Williams, Sal Mineo, John Huston; Based upon the book "Monkey Planet" by Pierre Boulle; Make-Up by John Chambers
More Planet of the Apes: The Legacy Collection (Planet of the Apes / Beneath the / Escape from the / Conquest of the / Battle for the) reviews:
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Summary of Planet of the Apes: The Legacy Collection (Planet of the Apes / Beneath the / Escape from the / Conquest of the / Battle for the)
Disk 1: *Planet of the Apes ('68)Disk 2: *Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Disk 3: *Conquest for the Planet of the Apes
Disk 4: *Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Disk 5: *Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Disk 6: *Behind the Planet of the Apes (bonus disc) *Documentary Â"Behind the Planet of the ApesÂ" *Planet of the Apes trailer *Beneath the Planet of the Apes trailer *Escape from the Planet of the Apes trailer *Conquest of the Planet of the Apes trailer *Battle for the Planet of the Apes trailer *Planet of the Apes Cross Promotion trailer *TV Spot for Behind the Planet of the Apes *Fox Interactive Presents: Behind the Scenes of the Planet of the Apes game
Planet of the Apes
Billed as a "reimagining" of the original 1968 film, Tim Burton's extraordinary Planet of the Apes constantly borders on greatness, adhering to the spirit of Pierre Boulle's original novel while exploring fresh and inventive ideas and paying honorable tribute to the '68 sci-fi classic. Burton's gifts for eccentric inspiration and visual ingenuity make this a movie that's as entertaining as it is provocative, beginning with Rick Baker's best-ever ape makeup (hand that man an Oscar®!), and continuing through the surprisingly nuanced performances and breathtaking production design. Add to all this an intelligent screenplay that turns Boulle's speculative reversal--the dominance of apes over humans--into a provocative study of civil rights and civil war. The film finally goes too far with a woefully misguided ending that pays weak homage to the original, but everything preceding that misfire is astonishingly right.
While attempting the space-pod retrieval of a chimpanzee test pilot, Major Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) enters a magnetic storm that propels him into the distant future, where he crash-lands on the ape-ruled planet. Among the primitively civilized apes, treatment of enslaved humans is a divisive issue: senator's daughter Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) advocates equality while the ruthless General Thade (Tim Roth) promotes extermination. While Davidson ignites a human rebellion, this conflict is explored with admirable depth and emotion, and sharp dialogue allows Burton's exceptional cast to bring remarkable expressiveness to their embattled ape characters, most notably in the comic relief of orangutan slave trader Limbo (played to perfection by Paul Giamatti). Classic lines from the original film are cleverly reversed (including an unbilled cameo for Charlton Heston, in ape regalia as Thade's dying father), and while this tale of interspecies warfare leads to an ironic conclusion that's not altogether satisfying, it still bears the ripe fruit of a timeless what-if idea. --Jeff Shannon
Beneath the Planet of the ApesThe second--and most horrifying--of the five Planet of the Apes movies, this film goes where few end-of-the-world movies ever dare tread. It's the far future. The mass of humanity has descended into speechless savagery, kept as captive animals by the talking apes who have inherited the world. Two astronauts from our time have landed here, retracing the path of their lost comrade, Captain Taylor (Charlton Heston). Unfortunately, they've landed in the middle of a grim situation. Warlike gorillas are preparing to eliminate the last shards of shattered human civilization, a degenerate, subterranean cult worshipping the greatest of all human achievements--the cobalt bomb. As well as rescuing Taylor, the two men have to stop the gorillas from wiping out humanity ... and stop humanity from fulfilling their self-appointed, self-destructive destiny. This is both thrill-a-minute science fiction and a surprisingly deep reflection on the human condition. Plus, it's got lots of guys in really keen ape suits. --Grant Balfour
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