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Review: Planet of the Apes
This only matters because it may affect the way older people see Tim Burton's reimagined Planet of the Apes. It's a generational thing, admittedly, of no importance to anybody under 30, who can go see the movie with less baggage.
But in that context, this movie doesn't match up, or come close. And it pretty much squelches hopes for a great movie of this summer (with the possible exception of Shrek). Unless American Pie 2 really delivers, there just ain't going to be one.
The costuming and computerized effects in Planet of the Apes are really terrific, and the movie is at times witty, imaginative and entertaining, no small accomplishment, especially this summer. It reminds us that when it comes to ominous design and atmosphere, nobody can top Burton. Where he seems to have trouble is with storytelling.
In the original, Charlton Heston played the towering hero Col. George Taylor, the arrogant and stranded space traveler. In this re-engineering, rechristened Capt. Leo Davidson, Mark Wahlberg, takes over. As great as he was in Three Kings and Boogie Nights, historical comparison isn't kind to Wahlberg, who seems to really lack stature. He looks stunned from the minute he lands on this strange planet, and he spends much of 125 minutes mumbling platitudes to simians and humans and running from some ferocious, brilliantly-rendered and truly mean apes. (The exception is a literal human-rights activist and bleeding heart named Ari, played by Helena Bonham Carter.) This movie really needs George Clooney or a younger Harrison Ford.
You'll find all sorts of winks and nods at the earlier films, including landscape and architectural references, and an uncredited appearance by Heston himself as the ape general's father. There are also mutations of the earlier version's best known lines -- including the classic "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" You had to love Heston at that moment in the first movie, a towering old-school Hollywood superhero insisting on his dignity in world that didn't want to give him a shred, but which, ultimately, had no choice. Capt. Davidson never gets far enough past his shock and disorientation to get mad. In keeping with this era, he's a sensitive hero, concerned but incapable of outrage.
Tim Roth playes Thade, the Simian general who truly loathes humans and exudes hate and rage with every movement and facial expression.
Thade finds people so disgusting he literally bounces off the walls and hangs off the ceiling waiting to get to them so he can tear them apart. Yet oddly, he loves Ari, the liberal human sympathizer. (In another echo of the past, she loves the spaceman, of course, and there is even an interspecies smooch that had the audience in my theater feeling volubly yucky.)
But don't look for too much intellectual exercise. The movie makes the point -- fittingly, through Heston -- that the smarter humans become, the more damage they seem to do as a species. The first movie clearly had racial and class messages to pass along (it was adapted from La Planete des Singes, a novel by Pierre Boulle, whose target was European class snobbery).
There are things to admire here. The faces and expressions of the apes are much more expressive than they were 30 years ago. They're more expressive, in fact, than Wahlberg's. The computer-rendered battle scene, becoming a staple of Hollywood action movies, is impressive.
And the opening 10 or 15 minutes are promisingly fabulistic. On a spaceship that sends trained monkeys out in pods rather than risking humans, Capt Davidson's favorite, Pericles, gets lost in a nebula. It's a neat sequence, with Davidson defying orders to set out after him. Strange space storms wreck his navigation systems, though, and he crash lands on the nearest planet. Leo barely hits the ground, though, before vicious ape soldiers out to capture and sell humans into slavery are after him and his kind. We are clearly meant to see none-too-subtle slave-trade analogies here (plus echoes of animal-rights arguments). But even movies about apes ought to evolve -- does anybody in 2001 really need convincing of slavery's evil?
Nevertheless, to make the point, the movie's humans get treated with utter contempt and brutality, bought and sold and doomed to menial labor, caged at night. In one manipulative but effective sequence, a small child, adopted as a pet by an ape girl, gets locked in a birdcage at night. In what is perhaps a reference to slavery and the Old South, ape society seems to be becoming more narcissistic and decadent, its cruelty to humans undermining its own sense of moral value and purpose.
Dahlberg, who seems ill at ease in this movie and is flat throughout, simply wants to get home. Hardly any other motive or thought occurs to him until very near the ending. Ari, protesting brutality against humans, helps Leo escape to rouse the battered, hopeless remnants of the human race.
I don't want to give anything further away, except to say that either Burton or 20th Century Fox went for still another memorable ending to this Planet of the Apes. I suppose you have to admire their guts, and this one is also a jaw-dropper, but alas, mostly because it's so dumb.
Let's be clear: Planet of the Apes is more than good enough to go see, but you will have forgotten every scene by Labor Day. In 30 years, you'll be eagerly awaiting the remake of something else -- hopefully. Maybe it will be less of a disappointment for you than this one was for me.
My lord this story is generating a lot of interest! 7 minutes after it's posted we dont have an fp! yet.
I couldn't get past the first sentence. "In the pre-Net era'? What the flipping hell is something as inane and banal as that doing opening a movie review?
My God, why doesn't someone do us all a favor and just start re-posting Ebert's reviews. He at least sees summer blockbusters for what they are: Action flicks so we can forget reality.
Starring William Shatner as Marshall, Wierd Al Yancovic as Will, Elvira as Holly. And Mark and Brian as the Sleestack. Hey kids! It's got dinosaurs!
No, he didn't.
Katz wanted to be *in* Matrix but Reeves stormed off the set saying, "Even *I* have some standards."
Is that some AC isn't posting a bunch of links to "apese.cx" or some such...
Hey, don't get mad at the earlier poster, he was doing a great service to all those people who thought that the events in Planet of the Apes really took place.
Okay, this is just enough. From now on, let's mod up the first AC who cuts-and-pastes a real review, and then people who want to know about the movie can just scroll a little (okay, so a lot) and have it.
(Note: if you moderate using Over-rated or Under-rated you won't go to meta-mod. [Since it doesn't make sense to metamod either of those if you don't have a score to go with it....])
In this proud new tradition, I submit:
And now Ebert's review:
BY ROGER EBERT
Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" wants to be all things to all men, and all apes. It's an action picture and a satire of an action picture. It's a comedy and then it gets serious. It's a social satire and then backs away from pushing that angle too far. It even has a weird intra-species romantic triangle in it. And it has a surprise ending that I loved, even though Matt Drudge spoiled it last weekend with a breathless "scoop."
The movie could have been more. It could have been a parable of men and animals, as daring as "Animal Farm." It could have dealt in social commentary with a sting, and satire that hurt. It could have supported, or attacked, the animal rights movement. It could have dealt with the intriguing question of whether a man and a gorilla having sex is open-mindedness, or bestiality (and, if bestiality, in both directions?).
It could have, but it doesn't. It's a cautious movie, earning every letter and numeral of its PG-13 rating. Intellectually, it's science fiction for junior high school boys.
I expected more. I thought Burton would swing for the fence. He plays it too safe, defusing his momentum with little nudges to tell you he knows it's only a movie. The 1968 "Planet of the Apes" was made before irony became an insurance policy. It made jokes, but it took itself seriously. Burton's "Planet" has scenes that defy us to believe them (his hero survives two bumpy crash-landings that look about as realistic as the effects in his "Mars Attacks!"). And it backs away from any kind of risky complexity in its relationships.
The key couple consists of Leo (Mark Wahlberg), who is the human hero, and Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who is the Eleanor Roosevelt of the apes. They're attracted to each other but don't know what to do about it, and the screenplay gives them little help. Leo is also supposed to be linked romantically, I guess, with a curvy blond human named Daena (Estella Warren), but her role has been so abbreviated that basically all she does is follow along looking at Leo either significantly or winsomely, as circumstances warrant. At the end, he doesn't even bid her a proper farewell.
Leo, to be sure, is not one for effusive emotional outbursts. He's played by Wahlberg as a limited and narrow person with little imagination, who never seems very surprised by anything that happens to him--like, oh, to take a random example, crash-landing on a planet where the apes rule the humans. He's a space jockey type, trained in macho self-abnegation, who is great in a crisis but doesn't offer much in the way of conversation. His basic motivation seems to be to get himself off the planet, and to hell with the friends he leaves behind; he's almost surly sometimes as he leads his little band through the wilderness.
The most "human" character in the movie is, in fact, the chimpanzee Ari, who believes all species were created equal, casts her lot with the outcast humans, and tells Leo, "you're sensitive--a welcome quality in a man." Helena Bonham Carter invests this character with warmth, personality and distinctive body language; she has a way of moving that kids itself.
There's also juice in a character named Limbo (Paul Giamatti), a scam artist who has a deal for everyone, and a lot of funny one-liners. That he sounds like a carnival pitch-man should not be held against him.
The major ape characters include the fearsome Gen. Thade (Tim Roth), his strong but occasionally thoughtful gorilla lieutenant Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Sen. Sandar (David Warner), who is a parliamentary leader and Ari's father. There's also a cameo for Charlton Heston, as a wise old ape who inevitably introduces a gun into the plot and has a curmudgeonly exit line. Watching the apes is fun all during the movie, while watching the humans usually isn't; the movie works hard to bring the apes to life, but unwisely thinks the humans can take care of themselves.
It's interesting that several different simian species co-exist in the planet's ape society. It may be a little hard to account for that, given the logic of the movie, although I will say no more. One major change between this film and the earlier one is that everyone--apes and humans--speak English. The movie explains why the apes speak English, but fudges on how they learned to speak at all.
The movie is great-looking. Rick Baker's makeup is convincing even in the extreme closeups, and his apes sparkle with personality and presence. The sets and locations give us a proper sense of alien awe, and there's one neat long shot of the ape city-mountain that looks, when you squint a little, like Xanadu from "Citizen Kane." There are lines inviting laughs ("Extremism in the defense of apes is no vice") and others unwisely inviting groans ("If you show me the way out of here--I promise I'll show you something that will change your life forever"). And a priceless moment when Leo wants to stop the squabbling among his fugitive group of men and apes and barks: "Shut up! That goes for all species!"
"Planet of the Apes" is the kind of movie that you enjoy at times, admire at times, even really like at times, but is it necessary? Given how famous and familiar Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film is, Tim Burton had some kind of an obligation to either top it, or sidestep it. Instead, he pays homage. He calls this version a "reimaging," and so it is, but a reinvention might have been better. Burton's work can show a wild and crazed imagination, but here he seems reined in. He's made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting.
Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
Let's make a tradition of this!
First off I thought the movie was really mediocre. If that good. Guy lands on a planet with talking, sapient apes and is only a little stunned? Bleah. He should have been freaked out.
Anyway, do listen to what they say. The ending was completely predictable, and Wahlberg's character was an idiot for not putting 2 + 2 together.
The one female Ape who was helping them (sorry, I don't remember any of the character's names ;-)) told Wahlberg that the ruins (of the ship) were thousands of years old. Now if he came from around 2100 sometime to 2400 sometime (judging from the clock displayed in the pod, another silly issue), then they crashed a very long time ago. (Like I'm going to believe they could build that sort of technology that could last that long, riiight. Power source maybe. Computers no.)
So basically he deserved what he got for not thinking. As has been explained, it was Earth all along (like we ever doubted, with the flora and fauna being so familiar). Ruins 1000's of years old obviously affected a large part of known history (how much wasn't given).
What I find also incomprehensibly stupid is the fact that everything developed identically with apes as it would have with humans. I'm sure I'm not the only one. America, s/human/ape/g? Bah.
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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Look and listen closely. Wahlberg travels from ~2100 (2039? close enough) to 2400 something. He finds Planet of Apes.
While on PoA, he finds ruins of a Ship Looking for Him (SLH). Female Protagonist Ape comments at one point "that's impossible, these ruins are thousands of years old" [highlight added]. This means, SLH crashed at Some Unknown Time, BC. The ape takeover happened a long time ago, and if Wahlberg's character wasn't such a dunce he would have realized this.
Anyway, so he travels back in time, but not far enough... he's still in the new, Ape-ridden timeline (although why exactly apes would have an exactly identical history is silly beyond belief). He needs to keep travelling an unknown number of millenia in the past (till he reaches SUT, BC) to put a stop to the problem.
Simple, stock time travel. I think you guys need to watch more Back to the Future, and play a lot more Chrono Trigger.
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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I must have missed something then. How is this established...?
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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Think earth, with the oceans dried up a lot. That's what I thought when I saw it. Besides, if this is taking your typical evolutionary view of planetary development, how else would you get identical flora and fauna?
The three moons bit probably isn't that far fetched either, we could always get moons from elsewhere. ;-) That's the hardest part, I'll admit.
Finally, the future apes might very well have been more technically advanced... and we just saw a portion of the world that wasn't as technologically outgoing. This is especially feasible if you look at the clothing of many of the apes... obviously mass fabricated. (Leather jackets, other machined textiles, etc. Imports.)
OTOH, knowing the ape personalities, it's also not too far of a stretch to see a technological decline, especially if advanced weapons were once available (blowing each other to bits, new dark ages, etc.). Question of how they got there in the first place remains to be answered.
Heck, I dunno. Doesn't seem to hang together in any respect, trying to make it hang together is impossible, but the time changes did seem fairly logical from what they said. ;-) The harder you think, the less sense it makes, which is usually a good sign of a bad movie.
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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I wonder if the primate stories are any good?
A) Fabulistic is a real word.
B) Even if Reality Master 101 was aware of that, it doesn't make their post all that funny.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
A) http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?fabulistic
Merriam-Webster's seems to accept it as an adjective.
B) I was trying to understand what was going through the moderator's head. Either they thought it was a joke (in which case a rater weak one), or they felt it was serious (in which case both they -- and you, are wrong).
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
The idea that inbreeding is bad is mostly a myth. As the above poster mentioned, if bad recessive genes are possessed it's a problem, but it's otherwise perfectly fine. The dislike for inbreeding is a social taboo, not a biological imperative.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I was kind of wondering where the horses came from. Surely they didn't have any on the space station.
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For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
It's simple.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
The only remake I've seen that lived up to the original was Evil Dead 2...which was, for all intents and purposes a remake of Evil Dead - although they set it up as a sequel.
By the way: read the book. It's really good science fiction.
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"Thade. Agent Thade."
Hmm. The Apetrix...
They should have done a remake of the original book, which todays movie budgets and technology would allow. And they should have picked someone other than Tim Burton to make it. In the novel the apes lived in a futuristic society with advanced technology. That I'd pay $8 to watch. Instead, I've ordered the novel, and after I've read that I'll rent the original flick.
Mark Wahlberg is no Charlton Heston. Ugh.
This is my favorite review of the movie. "Meanwhile, even though we are supposed to be rooting for the humans, Wahlberg throws out one-liners about how awful and relatively inferior we are. 'The smarter we get, the more violent our world becomes,' he says with all of the intensity you'd expect from a mechanic telling you to pick up your car on Tuesday. Indeed, when Wahlberg needs to issue a Henry V style loin-girding speech a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart, he instead sounds like he's yelling at a driver who's about to take his parking spot."
I can't believe that he has the gall to say that there's not going to be a BIG movie of the summer, when Jay and Silent Bob Stike Back has yet to come to theaters. Screw all the rest of them...I am admittedly a *huge* Kevin Smith fan, and I think that this one is going to be his piece de resistance.
Unfortunately, he's also said it's going to be the last of his movies that features the dynamic duo of Jay and Silent Bob.
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Join my fight against Subway's new cut!
http://spine.cx/subway/
Though having Pericles land so smoothly right in the middle of the battle was of course a very big stretch.
Only the timing (to land during the battle) is a stretch. He woul dhave homed in on the same signal that Marky used to get back to the ship.
How is this established...?
The first planet he landed on had three moons. The last one had a continent that looked alot like North America. I think it is safe to say they are different planets.
tim burton is simply the worst directory there is... thats what i've preached for years and simply wont bother wasting 7bux on this moive
-- "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
That would be true to the spirit of the book. In the book on which these movies are all loosely based, our hero takes a long trip to a planet far away. He discovers that the humans on that planet did themselves in and were replaced by apes. Our hero breaks free and flies home only to discover that the same phenomenon independently happened here during his travel time. Incidentally, there wasn't any "time rift" in the book; every trip took centuries of real time but relatively little "ship time" due to relativity.
The sci-fi premise of the book is that it is natural for human civilization to destroy itself (think of the cold war mentality; many folks in the 50s through the 70s regarded a nuclear world war as pretty much inevitable) and gentle tool-using apes might be able to take over the reins.
Nowadays we know apes are about as warlike as people are, so the premise that ape civilization could be more fundamentally stable than human civilization, doesn't make much sense.
The Burton movie preserved the animal-rights aspect (arguing that it's wrong to exploit near-human species) but extended the argument to genetic manipulation and didn't focus so much on civil rights allegory.
Some of the movie reviewers were looking for a civil rights statement and disappointed not to find one. I'd rather take the example of that little girl being used as a pet literally. Baby chimps _are_ used as pets, while adult chimps are too dangerous to have around. The essence of the animal-rights argument is that it's morally justified to treat animals as you would treat a human being, and that to treat them otherwise is equivalent to engaging in slavery.
With that in mind, a lot of scenes make more sense. The youngsters throwing rocks, the human organ-grinder assistant, and the caged kid all fit that mold; we are invited to see these things from the animal's point of view.
I play Nerd-Folk!
I agree with most of the problems you mentioned. However, I just wanted to comment on the apparent problem of artificial gravity. When I was watching the movie, it hit me immediately, so much that I even started to stare at the actors' feet to see if they were wearing anything that could be construed as magnetic boots. But anyway, I thought about it for a little longer, and it occurred to me that it may be conceivable that since the Oberon is orbiting Saturn, assuming that it was oriented correctly, it could be positioned in the right orbit for a sufficiently apparent gravitational field aboard the station. I started to try to do some calculations in my head, but then I had to stop myself so I didn't miss any of the movie. =P
--A
Yeah, you got me there. I wasn't quite thinking clearly, apparently... It's a good thing that I haven't gotten my physics Ph.D. yet. =)
*But*, after some calculations, I can still partially salvage what the movie showed. If the Oberon was sufficiently long and pains were take with thrusters to keep it so it was perpendicular to the surface of Saturn, then the distance between the part of the station that we saw and the center of mass of the station would result in an acceleration that might function as an apparent gravitational field.
However, of course, from the relative scale of the pods and the size of the ruins, the Oberon was probably not of sufficient length (not to mention that IIRC the setup they showed, the apparent gravitational field would have been in the opposite direction).
--A
Has anyone asked/answered this question? Most of his viewpoints never seem to agree with the general populace here (at least from what I have seen), so what is he doing telling us what we will/wont like?
God forbid opinions differ. And god forbid I ever be considered one of the general populace of slashdot.
ObReview: corny eye candy. i had to suspend my disbelief of the dubious parts (like the indestructable ship's bridge), but marky mark's acting job made it all that much harder. final fantasy had better eye candy for its vapid plot.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Hmm. It's worth watching the first one just for Heston - a truly magnificent performance. Makes you proud to be human.
Plus, the original film had an ending that hurt - and I'm not even American.
~Cederic
* Abraham Lincoln was a republican...
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But I can see absolutely no purpose to pulling that word out of his butt, and nothing in the context signals any "playfulness" with language.
Unfortunately for you, "fabulistic" is a real word.
Or, rather, "fabulist" is a real word, and "fabulistic" is a reasonable English use of the noun as an adjective.
For all Jon's faults, he at least owns a dictionary. Perhaps you should invest in one.
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* We know he's going forward through time, about 600+ years, and yet the monkeys have evolved dramatically (into other species infact) over that time period.
Why is every single person who responds to this review assuming that the modified apes were the only ones present on the planet?
Has it crossed no-ones mind that the modified apes could have bred with unmodified apes, producing offspring that resembled the unmodified species but with higher intelligence, strength, etc.?
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I think I may have figured it out. The General was locked in the space station's bridge when the dude left. In a way, I think you are probably expected to assume he stays there forever. However, what if he got out? See, there is one shuttle still left on the planet--the one at the bottom of the lake! What if Tahde got out and figured out how to fix it? Or what if it wasn't even really broken? The thing should be able to withstand quite a lot given that it works in space and all. So, if Thade got that ship out and popped in for a ride, he might have ended up in that storm and flew back in time hundreds of years and landed on earth.
In fact, now that I think about it some more, there is also one little chimp on the planet of the apes that knows how to fly those things too.. The test pilot!
I think that if there is a sequel, this would be the only explaination possible. And it fits with the facts of the movie.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
CaLiMa is what the Apes refer to the ship's reckage as. I have a sign on the corner that says my street name. It's still a SIGN denoting a place or an object. It in itself is not the place or object.
± 29 dB
When Leo (Mark) goes into the wacky space vortex the first time, you see him go past the other pod, spinning out of control. That tells me Pericles' ship lost power for a bit too.
± 29 dB
I don't get your point about the ending screwing over anybody thinking of making a sequel. It seems to be a perfect setup to have a sequel where the apes are running modern day America. To me, the ending flat out didn't make sense and that the only reason they did it, shock value aside, was to make room for a sequel.
Has anybody seen any sites or reviews that try to explain the ending? I'm really curious to make some sense out of it, and if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears. Leo goes to the future and battles Thade's army. Then Leo comes back to relatively modern time, and the monument inscription refers to Thade. I could've dealt with him coming back and finding the Earth ruled by apes, but for them to specifically refer to Thade, who was from the future, really baffles me.
Ya know, as I was typing this, I thought of a possibility. Thade wasn't dead at the end of the flick, he just kind of sat down in defeat after not being able to escape the ship. Since the ship still has power, maybe he found some way to get out in one of the pods, then just like Leo, he went back in time, even further back than Leo did, and that's how the apes came to rule Earth. Hmmm....
Other observations from the movie:
Cheers,
Heh, I also thought it was really cold for him to just up and take Pericles's pod and leave him stranded there.
Cheers,
I don't want to give the MPAA any more of my money. Can someone fill us in, how did the first one end? How does this one end?
Reality has a liberal bias
a) The ending
b) Where did they get horses?
c) If I were the spaceman about to get in a pod, and Estella Warren was standing over there, I would've said "Hey, I've got room for two in here".
~dlb
Thank you for being anal. We need more quality people like you.
~dlb
As long as I can strike a nerve with the over-caffienated, the under-sexxed, and in your case, the over-critical and excessive on the cheesy cliches, I consider my postings to be satisfactory.
I find that the ones who dish out a lot of picky criticism are the ones who can't seem to take it.
~dlb
I noticed that several apes looked disturbingly close to a sneering Sandra Bullock.
Leaving a planet and not taking Estella Warren with you should be a crime.
I wanted so badly to yell at the screen:
Hey Leo! There's a blonde hottie standing over there who's two seconds away from grabbing your junk. What's your hurry to get back to earth? Giddyup.
I say he deserves to get stuck on an Earth full of apes.
~dlb
Wahlberg. Get your teen heart throbs straight!
And I don't think Katz was implying that younger people can't appreciate the original film, since he even said or implied that it is still a popular rental today (I, too, am 22 and have seen it 3 or 4 times).
______________________________
rooooar
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rooooar
The ending was very close to the book's ending. A hell of lot sillier, but still on target.
In the book, the hero escapes from planet, makes his way back home and lands, and is met by a lone figure on the tarmac. The last words of the book: "He was an ape."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You maniacs! You screwed it up! God, damn you all to hell!
And to those who have never seen the REAL PotA, please do yourself a favor and go see it. As soon as I found out that the """remake""" tore the guts out of the original, I decided I wouldn't be seeing it in the theater (and I won't, either!)
The suprise premise/ending is what makes the original PotA one of the BEST MOVIES EVER (no I won't spoil it!). Sure, the costumes look goofy and the movie is older than I am, but that doesn't change the fact that it is one of the BEST MOVIES EVER!
I guess I just have a thing for movies that involve the hidden premise of PotA. I wish I could tell you what it is without spoiling it for you! What a dilemma!
--=( HunterZ )=--
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Hmmmm. The big billboards around town (Vancouver, BC) show "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The magic begins Nov. 16"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
If the apes evolved from the monkeys that came from the crashed ship (sheesh...I figured that out in the first 10 minutes of the movie. No surprises there!), where did the humans inhabiting the planet come from? Or are these humans 'leftovers' from us destroying the planet?
Well the planet wasn't earth. And the Humans Came from the ship. But that doesn't explain the horses.
I don't beleive that the ship traveled through time. I think it just crashed while looking for Marky Mark. I also think pericles ascending after Mark could be passed off to randomness of the time travel storm. Though having Pericles land so smoothly right in the middle of the battle was of course a very big stretch.
I want to know why the monkey landed great on the frist try and Mark got it wrong twice. Also how fucking close must that planet have been to earth? You figure that someone from earth could have just shown up to rescue the people from the crashed ship. Esp since their beacon was working.
Yes Jon Katz is a professional writer!
13th paragraph down...
Dahlberg, who seems ill at ease in this movie and is flat throughout, simply wants to get home.
Well he could have slipped worse and said "Marky Mark, who seems ill..."
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Check out my blackbox styles
I was very impressed with the original Planet of the Apes as a major part of it was about evolution vs religion. For the day (and even today) that would of raised quite a storm.
I haven't seen the movie yet but, out of interest, can someone tell me if they've kept that as a major aspect or is it all now about Freedom ala BattleField Earth?
It's turtles all the way down.
You need to look closely at the clock on the spacepod as he travels through time. (we won't even get into why that makes no sense) But We started in 2029. Marky Mark Goes through a time-unstable LIFO wormhole and end up 400 years int the future at a distant world. Perecles Went in first so he came out last. The Mothership went in last so it came out first, crashed and the apes take over. Now to my point: If you look at the clock on Marky Mark's spacpod on the return trip, The last date you see is 21xx which means he is 100 years into OUR earth's future. This being the case, and assuming that the only genetically engineered apes in the universe were not on Marky's Mothership, would it not be conceiveable that the genetically engineered apes on earth could have a revolution as well? Could this be a anti-genetic manipulation theme. And Yes I realize I'm reaching. But my logic filters demand satisfaction.
To tell the truth, I thought Ace Ventura: Pet Detective had more of a shock ending than Shawshank Redeption or the 6th Sense ... tell me you didn't get the idea that Willis was dead throughout 6th Sense?
I'm trying to think of better examples of shock endings though without much success.
What Lies Beneath had a little shocker toward the end, I'd day. There's a movie about Voodoo / Santeria starring Charlie Sheen ("The Believers"? I dunno English title, saw it only in German) which has what I thought was a pretty gruesome shocking ending. And unlike Angelheart, it was much less strongly hinted at. Angelheart though -- YOIKS! Scary movie.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Well, No, I didn't really think AV:PD had a shocker ending, but I'm just saying I didn't think 6th Sense or Yawnshank Resumption (sorry ... I wanted my money back after that one;) )had endings that were at all surprising. Not that the details were known in advance, but the actual ending was just one of several plausible scenarios, no real disconnect.
I was just kidding about AV:PD! (But Jim C. does make me laugh, banal as many people find his physical comedy.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'm not sure if you remember, but the opening scenes showed at least one orangutan. They weren't all chimps. Sure, they didn't show gorillas. We can just assume that they were there... I think it was pretty obvious that the humans came from the Oberon. They had a shared genesis. My question is why they couldn't just program a computer to go into the nebula instead of using monkeys. Kinda silly. As I told my friends who were trying to figure out the ending: The ending is not supposed to make sense. The ending is supposed to shock. It was probably tacked on last week when they were scrambling to complete the movie (they made 7 endings, apparently). In any event, it's supposed to show that a)time travel is weird and b) Marky Mark is a moron for wanting to go back to his ship which is obviously going to just crash c) Marky Mark is only thinking about himself and that is BAD Invicta{HOG}
end up 400 years int the future at a distant world
..not quite right.
but that can't be right either, because Ari said, when they were at the ruins at "ca li ma" (ha !), that the ruins were thousands of years old..
which brings me to another point.. if those apes are supposed to be so superior to humans, then why haven't they, in the thousands of years they've been there, invented the things that we as humans invented in the mere 2000 or so years we've been here? and if they hated humans so much, then why did they take on so many of the habits and customs and vices that humans have ? they look like ape-ized people (which yes, i realize there are people under those costumes.. but i never knew that apes grew body and facial hair so similar to the way humans do. heh...
Insert mind here.
yes, i know the world didn't begin on his birthday.. i guess i was just trying to point to the 2000 years of modern history when we've done interesting things.. though certainly the innovations prior to the start of that 2000 year span are quite noteworthy too. Either way, we've got the apes beat pretty good, eh? But also, I thought one of the reasons that primates other than humans didn't speak is that something to do with their larynxes weren't developed correctly for speech as we know it. Course i may be hallucinating, who knows...
Insert mind here.
> But why in every review he does of every movie is he downing it?
Trust me, he's right on this. It's a very bad movie, only worth seeing for the excellent ape-makeup/suits.
--
Jim Buchanan
Jim Buchanan
Heston's speech regarding the handgun is about human nature, not guns. Yes, Heston is an NRA bigwig. Heston is very opinionated on the subject of guns. If you'd ever read his writings on that subject, though, you'd discover that his speech surrounding the handgun was totally orthogonal to his gun-control beliefs.
Heston's speech was about the dangers of human nature; that it is human nature to develop ever-better tools, and to apply those ever-better tools to the task of killing things. This isn't hyperbole; it's fact. Every time we invent something new, it's only a matter of time before someone looks into how to use it for military purposes.
That's what Heston's speech in the remake was about. Beware humans, for they are hardwired to build and to destroy--and to build things which only exist to destroy.
I enoyed most of the movie, except the ending. The ending made no sense. I went with three other people and none of us could reason it out. I've talked to other people online and have come up with three explanations, but none make complete sense.
1) Somehow he really went into the future instead of into the past and the apes were somehow able to evolve further and just happened to make washington look like it does now.
There are a bunch of holes with this one, but it thought i would post it at least.
2) The storm cloud also allowed to travel through dimensions and he went to another dimension where apes ruled.
Okay, this one is even funnier than the first one.
3) The general was able to use the technology from the ship and construct some kind of spacecraft, go through the storm before the main character could get back and conquered earth before he arrived.
This one makes more sense, but there is less proof of it.
What do you think?
You mean tidal forces? Maybe, I suppose. But if the station is that long, why wouldn't they just rotate it slowly?
(But then, if we're going to analyze it to these lengths, why wouldn't they just operate their probe ships by remote control instead of apes?)
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Orbits, by definition, are in free-fall.
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I am amazed that *anybody*, including the /. crowd, thinks for a second that Charlton Heston's lines literally meant "people should not have guns".
Didn't you guys pay attantion to ANY of the other words in that scene?
Heston's character says that "with guns in the hands of humans, our strength is no longer an advantage" and goes on to say that the apes will no longer be able to enslave the humans.
Get it? Does ANYBODY get that? He is saying that guns are the EQUALIZER that will allow humans to break the bonds of slavery.
How does EVERY person *paid* to review movies miss 90% of the important stuff?
I agree with the AC above, this was not a "remake" it is a wholly new movie that could have been done better. (I liked it anyway)
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First item: It is a work of fiction!
Second item: Ape species variety puzzle.
Answer: Genetic engeering side effects.
The genetic engineering of the chimps included key genes from several other ape species that allowed for RAPID ape variety when the chimps broke free from the humans and were able to reproduce naturally, without "impurities" being destroyed.
Did you note the extreme LACK of variety in the apes in the movie? Where were the spider monkeys, etc? I only counted chimps, orangutans and gorillas, no others (might have missed some).
The lack of diversity in humans was probably to the lack of diversity of the ship's crew.
Ending: Thad (the ape general, whatever his name was) had a momument to him in the "future" because HE became a myrtar after being "jailed for life" in the ship. Legend developed and the apes took over the earth after they got guns (note that all of the DC ape cops had guns at the end), thus being able to re-enslave all humans.
Now, someone else work on the horsey problem? I will never figure that one out.
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The ending does work if flipperboy's theory is applied.
The middle is still a mess with unexplained horsies. Where did the horsies come from!?
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The ending is from the origonal BOOK by Pierre Boule.
The origonal *movie* is NOTHING LIKE the book.
This movie has NOTHING to do with the origonal movie and little to do with the origonal book.
All 3 are works of fiction, thus explaining the horses in the most recent movie.
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At last! A post that makes perfect sense!
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The book was about european class differences.
This movie is a retelling of the book, not a re-doing of the last time the book was torn to shreds.
This movie is good, but a different "good" from the first and at least nods at the book, something the first movie ever did.
Why are so many people so dedicated to the first movie? It followed almost othing from the book and was hobbled by crappy tech and a low budget?
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With that out of the way, you're right. This movie is chock full of plot and scientific holes. My favorite is:
When he comes out of the storm at the end of the movie he is travelling past Saturn. Two or three seconds later he's crashing on earth. Holy hell that's a fast little ship he's got there! That's about 1.2billion kilometers. Hmm...even if it took him a whole 3 seconds, that'd be about twice the speed of light. ---Zooom---
Of course a discussion on all the technical problems with this film would take more typing than anyone on slashdot probably wants to do. :)
Ender
Nothing to see here
The survivors of the Oberon crash were subsequently attacked and killed by the enhanced monkeys from the ship. I believe the humans in the movies were the decendents of some Oberon humans who managed to escape the monkeys and live primitively in the forest.
Aside from numerous other inconsistencies/impossibilities, I think it is reasonable to assume that after 600 years worth of living in the forest on the run from intelligent apes, humans wouldn't have much tech left.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong [apologies to Miller...]
Ender
Nothing to see here
Consider the situation before he left for "home:"
He comes "home" not to the 2100's, but to present-day America. He is greeted with weapons drawn and flashbulbs popping. He is different, and how is he treated? Isn't this exactly what we would do?
Welcome to our world (the audience's world), where we believe we have already solved these problems.
Have we?
What's wrong with fabulistic? That's a completely promulent word.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The ship is Ca-Li-Ma btw.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
That's not the point. I mean, if you want to nitpick, you could say it's not "Ca Li Ma" it's
Ca
Li
Ma
but not, the dashes are just to indicate association between the separate parts.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
...A Beowulf cluster of statues of liberty?
Comes out in wide(r) release on August 3, in case you'd like to see something good before your Kevin Smith movie comes out.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
But why in every review he does of every movie is he downing it? This movie wasn't intended as a remake. Sure, they pay homage to the originals, but how could that be avoided? It shouldn't be *compared* as it's not the same animal. Pardon my bad humor.
I've seen all of the oldschool Apes movies. And I plan on seeing this one as well. But, unlike our lofty reviewer here, I plan on crediting it on it's own merits. I would advise anyone else who watches it to do the same thing.
I went to see Planet of The Apes on opening night. Because I liked the original movies, but mostly because I'm a big Tim Burton fan : he's my favorite director. But in planet of the apes, Tim seems lost in all this technology and none of it bears the distinctive Burton mark that we have grown to love in Sleepy Hollow or the Batman series (I and II). It just didn't feel right. Sure, the jungle was nice, the city too. But everything else seemed out of place for a Butron movie. It seems to me that Burton maybe is not the director to choose for sci-fi movies, even tough he did he great job in Mars Attack. Mars Attack at that wackiest touch that Burton had always had fromt he caracters to the objects like the alien guns. In planet of the Apes, Burton seems to have fallen to the false premise that everything in the future has to be slick and white. The worst part of the film in my opinion is truly the beginning, and there's that time travelling thing that I really did buy at the beginning **** SPOLIER ALERT **** and that travelling back to his time trough the same portal at the end, seems too stupid to be coming from a Burton movie. This director makes intellingent movies. When a scene looks strange, it's because it's meant to. **** SPOLIER ALERT END **** The acting is good, but what I really missed in this movie was dialogue. Human dialogue. I know this movie isn't all about humans, mostly about apes, but I didn't feel there was much interaction betweem humans, except running away and fighting apes. I was exceping better from a Tim Burton movie. But at least, the ending, which has Tim Burton written EVERYWHERE on it, is probably the best part of the movie, only surpassed by the fact that I could finally get out of the theater and move on.
"The answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is... 42"
in one of the original movie, some scientist suggested that the different planes of our parallel universe was like two peices of mirror, reflecting each other's image, what happened in one plane will affect the other, so its theoretically imposible for a time travller to go back to his original time and space.
for this new movie, the only difference was that the EM storm transported him to a "different" planet.
imagine that we are all decendants of not our forefathers but of our great-great---.....grandson...like a never ending loop
the story is just mind boggling.
I've gotten to the point of almost enjoying Katz's reviews because they are so orthogonal to my reasons for viewing a movie and yet they help me to see how other peoples' minds may approach the issues involved in modern entertainment.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I haven't yet seen the movie, but I'm told this ending is a lot more in tune with the original book the movie is based on.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'd like to follow up on this ending discussion -- I saw the movie and loved the ending. It doesn't feel complete, of course, but that's never been a requirement for a good movie in my mind. My only change would have been to end the movie as he entered the earth's atmosphere, leaving you thinking that everything's ok, but not knowing for sure. The rest of the ending could have been used as the preview for the sequel ...
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
You can't live up to nostalgia. This movie proves it, but any of the negatives people are whining about would be on the Standard Blockbuster Disclaimer agreement theatres should have you sign before you watch anyhow (I promise I will not expect anything too deep, etc ...) The ending, which everyone seems to be complaining about is really a nod to the old series. That was the camp .. neccessary; the original stands the test of time, but find me a fan who won't admit camp was part of the series.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Incidentally, exposing racism for the ugliness that it really is was part of the original brilliance of the movie. These days, I think people are more tired of the equality issue than anything (as demonstrated by the recent resurgance of neo-racist and neo-sexist punchlines in comedy and advertising), so the thing that made the original so effective and head-slapping is responsible for making the message in the remake sound strained and cliched.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I don't think it was suppossed to be a wormhole, but rather a "time storm" of sorts. I also don't think Katz was right in saying "gets lost in a nebula". This "time storm" sent people to various point in time (and various different realities of time--hence the apes in the 21st century). Perecles & Marky Marky, followed the same course (for the most part) into the storm. They were not sent backwards or forwards in time until they hit one of "pink lights". The difference in when they get to planet can be explained in the fact that the time storm didn't send them to a specific time.
In the end, Marky Mark ends up in an alternate reality o the planet Earth. The whole story take place on Earth (like the original). The planet of the Apes is Earth.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Where did the non-monkeys on the planet come from? If they only had chimps on the ship, and not so many people...
1. Why are there all species of ape on this planet?
When was the last time two monkies bred and produced a Gorilla? Uhmmm... never!
2. Why are there all distict races of people on this planet?
If they were truely all descendants of the original crew, much more uniform tribe
--Mike--
Let's not forget the 5 second trip from Saturn to the new and improved Earth, too. That's one hell of a rocket pod.
Ford can be a great Jack Ryan. It's just that Clear and Present danger sucked. Try Patriot Games for a much better Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan film.
The questions I had:
1) Why was Thade remembered as good? (The "Ape Lincoln" statue? Everyone hated him in the end, and he presumables dies where he's left.
2) Where are the horses from?
(More of a questioning commentary) I thought it was a different planet, as the station listed it at "uncharted." I figured the "thousands of years old" were them not knowing any better.. ie carbon dating, etc. Thus, the whole ape version of the US didn't sit well with me. I wondered how that worked. Thinking it was a different planet, I thought the ending (after he passed up the SURE THING!!!! and left the planet) ruined the plot for earlier. While not the biggest twist in history, I liked the new take on it with the space station "supplying" the apes, and other than the ending, thought it was a pretty decent flick overall. Heck, just chop off the movie where he flies away, leave everything else in doubt, and it's a better ending (with more flexibility for sequels...)
There was at least a baby orangutan on the ship.
It's a generational thing, admittedly, of no importance to anybody under 30, who can go see the movie with less baggage.
This is plain wrong, Katz. I am 22 years old and Planet of the Apes is one of my favorite sci fi films. I certainly had said baggage when watching Burton's film and I know many of my peers (and younger) carried the very same. The original is a classic that everyone should see.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
I thought the main plot twist was very creative.
But everything else about this movie screamed "stupid". Dialogue was especially insipid. I was hoping Marky-Mark would get it on with Helena, just to get people up and out of their seats, to liven things up. I really think Tim Burton's best movie was Betelgeuse...sad he has gone downhill since then.
Do geek reviewers have a Review-o-Matic in the background somewhere they can just turn on, enter "remake", and leave it to do its thing?
If you can't judge a film on its merits, don't bother reviewing it. All I want to know as a moviegoer is was it any good.
I'm pretty sure I saw at least one orangutan in those cages during the beginning of the movie. Also, one could argue that the genetic engineering they had done on the apes caused different species to emerge later -- but that's a bit of a stretch.
Free Hans!
I saw the movie oneping night, and personally, I was very impressed, and I reccomend it to anyone. Mind you, its is obviously not a mind-bender, nor does it follow the original plot, as it is not a remake of the original, as Burton has said many times. Its more of a "Burton's take" on the story. And a cool one at that.
2. Ending - how can the future effect the past? As I understand it the majority of the movie takes place in the 27th century (or something like that). So at the end when he goes back to the 21st century how can there be a memorial to General Thade when he doesn't exist until the 27th century?
I believe the idea is that after Wahlberg leaves the planet, Thade finds a way to escape, and eventually regains power among the apes and conqueors the humans... And he (somehow) uses the ship's technology (and the gun) to set the apes along a line of technological and cultural development that is exactly parallel to humans'.
I don't think the movie is that bad. If you go to every movie expecting to see something mind-shatteringly good, then you'll be dissapointed alot. It is worth keeping in mind that I don't have the baggage that goes along with the *original* planet of the apes, but I think the show was pretty good... It didn't have any major plot holes. It's feasable that in the future computers are developed that could last thousands of years... why not? Also, as for the horses... parallel evolution? It all depends on wether you're looking for reasons the movie is bad or you're looking for (semi)-believable explainations. It is sci-fi.
1. The apes came from the monkeys. So where did the horses come from on the planet?
\
The "other" planet was earth... the horses weren't killed off by whatever killed off most of human society.
2. Ending - how can the future effect the past? As I understand it the majority of the movie takes place in the 27th century (or something like that). So at the end when he goes back to the 21st century how can there be a memorial to General Thade when he doesn't exist until the 27th century?
The "ending" was earth again... but it was showing an alternate timeline in which Leo never showed up to overthrow the apes. It was showing what ape society would eventually evolve into.
Was I the only one to find Charlton Heston's scene absolutely hilarious? There were maybe a few muted chuckles in the audience, and I don't think even half of the audience even caught the fact that there was a HUGE joke there. (It's a joke thirty years in the making)
I couldn't help myself and I was almost going to bust wide open laughing. My friend sitting next to me almost lost it, too, which I'm sure didn't help my laughter. That's my fondest memory of that movie.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
"Personally, I'm surprised Thade didn't off himself accidentally"
Yeah, that kinda bugged me. There he is firing shot after shot, bullets ricochet all over the place and not a single entry wound. I was just waiting for the overly used bullet in the forehead, between the eyes.
"You like Chinese food." -Fortune Cookie
I'm hard pressed to come up with any remakes that live up to the original. It's because it's always a derivative work, the original having a strong bering in the screen writers mind the whole time. No doubt the inspiration for the original came from a different source, perhaps a variety of sources. Unless the new version is inspired of the same sources, it's doomed to just seem like a shallow replica of the real thing.
Blender And Linux Fan
He was in a supposed "electromagnetic storm". How can you trust his instruments at all? ;-) Furthermore, no creature of that size can jump like those apes in the movie. That's what I found the most incredible.
-----
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Great sets, great acting...but why did they have to go out of their way to mess up the story?? (Spoilers below) In the book, for those of you who didn't read it---or even knew that it existed--the hero travels with his crew in a slower-than-light spaceship to another planet. Once on the other planet, he goes straight into the ape-safari where apes are hunting humans in an uncomfortable parody of humans hunting animals. Hijinks ensue. During his discoveries, he discovers that the alien planet was once dominated by humans, but that hundreds or thousands of years ago they grew stupid and that apes took their place as the dominant species. The hero is finally able to return to earth. Remember--it's slower than light travel, so when he returns home hundreds of earth-years have actually passed. When he returns, he is greeted on the landing pad by a bunch of apes. The human devolution and ascendancy of apes has repeated itself on earth. Irony. Curtains close, music swells. The End. In this version, unfortunately, they start out begging the question: why do they truck chimps and researchers out to Jupiter--the chimps don't seem ready for production use yet... Then there's a time-space warp that blew over from the Star Trek universe. I was able to reasonably suspend my belief throughout the movie--the Oberon?s super chimps came through the time-space warp hundreds or thousands of years before the hero (o.k., so there?s not a 1:1 mapping in the time aspect of the warp, even though the space warp component must be stable) and then displaces the native humans on this planet. OK, although it begs the question: Why would the Oberon research ship venture into this anomaly after seeing two of its ships disappear? Now, the hero gets back into his ship and returns to Earth and...what the hell? It's twentieth century Earth with monkeys in police cars and there's no longer Abe in the Lincoln Memorial but General Thane (the uber-monkey from the Planet of the Apes). This ending not only destroys the symmetry of the original book but left me scratching my head. WTF? Why are there now monkeys in twentieth-century Earth? The only thing that I could figure out is that this must be a parallel universe where monkeys (o.k., maybe I should ammend that to "a different species of monkey") seem to have recapitulated the development of twentieth-century civilization.... Why do people have to dumb everything down for today?s movie watcher. Maybe the guy next to me had the right idea: he brought a couple of cans of Colt 45 with him.
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
Let's see, Mark Wahlberg's character crash landed twice in the movie and the monkey he disobeyed orders for landed with such perfection? I perssonally felt the monkey made a better actor/pilot by the end of the movie.
Mark Wahlberg has grown since his days of being Markie Mark. Call this movie what you will, but don't deny that it's brought some of his good acting abilities out to the forefront.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Here's a plot hole that actually woke me up the night after the movie (there are others I'll admit, but this one stood out).
The apes evolved from the genetically enhanced trained apes aboard the Oberon in about a thousand or so years. It's a stretch but I'll suspend disbelief for that. The humans are apparently descendents of the survivors from Oberon who survived the initial ape attack. Sure, OK, I'll accept that with reservations.
The question no one seems to ask is:
WHERE DID THE HORSES COME FROM?
You can't expect me to believe they just happened to have a couple horses aboard the Oberon. Most people missed this one because, well, there were horses in the original movie so it's normal for them to be here in this one. But Tim set this on some other planet than Earth (I was led to assume it was some terraformed moon of Saturn since opening scenes looked to have Oberon orbiting Saturn. We won't go into the obvious problems of a cold airless moon out by Saturn turning into a verdant jungle world in a thousand years).
ChodaBoy
ChodaBoy
- The preceding statement is the product of a deranged mind and the sole property of the voices in my head.
Finally, when given the opportunity, they want to remake the movie in their own vision, and in many cases with new technology. The upside is that the originals are usually so great, that even bad movies introduce and inspire younger people to see the old version.
That may not be the intended effect, but it surely happens, and I believe will happen in this case. I'm 34. I used to have Planet of the Ape figures. I can't believe how many people who have told me, recently (because of the new movie) that they never saw the original.
Oh, and too add my two cents to the "why make remakes" threads - I think the modern "The Fly" blew away the old "The Fly". Of course the sequels were horrible, but then they were horrible back in the fifties, too.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Becuase the US released book is called "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone."
If you don't believe me, check out the US version of Amazon.
Very frequently British and US Publishers re-title books in an effort to make them more appealing to their market.
Check out Magic Firesheep!
They are on pre mamal earth. Ny crashing they destroyed our history. The humans you see are a mix of 1st humans and survivors (thus enlish) & thats why at the end when he lans @ earth its Apes. MUAHAHA
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
That is Aug. 3rd. That is your other chance for a good movie, btw. Imdb's RH2 Stuff. Just my $.02. Oh - POTA. I was really expecting total crap. I had read the Salon review that bashes it for a paragraph and then goes on to tell the history of the Apes series. I can not find that review. Oh well. Anyways, I also read the CNN review that bashed it all to hell. I thought the story was good enough to keep my attention for 2 hours, but had it got 2hrs, 2minutes - I woulda died. It really pushed to the end and quit. That to me is a good characteristic in movies. All and all - was worth the $5 student discount ticket.
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I read the book several weeks ago and found it to be very well-written and somewhat disturbing. And I was pleased to see, last night in DC's Uptown theater(DC residents will know how much buttock that theater prods), that some of the book was well-preserved in the film.
Several reviews I read seemed to disdain the ending as a cheap sequel setup. But I saw it as a good adaptation of the book's ending. The entire movie was good, though - highlights included the old rich orang and his young chimp wife, the references to the original (damn dirty human!), the apes themselves, the interspecies romance, and the rain of flaming monkeys. Sorry, apes. And the music was pretty good.
I really recommend the book - they've republished it with a cover that I don't like, but in paperback. Definitely worth the US$6.99 .
My prediction for this discussion: Original purists vs book purists vs people who loved this movie. Also, extended arguments about time and space and which planets were where when. My friends and I coudln't really come to a conclusion about that, despite an hour's worth of argument. I guess we'll just wait for the inevitable sequel (which I can't see as being as good).
Ooook.
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
1. That didn't bother me. I found it fitting. The gorillas in the book reminded me of Klingons, too.
-j2. Those humans were survivors of the Oberon, I think. That seems to make sense.
3. Well, yeah, but religion is a powerful thing.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
How do you suppose they have responded to the movie? "See, we'd better be nice to them!"
This makes me wonder. Do you suppose there were bonobos among the apes in the film, too?
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
That's a good point - in the book, certainly, the planet Soror has been inhabited by humans for millions of years. But I think ender is on the right track.
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
The chronometer rolls forward when he goes through the warp the first tiem and abckwards when he goes through again.
The ending is EARLIER in time then the rest of the movie.
GHiven that the only way it works is if, ina sequel, some gene-engineered ape or its descendent goes back through time.
(And yes this did happen in the original series... see "Escape from the planet of the apes".)
The Apes DIDN'T evolve. Its wasonly a few thousand years sicen the crash which is no time at all i nan evolutionary scale.
Rather, theyw ere gene splcied with hunmans for increased intelligence. In teh succeeding generatiosn more huamnt raist emerged.
it works, more or less.
Doesnt help save the film though.
If you add things totally outside the plot and toally unjustified by anything we've seen, like his chronomteter lying, you can make anything work.
Its clear from the movie that (1) he does go back in time and (2) he does return to earth at a tiem close enough to ours that Washington loosk identical.
ERGO, our own approximate rpesent has been changed, and the only way that can be explained is with yet another time-traveler....
Basic logic.
Its a ncie diea... unfortunately the back-spinning chronometer doesn't fit.
You have to keep in midn the time travel invovled here, he's on earth WELL before any of the POTA stuff took place...
Orangutangs, chimps, and all those other small monkies/apes are OK. But gorillas? Gorillas have never, to my knowledge, been used in any space program. Groillas would not bloody likely fit into those space pods or into those cages on the Oberon. Yet there they were. The gigantic human population I'll let slide even though it's ridiculous, but I can't excuse the including of a completely unlikely thing like gorillas in this movie/POS. The original was better, but even without comparison between the two Burton's is bad because it just doesn't make sense. Maybe a litle sense? No, not really. Gorillas?
-Pasty
Imagine a sex scene... Imagine the public uproar, and how hilarious/amazingly odd it would be to see... Anybody know if that supposed sex scene was cut out, never filmed, or just an internet rumour? It amuses me to no end.
-Pasty
Good god, I hadn't thought of that. Space horses? Maybe before hte Oberon crash horses were the dominant/only life form on hte planet and they too are enslaved by the apes. Maybe they can talk. Mr. Ed was an alien? It makes as much sense as an ape talking since neither have sophisticated vocal cords that can produce human sounds. I would have considered it a good movie if Tim Roths (awesome) character had said "Get your hooves off me you damn dirty horse!" at some point.
-Pasty
I think it says that caging them up and shooting htem into purple space storms is a Good Thing. I suppose the oppressed geeks were in a much greater supply than apes on the Earth of the future anyway.
-Pasty
I disagree with Katz - which I'm sure most will not find surprising - on the movie. Is the original? No. Nothing could match that. Of course, if the original were released now, I have little doubt that it would garnered only a fraction of the praise it did in the 60's (ignoring for the moment the special effects). The message of the original, in the 60's shook people. I was moved by the ending when I saw it the first time (at the tender age of 12) but I doubt my reaction was a tenth that of my parents when they saw it. But that's because of the time, the historical context.
So if you go into this movie expecting to find something like the original, but for today's audience, you won't find it. But only an idiot would go in expecting that I think. After all, even with all the various plagues affecting mankind today, not one of them inspires the kind of dread/fear/nevousness that the threat of nuclear war did 35 years ago.
I thought one of the strongest points of the movie is that it didn't try to be the original (except for going for the shocking ending, about which I'm somewhat dubious, but not nearly as critical of as Katz). I thought the plot, though not particularly inspired, was better fare than most sci-fi flicks of late.
Maybe I've had my standards lowered by the absolutely awful sci-fi offerings of late, but I came away from the movie pleasantly surprised. Is the film going to win an Oscar? No. Well, maybe Tim Roth will, who was quite execellent IMHO as Thade (he's so simian at times it's unnerving). Is it fun entertainment? Yes. The only better flick that I've seen this year was Memento (admittedly, a much, much better movie but unfortunately it seems to have been panned by 98% of the slop-eating public; if you haven't seen it, SEE IT). And I don't expect to see a better sci-fi flick this year (No, I'm not including LotR, that's fantasy).
So if you're not old enough to have seen the original in theatres, I'd say you're quite safe spending - at the very least - cheap night prices on this flick. I spent the painful full-price of CDN$12.50 on it and walked out satisfied.
Wood Shavings!
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Warf was the main Gorilla...so it's funny you think gorillas and klingons sound the same. Check the credits... :)
This movie went along with the plot of the book...unlike the original "Planet of the Apes." In the book, Taylor lands on ANOTHER planet, and in the end goes BACK to Earth where he is met by gorillas.
Sounds like you're really reaching for a way to get in the obligatory Katz insult...
what did you really expect????
Hey, you forgot the cameo in Scream 3 (they're on the studio tour and Jay hits on Gail Weathers) which served exactly no purpose whatsoever.
Cape Fear and The Thing are two remakes I can think of that were pretty decent
Okay, I'm not disagreeing that Hollywood is lame in a lot of ways, but I disagree with lumping this movie in as proof.
I don't believe that this movie was just your typical marketing rehash of an old cult hit. Tim Burton has done some good work (I'm personally a fan) and has established that he's a fan of cult and B movies. (Ed Wood, Mars Attacks).
So what if this attempt failed (though I liked it), Tim Burton is hardly someone who lacks vision and the ability to make an original movie.
Now if you want to start trashing Jerry Bruckheimer, be my guest.
...but, still, it's established that the PoA is not the same as the planet he landed on at the end.
It was not Earth. Note the following:
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
If it was not the Earth how does the Statue of Liberty end there?
Have you seen the *new* Planet of the Apes that just came out? The Statue of Liberty is not in it. This movie is not a retelling of the original story.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Has it crossed no-ones mind that the modified apes could have bred with unmodified apes, producing offspring that resembled the unmodified species but with higher intelligence, strength, etc.?
Well, let's assume that there were already apes on the planet. Exactly how modified would chimps (the only primates on the ship) need to be to mate with them naturally?
A more plausable theory is that of spontaneous, rather than gradual, evolution. It is possible that the chimps, exposed to a sufficiently different environment, could have evolved in a single, or very few generations.
I've heard this theory used to explain some of the apparently sudden stops/starts of related species evolving on earth.
While there are ways to explain away the problem, Burton made no effort to do so. It could have been done in a few seconds as part of the Oberion's logs, or during the father's deathbed speech. He should have know that people would have a hard time suspending disbelief. It's possible to explain away much of the apparent goofs in the movie if you want to spend time doing it, but it still screws up the movie if you have to sit there wondering "what the fsck?" while the movie moves on. Burton, or his writer, was just lazy about the science.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
- Starting the movie in 2029 isn't really a problem. But the technological leaps made in 28 years are staggering. Artificial gravity? Long-range, manned space flight? The Oberion (sp?) appears to be in orbit around Saturn, but it can't be unless the storm also moves you through space as well as time. The planet is not Earth (note the three moons.) So the planet isn't in our solar system.
- We know he's going forward through time, about 600+ years, and yet the monkeys have evolved dramatically (into other species infact) over that time period. Perhaps the Oberion went backwards in time when the storm hit it, but that seems unlikely and isn't supported by the Apes timeline.
- Are we to believe that enough people survived the crash of the Oberion and the slave rebellion of the monkeys that they could grow a human population that is "four times" that of the Apes.
- The ending makes no sense at all except to setup the inevitable sequel. I agree with Katz on this. It was shockingly stupid, even by comparison to the balance of the movie.
I did enjoy the movie and found it to be a welcome retelling. I think Wahlberg did a fine job in the lead. The story doesn't require the stereotypical hollywood hero actor. The character is clearly a reluctant hero, at best, and Wahlberg is well suited for it.Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
...at a buried Statue of Liberty? Somebody's gotta do it!
You're using her as bait, Master!
'nuff said.
You're using her as bait, Master!
What does this have to say about the way we mistreat our outcast geek-youth?
My point, however, regards the ending. I think Burton made this ending intentionally jarring and, well, stupid so that the audience could mentally edit it out. He was contractually obligated to leave room open for a sequel. He hates sequels. This ending thus says two things, IMHO:
Wait... oh yeah... there were actually five movies. Taken as a whole I'd have to revise my review of them from 'cheesy b-movie' to 'inexplicably shitty'.
I did see Tim Burton's version yesterday and felt it was better overall. That's not saying much, so I'll also include that I liked it.
Unlike the original I wasn't distracted by crappy costuming or set design. I wasn't distracted by the lead actor's cheesy delivery or bizarre personality. Finally, I wasn't distracted by an implausible and unexplained plot.
I think it's time to check the 'exclude Katz' box on my /. prefs...
"A matter of internal security, the age old cry of the oppressor" - Jean Luc Picard
Oh please do not mention 2001 on the same page as your old ape movie...
I *love* 2001, own the dvd and watch it about four times a year. It is the benchmark for science fiction in my opinion.
It was masterfully directed, had a plot that was grounded in science, was written by a certifiably masterful science fiction writer, had a great score, was groundbreaking for its time, didn't feature the shitty acting (if it can even be called that) of Charlton "More Guns In Schools Would Be Good" Heston, and its monkey suits managed to conceal the actors in them.
This has nothing to do with teenage males or length. I'm no teenager and I find hollywood's aversion to longer features one of the contributing factors in my indifference to the movie industry as a whole.
No, the original sucks. It brings out nostalgia from a certain age of people. That nostalgia may be clouding their judgement or that generation may just have shittier taste as a whole.
The fact remains: It sucked.
"A matter of internal security, the age old cry of the oppressor" - Jean Luc Picard
And then who would have said that he had to leave right then? I mean it's Estella Warren! Did marky marks balls get turned to pudding during the wreck? At the very least I would have spent a week there.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
I previewed this movie Thursday afternoon at the theatre that I work at. Unforturnately it was a beautiful day that I wasted on this film. The film wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. I wouldn't pay to see it though. Here are my thoughts:
1. The apes came from the monkeys. So where did the horses come from on the planet?
2. Ending - how can the future effect the past? As I understand it the majority of the movie takes place in the 27th century (or something like that). So at the end when he goes back to the 21st century how can there be a memorial to General Thade when he doesn't exist until the 27th century?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Very simply, How can there be at least 4 different spieces of smart ape, when the crash only contained 1 spieces of APE?
Explain that Tim *Totally unacceptable Plot* Burton.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
It was not earth so there could have also already been humans on the planet.
:)
They had primitive tech so I dont seem to think they are survivors of oberon.
Jeremy
True enough it is just too open ended and inconsistent to say xyz is right or wrong. This movie was almost there as far as greatness. But marky mark did a good job but honestly it just seemed that he was shouting at people at times and not acting with much passion or feeling. The ending.. well.. no comment. ;p
According to Fox's head of distribution, the ending wasnt' supposed to make sense -- it was just supposed to shock:
e ws .cgi?newsid996445283,25089,
http://www.comingsoon.net/cgi-bin/archive/fulln
In my mind that's bad moviemaking. His quote -- "you've got to remember you just watched a movie about talking monkeys in outer space. Don't look for too much logic, you know." -- is asinine. Just because a movie has supernatural elements doesn't give you carte blanche to violate premises established in the first 99% of the movie just to get a spectacular ending.
It would be like at the end of Star Wars, if everyone magically became invincible without explanation, and were able to defeat the death star.
Ralph
As far as I know, the movie will be shown at the Locarno film festival in the following days, and that sould be the international premiere. Locarno is located in southern switzerland, and as a giant (maybe the biggest in europe) outdoor-movie thather (around 10'000 seats). So if you are spending your holiday here around ... You can certainly find more information at this url
While "Planet of the Apes" unquestionably has one of the most shocking endings ever printed on celluloid, it's not the alone. For an equally shocking ending check out the classic 1980's comedy "Being There" with Peter Sellers. In it, Sellers plays a gardener who has lived his entire life with no human contact - except the constantly present television. However, he is forced out into the real world and somehow finds himself in the highest echelons of society, meeting the President and, unknowingly, describing the countries finances with simple gardening metaphors. (it makes sense in the movie!)
Anyway, at the end of the movie, at the funeral of Sellers' rich benefactor, he wanders off into the woods nearby. As we watch him play amid the trees, the politicoes at the funeral agree that he should be the next President. And then, the incredible happens, Sellers walks up to a lake...and walks across it, walking on the water. Anyone who has seen this film will agree that it's one of the most surpising and effective endings in film.
(And then there's the both surprising and uneffective ending of AI.)
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
"...either Burton or 20th Century Fox went for still another memorable ending to this Planet of the Apes. I suppose you have to admire their guts, and this one is also a jaw-dropper, but alas, mostly because it's so dumb."
You got that right! My suspension of disbelief was horribly murdered, never to return, after seeing that poor excuse for an ending.
Warning! Keep Out of Eyes! Wash Out with Water! Don't Drink Soap! Dilute! Dilute!
3) The general was able to use the technology from the ship and construct some kind of spacecraft, go through the storm before the main character could get back and conquered earth before he arrived.
This explanation is straight out of the transformers beast machines storyline.....I just wish the writer's for beast machines would get the credit for coming up with the solution to the age old question "how do we make a sequal if we have the good guy winning in the end of the first installment"
but seriously...this explanation is very viable. They didnt kill the general...they left him in an operation control room of the space station....we know there are atleast a couple of unaccounted for space pod ships, that might have survived the crash. -jef
No it isn't
Ca Li Ma is the sign
Caution
Live
Animals
with part of the lettering of each word obscured by dirt.
Sure, on the base level, "oh look, it's Chuck with a gun, ha ha. Damn dirty NRA." But look beyond that. Heston's message in the film is solely about the evils of the human race, and technology, personified in a rusted gun. In effect, Chuck is saying "guns are bad." And Thade's undoing is directly related to his desire to master the human technology, further reinforcing this. (Personally, I'm surprised Thade didn't off himself accidentally)
On a side note, it'll be interesting to see if the protest scene and the cross-species sex scene make it back into the director's cut.
Some of the later Planet of the Apes movies deal with a revolt by domesticated monkeys lead by a talking ape that came from the future. What if there is going to be a sequel to the new Planet of the Apes, but with a revolt of domesticated humans lead by a talking man from the past?
Yes it does work. He's still on a planet ruled by apes, isn't he? Did he go all the way back to his time, or did he fall short? Does his fancy clock really work, or does it need to go back to the shop?
Basically, I don't see how saying "Yes, he's on a planet filled with apes, but he went back in time so your idea doesn't work," actually invalidates my idea.
They should have casted Crarlton Heston (http://www.nrahq.org/administration/publications/ pres/index.asp) in this movie too.
;-)
Can you imegine a Beowulf cluster of his followers crunching the number of apes?
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
The effects were wornderful, but it was way to predictable, even the ending(s). There was actually two endings to this movie ... the real one, and the second one that burton tacked on the tail to thumb his nose as another poster pointed out.
This is a good movie, if a little predictable, and other than Shrek the only other watchable movie this summer I've seen (I have not watched AI yet).
Of other Sci-Fi movies of the periods that I think should be mentioned are the following.
Soylent Green (sp?)
The Omega Man
Both classics depicting dark futures and starring Charston Heston as the main character.
- subsolar
ITs not that General Thade loves Ari. He actually has contempt for her for being a human sympathizer, which is why he is capable of hurting her as he does. However, Ari's father is VERY powerful and if he marries her he gets that influence as well, thats why he pretends to love her.
Maybe what it's really meant to communicate is the question "How different are we from the apes?"
It's a pretty classic archetype, the hero who returns home, and finds it's no longer really home, that it is all that he despised abroad, and it's essentially the experience that a satirist is trying to give his/her audience: you've read my recasting of things, now how far, really, is your "reality" from it? And the original book was, I am told, a satire of sorts (not in the funny sense). Similar idea to the soldier who returns home victorious, only to be feared for his/her murderousness (seen, iirc, in this movie, when one of the humans shies away from an ape who just defended him); Similar, I think, to some of the sentiments in Gulliver's Travels (Swift- satirist again!); Similar to the real experiences, perhaps, of ocuntless people, eg (more crudely) Lawrence of Arabia.
Similar, even, for that matter, to the end of the Lord of the Rings (tho' I've never read it)
He who fights and runs away,
In 30 years, you'll be eagerly awaiting the remake of something else
Why is it that so much pop culture is regenerative or derivative of stuff from the past? It seems like all we get now are remakes/retreads of old movies, TV shows, character types, plots, etc.
Is it just that the media moguls want to make money off of nostalgic baby boomers, or what?
I'm very bored with all this, is anyone else?
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
I went to the movie quite excited, with almost no recollection of whether I had watched the original or not. The previews somehow screamed that I would get some juice. I got the juice in the costumes. . .In my opinion there was bearly a plot, and instead of a message, a cosmetic social commentary. The movie came across emotionless and I remember feeling a lingering empty space while watching it. I developed no attachement to the characters and could care less whether the Captn were to find his way home.
In short I must say a disappointment. I was especially perturbed (and I know some guys who thot this too) at how miraculously a woman fighting apes in the desert had time to pad and wax down her breasts and to put on red lipstick! I found Nova (the "human-lover") to seem to have more of a brain capacity and more entertaining than the woman (did they make her a blonde on purpose? so depressing!). Neither characters were as believable though.
I left the movie feeling less than entertained and only trying to figure out why they would make the replica of Washington just to make the point that he (the Captn) didn't really get home. {rant}Are we as humans so convinced that our ways of expression are so right that if this situation (apes evolving) were to really happen they would express themselves exactly as we had?{end rant}
Even if I did not watch the original, I would think somehow Tim Burton would think to let me in on the secret.
In the U.K., the first book in this series is known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and the movie version will have that title as well. How is that possible? Well, they're going to film any scenes that mention the "stone" twice: once with "sorcerer's" for the USA, and once with "philosopher's" for the U.K.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
--- .sig in order to have your advice
Hi! How are you?
I send you this
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I worked it out like this:
- Marky-Mark leaves Apeworld and flies "home".
- Without the distracting presence of MM, Thade is able to take over the planet again. The human revolution lasts about twenty minutes. A society of super-monkeys rules once again.
- Thade then gets bored, develops space flight (possibly by studying MM's crashed scout ship), goes through the time-space wormhole thingy.
- Due to a Plot Twist, Thade arrives on Earth in, say, 1750. He has enough time to mold the primitive Earth society into into a second monkey planet.
- By the time Marky-Mark shows up again, Thade has become revered as a hero in the monkey society.
Step 2) is optional.-Steve
still hoping for some sweet monkey lovin'
And in the end, we see our hero, watching the ruins of a great masterpiece before his eyes, go down to his knees while yelling out in ultimate outrage: "You finally really did it....... You maniacs! You blew it up! Ahhhh Damn you! God damn you all to hell!!".
No, I'm not talking about the final scene of the original movie. I'm talking about my reaction when I saw this new piece of crap version.
Oh, no no no... Third world countries don't really exist. Same with sweatshops. Those are just liberal fantasies. You don't see them on FOX, do you? See? They're just figments of the left-wing media.
2. If the apes evolved from the monkeys that came from the crashed ship (sheesh...I figured that out in the first 10 minutes of the movie. No surprises there!), where did the humans inhabiting the planet come from? Or are these humans 'leftovers' from us destroying the planet?
I assumed they were descendents of the humans on the ship, Marky Mark's crewmates... I figured the apes took over and made the people who were experimenting on them slaves.
Josh Sisk
__
Better watch the Simpson's Planet of the Apes
This is only a link to some pictures and sound bytes. THey are not mine but enjoy !!
This is the first time since "Voices from the Hellmouth" that I thought Katz was on anything less than crack. For the most part, on this movie, I agree with him. (Take beating here...)
He's too critical (as usual), but the points--likely generalizations about most modern movies--have merit. I agree and you can mod me any way you like!
About 30 minutes into the 6th Sense and it's all figured out--leaving only the slow entertained.
The Shawshank Redemption ends with the cast playing out their assigned and expected roles. No shocks expeced or recieved.
The Planet of the Apes ends as anyone would expect. It looks like earth, and has ape-things similar to earth's, but is desolate. We obviously nuked everything. If you think it's a shock to be in New York, go ahead...
As for meaning:
The 6th Sense is dry here.
The Shawshank Redemption's lessons are all standard "majority of americans agree" type lessons; few changes in opinion or view come from this.
The Planet of the Apes.... since we're all equal, roles can be reversed, and when done, it sucks--a verbose "do unto others". And, if we nuke the earth (plausible), it will suck--Oooh golly.
I almost forgot THE main point of Planet of the Apes.
As humans get smarter, they get more destructive.
I would say "more capable of destruction", but (here's the thing) less prone. Look at any conflict and tell me it wouldn't end if both sides really thought about it. It's biggest lesson is 60's era sophestry.
Katz hated it. I'll go watch it.
I saw originals movies when they were re-aired on TV years ago. That Planet of the Apes had a good plot with thought and irony.
The trailors to this one were enough to disturb me. They seemed to shift the focus all on to "action," violent and otherwise; like many movies of the last decade or so, the trailor reminded me of the beginning of the Transformers cartoon, lots of stuff zooming around with flashes of violence. It was as though the the plot and implications had been thrown-out and all the influence placed on flashy effects and "exciting" action (that has become so cliche as to not to excite anyon anymore). OK, maybe the concept is well known, but if nothing is added to that.... it is though the these movies are being produced for (and often by) a culture that has been conditioned to find fast action and flashy effects as *THE* basis of enjoyment, yet is so habituated to them that they can never have enough or be really satisfied (so just lay it on more and more, "when everything feels like the movies").
The original was not an action movie, it had no hint of that style, and I think no intention of it. It was a story with a plot, a lot of points, and good use of irony. The trailors give the impression of a movie that rips of the Planet of the Apes name and setting to make proffiteering sequal, and cheapnes the whole idea in the process.
The trailors sold me on NOT seeing this moving long ago.
I watched POTA last night with my girlfriend, and I couldn't hardly stay awake. I don't think it has the same feel as the first at all, or is as powerful.
A. Fabulist is a word. Fabulistic is not, unless you believe that "adjectivising" any noun is proper. The Reality Master is seldom wrong in matters of grammar.
B. The Reality Master does not pick the moderation.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A) According to my Websters Unabridged dictionary, as well as the admittedly lesser dictionary.com site, it is not. Unfortunately, I don't have an OED handy to get the definitive reference. To tell you the truth, though, making it an adjective doesn't even really make much sense. Take Katz' sentence: "And the opening 10 or 15 minutes are promisingly fabulistic. Given the definition of fabulist, what is this supposed to mean? Promisingly like one who tells a fable? Promisingly like a movie written by a liar? Promisingly dishonest? Merriam-Webster doesn't even bother to tell us what the adjective sense even means, which tells me that some dictionary editor somewhere saw the word and decided to throw it in without even knowing what it means.
B. I didn't think it was funny either, but I still think I'm right.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Katz is a professional writer, right? I mean, one of the rules of writing is that you can break rules when it serves a purpose in the writing. But I can see absolutely no purpose to pulling that word out of his butt, and nothing in the context signals any "playfulness" with language.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What are the odds that another planent, not only has inhabitants that are exactly like humans physically; but those inhabitants speak English? Yet, it seems that the astronauts never even suspect that they are on earth. Never mind that the mystery plantent is exactly like earth in: gravity, atmosphere, sun, moon, temperature, bodies of water, vegatation, animals, and so on. But when human inhabitants speak English . . . I dunno, just seems like you might get a clue.
As if we needed another intelligent species on the planet for human slavery to exist on this planet. Think the message that "slavery is evil" is quaint in the 21st century? It still exists, meaning some still don't get it .
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Do you actually believe that any story you have seen in the past 100 years is original in its plot? From Star Trek's 19th century ship theme, to Star Wars' cookie cutter hero mythology, to the Jungian ideas in the Matrix, it's all being retold in one way or another.
The only thing bringing some of us down is that this same one has been retold twice in our lifetime. While I was around in the 70s to see the originals the first time, I can still take this story as both something new and familiar, and still enjoy the differences. I wonder how long it's been since we've had a story that could not be classified as being very similar to what we've seen before.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
May i just point out that it's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sorry to say this, but why do Americans manage to get this so wrong?
Okay, so the apes and humans came from the crashed mothership/station. Where the hell did the horses come from?
funny munging
Tom.
Oh arse
The phrase "30 years ago" was repeated at least three times in the review. Dig a little deeper, man. Like into the URL below. Planet of the Apes was released February 8, 1968. 33 years ago.
I think nearly everyone agrees that the original was a great film, so get the facts straight and check out good old IMDB for more tidbits...
(Original) Planet of the Apes
(Original) Planet of the Apes: Quotes
Damn you!! You ruined it!! Damn you all to hell!!
Katz you damn dirty ape!
--
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
One big question in my mind.... Why send an ape? When not an autopilot computer? Just didn't make sense... Anthony
And from the lengthy discussion of the movie below, I'm glad Katz posted any review at all just to get all those posts posted. This movie sounds awful. At least the Matrix had a lot of interesting drug/bent-reality referencees to make up for the incredibly bad acting and inept plot. And when Matrix did all its cool effects it was mostly original. This new PotA sounds like it is heavy on effects and light on storyline enjoyment. A disturbing trend.
Before everyone jumps on me for not just being willing to roll over and suspend disbelief... I just want to say that it's impossible to suspend disbelief when the films keep leaving Mack truck sized holes laying around. Like Swordfish, some great effects and Halle Berre's boobs could not take away the pain of constantly being reminded that the writers knew less about computers and hacking than, well, anyone who'd actually used a computer.
It's irresponsible. I don't mind a few plot holes and glaring errors here and there, but over and over? And when the plot hinges on so many of them? It makes a movie downright unwatchable. It's like having someone pinching you every five minutes to make sure you're not dreaming-- when you're dreaming.
I do not have a signature
The movie was a huge disappointment and should never have been released in theatres. I've been spending the last few months telling the younger folk how great the original Planet of the Apes was, and now this hunk of shit makes me want to strangle someone.
Had it been released under a different name, I wouldn't be so pissed, but this is blasphemy.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Sad to say, not really. :-(
Except for Shrek, most other summer movies don't really have the legs to do long-term repeat business.
It appears that the only movies that will likely do long-term repeat business on a blockbuster scale won't come out until late this year: Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (gawd, I loved the trailer!!), Warner Brothers' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the first Lord of the Rings movie. Their positive financial impact will be mostly in the first quarter of 2002, though.
I should remind you that the Levine/Scholastic (USA) edition of the first Harry Potter novel is named Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. That will be the name used in the first Harry Potter movie opening on November 16, 2001 here in the USA.
With the kind of cut and pastery of the post above, I can skim the world press.
This combined with the few advertising clips seen on television allows me to not have to pay money for and (sic) actually watch what appears to be yet another a lousy, lazy, over-produced piece of shit in a long, long string of Hollywood moronics in action.
Thank you, Slashdot!
The only good films this summer, I expect will be the new Kevin Smith production, and possibly possibly the new Tolkien thing.
Here's to hoping!
-Fantastic Lad.
The best film I've enjoyed recently is the Phantom Edit; not because it's especially good, but because it makes me feel empowered. I can't wait for the DVD release, so that the film might be further repaired!
Try Ben Hur. The 1959 remake beats the 1925 version.
Several classic stories (Dracula, Frankenstein, Hunchback of Notre Dame) have been made several times, and generally the later versions were better, up to a point. In some cases it might be arguable whether or not they are "remakes." For instance, there have been several Titanic movies, and clearly the last one is the best, though these are all movies loosely based on one historical event rather than on a specific literary source or on predecessors.
But then again, enjoying most any movie requires a suspension of disbelief. I loved the movie, and for once, generally agree with Katz's review.
Oh yeah, if his ship was still partially functional thousands of years later- well, I'd like to be that kind of engineer!
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Believe it or not, the audience at our local theatre ewwwwed to both. ::shrug::
Madman
I can't be the only one that thought there was a real lack of character development in this film.
Most of the major characters were not fully developed. Many of the other characters, including Thade's right hand gorilla and Kris Kristofferson's I expected to be developed more.
I was suprised that Kristofferson's character was killed off so early. Why even bother having him in the movie?
How many lines did the blonde chick have? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed looking at her rack. But sheesh!
Really Disappointing. The sad part is I will probably go to see the sequel, prequel or whatever they consider it just to see how they explain the Lincoln Memorial thing.
Both the humans and the apes came from the same place: the space station
Of course, there is no explaination of how so many species of apes evolved form one chimpanzee, while the humans evolved not at all. But at least it explains how everyone speaks english, sorta.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Except that doesn't explain the General's memorial... how did HE get there?
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
In the original POTA (and in Sixth Sense, for example) the surprise ending is breathtaking because it gives new meaning to the entire film we had just watched - it was like, "Wow, that explains everything!" In the new POTA, everything got wrapped up before the big ending and the surprise ending was more like, "Oh, some new developments occurred which I can't logically implied but might give meaning to a sequel, but not to the film I just watched." Not a very good use of a surprise ending.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that statement. Mod this guy up!
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
But you're ignoring whole sections of social commentary in the original. It wasn't JUST about the cold war. It was about race relations, slavery, bigotry, and all sorts of other issues.
Are you saying we have NO social issues to deal with in today's society? I think race and class issues could have been addressed much more sharply, issues with PETA and such, hell, even allegory regarding religion and the place of gays in society could have been used (since that seems to be a rather large issue these days... think the military, boy scouts, etc, etc).
If you're going to update a movie with such strong social commentary such as POTA, it would have been wise to also update the social commentary within it, rather than just losing it almost entirely and turning it into yet another boring action movie with no soul.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Personally, I'd like to know what the other ending concepts were...
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Those are the questions I asked myself continuously while watching the new Planet of the Apes.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Is it so hard to imagine that there was already life on the planet before they crashed? I'm willing to bet there a planet out there with a very horse-like animal running around.
thus Thade got to Earth before Our Hero, took over, and defaced Lincoln to fuck with him
puhleeze! just because he's genetically enhanced doesn't mean he can take over a whole planet. I'm thinking his space pod gets shot down by two F-16's when he crosses the ADIZ line not on a flight plan. (ADIZ = Air Defence Identification Zone)
Did any of you ever think that maybe all the childish high-school insults you all keep throwing at Katz might just be hurting his feelings?
What exactly is it about the internet that makes you all feel like you can just abandon your common courtesy? This attitude you all are copping is one of the major problems with the internet -- everyone acts like an ass because they have no accountability. Well, I guess you can all be disgusted with me now because I was contrary, but i am just so tired of people being asses.
-- juju
The ending is a joke about George Bush. W. is the chief primate, republicans are the party of chimps, DC is full of chimps and Mark Walberg is democrat hollywood looking on in shock. I don't think it has anything to do with the rest of the film.
Oh, and to spite us, they remove Honest Abe's statue and replaced it with one dedicated to Gen Thade.
By the way, did I see that starting year correctly? 2029??? That's pretty soon for all that cool technology!
Yup - the movie was worth it just to see that trailer.
That movie is going to ROCK.
Hmm... was it just me, or did anyone else think "Rimmerworld" when they read this?
As for why Pericles landed in the right spot at the right time that obviously has a connection with firing of the main engine. Uncluttered an antenna or some such or somehow strengthened the homing signal. Pericles's homes in on the strong signal through a vortex like he is trained to do.
Wrong. Your only right about the ship going back in time but it's to the new planet - it had three moons. Mark went back in time to earth. To after 2100 which would have still been about 50 years after his time. The apes on earth were further evolved through science and somehow thade must have traveled back in time before mark and caused a revolution. This remake seems to focus more on the playing god aspects of genetics rather than the evils of nuclear weapons.
Has anyone ever seen a JonKatz review of a movie that he actually liked?...
In the original, Charlton Heston played the towering hero Col. George Taylor, the arrogant and stranded space traveler. In this re-engineering, rechristened Capt. Leo Davidson, Mark Wahlberg, takes over. As great as he was in Three Kings and Boogie Nights, historical comparison isn't kind to Wahlberg, who seems to really lack stature. He looks stunned from the minute he lands on this strange planet, and he spends much of 125 minutes mumbling platitudes to simians and humans and running from some ferocious, brilliantly-rendered and truly mean pes
Taylor is an Air Force guy, right? Well, to honest Katz, Marky-Mark is more believable in this role, and Charlton Heston is too tall. They have height restrictions in the AF you know.. Plus, his reaction to being stranded on a planet of apes isn't arrogance, it's bad acting.
Tim:How are you Phil? Were where you last night?
Phil: Oh, I went to see 'Planet of the Apes'.
(2 second of silence)
(People burst into laughs)
Tim: You went to see what!
Tim sounds like a really condescending, smug git to me. Why would Phil hang out with such a closetted fool?
Can you please supply more dialog? I want to know more of Tim and Phil's relationship.
Can you please supply more dialog?
No? I guess I'll have to extrapolate.
Phil: So what did *you* do last night Tim?
Tim: Well Phil, I went to a Kenny G concert, then I went home and watched 'Walker, Texas Ranger'.
(Everyone murmurs appreciatively)
The ape costumes were magnificent and even better than the costumes in the original yet the story and acting of Wahlberg were not up to snuff. I keep hearing that Clooney should've been cast as the astronaut. How ironic that people should say that since both those actors were in Three Kings. I think Wahlberg can be a good actor but just not in this movie.
Probably Ebert is right and this movie shouldn't have been made or they should have made it into something significantly different with more of Burton's style. I rememeber how shocked I was at seeing Burton's Batman! I was totally blown away by that movie.
As for the ending of the movie, some may call it cheesy or whatnot but it is truer to the Pierre Boulle novel than the 1968 movie.
All in all this remake is plain ok.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
"He looks stunned from the minute he lands on this strange planet..."
I'd look stunned too if I had just landed on a planet infested by talking monkeys with murder on their minds..
end communication
I really was looking forward to POTA. However, I did have a knot in my gut that it was going to suck out loud and it did. I was not really amused by the revamps of the old standard lines. Just goes to show that Heston will whore out to anyone that will show him and a weapon in the same frame and context. The line about superiority being derived from a gun was just too much. Heston is a whore for doing this film!
That's why it didn't make sense to me. The crew wasn't that big, was it? And the odds of a guy and a girl who breed...well..
There was a civil war by the Senator's Daughter to free the humans. They used an Underground 'passage' with the assistance of sympathetic apes to escape their slavery. Even the word "human" was used the way that the word "nigger" would be used in slave-owning America. "He's one of their house humans, he thinks he is better than us." I think that may have been a reference to a line from Roots? (Correct me if I'm wrong)
The ending was a comment on current American culture. The humans may have been freed, but the Apes were still in all the positions of power. They were the Police. They were the Firemen, and the kicker, they controlled the media. (ie. the reporters) Instead of the French idea of imigration, citizenship, and general human rights, with West Africa (meaning of book?) this took the idea and made it uniquely American. Not to feed us more sermons on the ills of slavery, but to point out that in the end, things still haven't changed much. They still have a ways to go.
Support for Human Emanciapation Theory: In the movie it was quoted that Apes can't invent on their own. To have cars, cameras, and the like they would have to have human help. The reason that humans would have to been emancipated is the fact that they made the contribution of invention/innovation to the Ape/Human society instead of using it against the apes (a quote from the legendary ex-general).
That's my take! Hope it made sense!
fable doesn't have to be about lies. Main definition (and the definition I knew) is; a story that involves animals and where animals behave, speak and act as if they are human beings. :)
La Fontaine, Aesop, first years of primary school,... Does it ring a bell
Geeze, if you wanted to see the original movie then why not just go and rent it. And yes I have done that myself, ie. Godzilla (you know the Hollywood version). So back to talking about POTA: If movies have to have "...a towering old-school Hollywood superhero..." in order to have a message, then your right this movie is pointless. Well (un)forunately my pre-net mind doesn't agree. Well maybe it does a little, your right, Whalbergs character isn't the: I'm the strongest, most enlightened, evil destroying, unstopable, and would have a brilliantly chromed armor if armors were still in, type of hero. But that doesn't make this a bad movie. The movie isn't about one man trying save a planet. It's about him trying to save himself, and get back to his own time. Did you notice that there was substance to be found in other parts of the movie? Equality still seemed to be an issue here, you know that side of the movie where humans were treated like animals, yeah, Whalbergs character isn't fighting for that but it's still there. There are things about Burton's movie that you brush off because they're different than Heston in the original version. It's a different movie geared towards todays audience. Did you notice that the original isn't identical to the book? It seemed to me that Burton's movie said something about how it's not always possible to fix everything we break. We live in a day of age where everything can be fixed and ideas of prevention aren't mainstream, but don't you agree that the end says that not everything can be fixed. In the movie it's one persons mistake that changes history permanently, He thinks that by getting away he can fix it. Remember he represents our world, our attitudes, and our self motivation. Sure it's not a movie that will change the world, make us better people who live in peace and harmony but it's still a good movie and it still touches issues. If you believe that the Original is a perfect telling of the story then don't watch this one but if you think a different interpretation/representation would be interesting then I think you'll atleast enjoy it.
And it comes out on August 22nd.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
And on that day, I shall give Hollywood money, only because Kevin Smith is a genius, and Joey Lauren Adams is, umm, amazing.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Can you explain how the planet Marky Mark crashed landed on in the start of the film was Earth? The space station was apparently sitting by a saturn-like planet, and whatever planet they crashed on appaered to have two or three moons. Now the ending would make sense if it was earth all along, but where did these three moons come from and also when they were entering the planet it, of course, looked nothing like earth. so, what gives?!
agree'd.
I know Marky Mark is no genius by any means, but how could he not realize he was on earth when he gets in his space pod and takes off?
When Pericles (the monkey) landed his ship, and here's why:
Leo (the man) couldn't land his ship correctly at all. Can you believe this? He and the monkey go through the exact same thing (the storm I mean) and then TWICE Leo screws up. He's an idiot.
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People Are Sheep
No sig for you.
It's a fairly widespread notion that primitive human beings invented because, physically, we're inferior to other species. It's reasonable to take from this that a smart but physically capable species would only develop as much technology as was necessary for them to survive.
The other driving force for human technology is war. If the apes had fewer wars or a shorter history, they would again have had less reason to develop high technology.
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
And yeah, Dirk Diggler was boring as hell but still did not screw up the movie. The apes were brilliant, downright scary. And the movie was good entertainment, well worth the $8.50 I had to pay for it (not like A.I., which I walked out at the end feeling cheated).
There is no way a new movie can measure up to the standards of the classic, but that doesn't mean we have to be unfair. Planet of the Apes was the first movie I have seen in months that I would not hesitate to pay to see it in the theater at least two more times, and then I'll buy the DVD too.
Pedro
Pedro
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The Insomniac Coder
Ah! But it is *YOU* who are not thinking four-dimentionally!!
I'm one of those over-30 guys for whom the movie was less than in keeping with the original. By and large, I agree with the reviewer of the movie. It was undeveloped... the plot was weak, the characters were weak lacking depth (sensitivity is NOT depth!) and complexity, and there wasn't enough story development. Frankly, I would have been pleased if they stuck to the original story-line!
However, we know that Gen. Thade didn't die. We know that the space storm (nebula) had pockets that will move the traveller through time. We know that the space ship that crashed on the distant planet had been there for THOUSANDS of years, not merely hundreds. This would lead me to believe that before the ship crashed, it fell backward through time.
Following that notion, suppose that after the civilization on the distant planet grew and evolved, they developed space travel abilities and that the apes again became the dominant inhabitants. History is always written by the victors...so Thade was a hero. If they developed space travel, then imagine them in orbit and then falling into the space storm and then finding their way to Earth...taking it over. That would explain the Aperaham Lincoln memorial.
Maybe this isn't the only possible explanation, but it works for me!
Score: 5 Interesting
I must burn in hell, suffer and pay for my sins
But Gods the one who's losing, Satan always wins!
It helps to catch typos. :)
I just got back from seeing the movie. While I prefer the original, I didn't see the flaws Katz saw with Dahl... er... Wahl... er Marky Mark and the Monkey Bunch.
'Same speed C but faster'
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People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
I agree that Sixth Sense can be considered a surprise ending, but what are you talking about with The Shawshank Redemption??? I remember the ending pretty clearly, and it wasn't a shocking surprise-twist ending at all.
So why is he so enthralled by big-budget Hollywood movies, which probably more than any other product exemplify what he claims to oppose? Does he think it's possible to produce entertainment products on the scale of Planet of the Apes or The Matrix without the multi-billion dollar corporate machine?
You can't have it both ways. If you're so attached to the products of capitalism run amok and the homogenized mass media, you can't turn and rail against them as soon as you leave the movie theater.
This is boring. Let's talk about much more interesting questions, like was Captain Janeway secretely in love with 7 of 9?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
It's all a cunning plan. The writers are on a go slow and not producing anything of quality until their value is realised, - hence all the rehashes of old movies and TV, plus all of the obvious mistakes that would never get past the hundreds of people employed to make a movie (the other unions must be in on it too). It must be true, they couldn't be incompetant could they?
Perhaps writers are chosen the same way many actors are chosen, by looking at photographs of faces and not reading the resume conveniently written on the back (as seen in the BBC documentary "The Face").
At least Hollywood has produced some great TV & Movies recently: Matrix, The Mummy (1&2), Dark City, Moulin Rouge, Pi, The X-Files, Millenium, Highlander, Hercules, Xena - wait a second, they were all made somewhere else.
'But even movies about apes ought to evolve -- does anybody in 2001 really need convincing of slavery's evil?'
excuse me? did katz just say that despite rampant slavery in third world countries throughout, plus sweatshops run here in america? What about many countries attitude toward women that puts them in near slave like conditions?
'Nah weep bah ninny grab?'
-Hot Rod
LOL.I have never met anyone who'll ever go and see such a ridiculously-named film (not in the 21st century, anyway):
Tim:How are you Phil? Were where you last night?
Phil: Oh, I went to see 'Planet of the Apes'.
(2 second of silence)
(People burst into laughs)
Tim: You went to see what!
Not funny,really. Especially when there's nothing better to go and see.
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
I know I'm being naive, and that all of you are too busy discussing the most complicated aspects of the film...
But if apes did evolve the way they did, weren't the physical weaknesses supposed to be the first to go? But in the film we've got smart apes but still that, apes. They don't have less hair or improved hands or anything? Maybe it's because they used humans to do all the hard work? Or is it working the same way as in George Orwell's Animal Farm (where the physical characteristics happen only at the end).
Oh, and if the human population was 4 times the ape population, how come the apes won when the races first met? That would mean that apes were both physically and mentally superior to humans.
Now, I'm not trying to be smart here, these are simple questions, which admittedly I cannot answer. Anyone?
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
Ahah! Your explanation helps. I was completely confused about the ending, and it still doesn't work, but at least I get the idea of what they were going for.
The problems with this idea are many-fold. (1)The primates on the ship were chimps, not apes. (2)Why do none of the land masses on that planet resemble anything like those of Earth? (I looked carefully, because I immediately suspected the planet would be Earth again).
The ending was totally predictable! As soon as he crashed near the Lincoln monument, I said "It's going to be an ape statue." Blah.
Pierre Boulle wrote another book made into a terrific movie The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) .
So some might say.
I prefer the original. Sure, the sequel had more spectacular special effects. Seven years of technical progress, and a tenfold budget increase can do that for you. The original cost just $6,400,000 to make. The sequel cost $100,000,000.
These are both thinking persons action pictures. I consider the original deeper.
The Maltese Falcon (1931)
Satan met a Lady (1936)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
I think it would have been interesting to see Bogart (3rd version) play opposite Bette Davis (2nd version).
The 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a remake of the 1964 Bedtime Story. The original starred David Niven opposite a young Marlon Brando. I preferred the remake, although it would have been interesting to see Michael Caine play opposite Brando. Watch both films, back to back, and you will be amazed at how far superior an actor Michael Caine is to David Niven. Compared with Caine, Niven seems more wooden than Pinochio.
Near the end of the movie, the spaceman (Leo) kisses the human-rights-activist ape (Ari). this drew lots of "EWWW!" comments from the audience in the theater. Ten seconds later, Leo goes over and kisses that human woman. Everyone in the theater was very quiet, except for my friend William, who immediately yelled out "EWWW!"
I was laughing for a minute and a half afterwards.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Geekizoid already did this. Why do we need a windy, pointless review when someone's already gotten straight to the point?
--
Is your company running tools written by ma
/me ducks from the rotten vegetables thrown in my general direction.
D - M - C - A
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Sadly, yes, Probably very few people (probably not even myself) really appreciate how horrible slavery was and is. Imagine the worst most nasty bosses you ever had, then imagine that they have complete control over your entire life from birth to death, every day 24 hours a day, and there was nothing you can do about it. Imagine they can take out whatever shit they had in their lives on you, regardless of what you do, in any physical or emotional way they want. Imagine they also have control over the people you love the most. That image gives you a vague idea of slavery.
While we've made significant strides, I think many Americans regard slavery as a sort of necessary evil that just sort of happenned and somehow was OK for that day and age. Contrary to popular opinion, many people throughout American history hated slavery and regarded as was it is: a terrible thing and an abomination against God.
Miko O'Sullivan
Miko O'Sullivan
Sticks Us asked why pop culture is all so derivative. I have 2 theories. Theory 1 is that it's hard to be creative. What takes more effort, coming up with the idea of a planet where apes rule men, or the idea to remake that movie 30 years ago about that planet where apes ruled men? Theory 2 is that people and corporations don't like risks or surprises. I guess it would be more accurate to say that people like predictable surprises. I know Freddy is going to pop out of the walls again, but when? Anyway, I think that many people enjoy the idea of going to a movie that they "know" already. I can't count the number of people that I've heard say, "That Planet of the Apes is going to be awesome! I loved the original movies!" The same goes for Charlie's Angels(no surpises, and hot chixx to boot, why wouldn't you make that movie?) and almost every sequel. I could go on and on... Star Wars Episode 1 was the same familiar Star Wars that we know and love, but with surprising new characters and spaceships. American Pie II == American Pie in college. People like being comfortable. They love to be entertained, but they don't like it when the entertainment makes them feel stupid. How many times have you heard someone leaving a theater say, in a disappointed tone, "It wasn't what I expected."? Think about it. Like, Woe
Today is a good day to die. They all are, though.
The ending: They all die.
You know, it was incredible to see the faces of people who wen to to see The Perfect Storm, whom I had told the same thing, come out and say, "They DO all die! I didn't believe you."
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I got nothin'.
The original Planet of the Apes was a movie, not a spectacle, which seems to be what you want. The original was meant to teach a minor truth about prejudice, not entertain teenage males for 120 minutes. Obviously the original went right over your head.
Anarchists never rule
for a moment, i thot JonKatz was referring to some actor-studio squabbles in making the original.
a quick check found that Heston was in fact enthusiastic about the movie (at the start): see here and here.
Heston on the prospects for the movie: "The novel was singularly uncinematic; there wasn't even a treatment outlining an effective script. Still, I smelled a good film in it."
yeesh.
the hero only leaped 300 years into the future according to his clock as he passed through, so the time really depends on whether or not the main ship stayed in current time, or went to the past.
*SPOILERS HERE*
The other planet was NOT Earth. They went through great pains to explain that the apes came out on top on that planet because the humans were stranded without the benefit of the full technology of all of human civilization and thus, once the apes developed ambition and were no longer content to serve their human masters, the physically stronger race won out. The horses? I don't know, either we're not supposed to notice or we're supposed to assume that they're horse-like animals that happened to be on that planet.
My question is, where did the gorillas, orangutans, etc. come from? The only apes I saw on the spaceship were chimps.
As for the ending, I think it was intended to be maddeningly vague so that they could do a sequel however they wanted. The problem is that we weren't given enough information to come up with a reasonable explanation for it. The one thing we can semi-safely say is that Thade SOMEHOW escapes and uses the gun he was left with to create some sort of ape revolt. Whether this is in that planet's future, the Earth at some earlier point in time, or an alternate reality altogether is impossible to determine. However, when Marky Mark is bringing his hip-hop rhythm home at the end, his display does say that he is approaching Earth, and we're not given any indication of a malfunction.
The ending was far too abrupt. One minute you have every army-ape in the world against the humans, and the next they're all buddies. Especially the big guy (2nd in command?). It just wasn't believeable that their acidic hatred of humans would disappear just like that.
Hah! If that wasn't believable to you, it is only because you don't understand how apes think. Especially, hyper-intelligent, genetically-enhanced apes.
---MM
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
I am going to have to agree with the coward here. Flips theory is interesting but a bit stretched. Ocam's Razor needs to be used on this mess. The only way I see them pulling this one out for the sequel (Whether you like it or not, you know it is coming.) is to play it off as a nightmare induced by severe head trauma during the crash. I don't like it either but it not the first time Hollywood has used that trick.
Monkey? Monkey? I'm a gorilla you fucking clown!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
this is aside from the fact that PoH has 3 moons etc.
Also, why would the apes further back in time from PoH be more technically advanced than the apes of PoH?
...
string* plamenessFilter =
...
string* plamenessFilter =
*plamenessFilter = "Flaming Death!!";
Did anyone else get the feeling that they were watching Crouching Rhesus, Hidden Chimpanzee?
Charlton Heston has a cameo as a damn, dirty ape. He talks about guns. Big surprise. I guess what they say is true about art imitating life.
Now, there are the obviously bad movie previews, and those are warnings that you go to see this stinker are your own risk. But there are those that look pretty decent, but warn you - usually quite loudly - that you should avoid this movie.
I've generally come to the conclusion that any preview that begins by telling who is in the movie or, worse, who directed it, is usually a movie to avoid.
The POTA preview I saw in a movie theater started with titles that said "From the director of Batman and Sleepy Hollow". If that did not scream "this movie cannot stand on its own", I don't know what would. Check out two previews online.
Samer
By the way, I think Planet of the Apes sucked on a variety of levels. I don't even understand why anybody bothered to make it, and I don't know who will bother to waste their time with it. Roger Ebert said in his review that in ten years, people will still be renting the original and this remake will be forgotten. I agree with that.
"Europeans like pictures that drone on, and I'm good at making pictures that drone on." -- Woody Allen
Furthermore, why were there no other animal species native to the plant except horses? And where were the insects?
I was very disappointed in the ending, but also in the lack of attention to astromony. Why did this planet have several large moons, yet you never see them from the surface? And why do the apes speak such clear English? Granted, their ancestors spent a lot of time around english speaking scientists, but come on. No localized accents or culturally specific language?
The farther away from watching this movie I get, the less I like it.
Carl G. Jung
--
Carl G. Jung
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"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
That's EXCEPT, not accept.
--
Aaron J. Shaver
http://aaronshaver.com/
That's AFFECT, not effect.
--
Aaron J. Shaver
http://aaronshaver.com/
First off...is neato a word? I'll have to check everything2...the only real dictionary still out there...heheh. Anyone else notice the ape who has worf's (the klingon for star trek next generation) voice? He's the one who is in charge of the camp down by the river. Also, Charlton Heston, is the dad ape of the military leader...General Thweed or soemthing like that. Anyways, Heston says that line from the original one, except now he's an ape saying it to the humans. "Damn them, damn them all!"
Well, the real master can teach truths WHILE still being entertaining, all at the same time.
Judging by first post, the original Planet of the Apes failed in this regard.
It looked like a crappy 20th century machine gun. What was a thing like that doing on the Oberon? Do you really think a planet could be terraformed in 2029??? The planet had to be Earth waaaaay into the future. Like maybe 4029 or later. The gun had to be an antique. That explains the horses, too. And Thade had to have found a way to get back in time to start an ape revolution.
This movie was bad. I'm sure it cost tens of millions of dollars to make. What were they thinking? Were they trying to make a campy comedy or a serious science fiction movie? I think they tried to do both. Plot holes, bad acting, poor script, implausible ending. With a little work they could have done much better. I guess it was easier to make this bad movie then to put the effort into making it good. On the other hand my brother loved it. After 5 minutes he decided to turn his brain off and enjoy it for the popcorn movie it was.
Heh, I was wondering this myself. Perhaps the main ship was some kind of "Space Ark" that actually housed many different Earth species, not just the chimps. Who knows!
I find it amusing, though, that everyone has issues with whether or not the "other" planet was earth or not, and missed the most blatant mistake in the movie.
mySig
I knew that Tim Burton had a twisted mind, but what was up with Mark Wahlberg ignoring Estella Warren. Is Wahlberg just gay? Or possibly asexual?
Anybody else think the girl monkey looks a little bit too much like Michael Jackson?!
| | | | |The point of the ending of the film, as it is in the book, is to show that the exact same thing happened on earth that happened on the POTA. I suppose that Tim Burtan meant for this to be chilling. However, it only causes me to say "Wha?" Entertaining? Yes. Good? No. Brendan
I do not control the Sig, the Sig controls me.
As to the question of horses... It's obvious that space is inconsequential in the movie. It starts near Saturn or a look-alike, takes our hero to some Earth-like planet except it having an extra two moons, and then ends back up on a Parallel Earth. That is of course, unless you consider the alternative: Not wanting to risk human life, the crew turns the Oberon over to an ape (not until later realizing how silly that is - but this IS a movie - and humans apparently are rather stupid and can't pilot anyway). The ape bravely pilots Oberon into the storm. This transports the Oberon thousands of years into the past. Unfortunately, since humans seem only to make ships that crash into planets rather stay in space, the Oberon smashes into the moon breaking it into three pieces. The collision disables the magic "keep us from crashing stuff" that always fails in space ships. Oberon then crashes to Earth where there are already horses, but few if any evolved humans. Bingo! The Apes have several thousand years to evolve, and we have lesser humans. This allows the Earth to have little or no human artifacts as the landing of Oberon prevented human evolution. This also explains how you have so many humans even though the Oberon crew was supposedly slaughtered by the original apes. Movie Magic!
As an individual who enjoys connecting everything I encounter in life into a seamless thread of ideas, I could not help but question the "coincidental?" issue of Ari having a striking resemblance to Janet Jackson. Not that alone, but that the more enlightened individuals in the ape tribe were of a fairer complexion, could it be racism on the part of the directors?....eck!
AHH?......u say, well...it should come as no surprise to u when we delve into a more detailed examination of these issues. While on a transcendental "E" trip at a local unsedate gathering, I had the profound opportunity to discuss these and other worldly issues with a fellow reveler, a Post-doctoral Anthropology student form the university of Toronto. Her thesis argues that true human awareness is brought through a social mind meld, and that this chemically induced state leads to a more culturally vibrant society. Good luck on nabbing that thesis Cassandra!....I have arranged for her to baby-sit my yet unborn children.
But getting back to monkey talk, in the midst of all that throbbing mass of humanity, she pointed out the science behind all that "Janet Jackson resemblance". Upon subjecting herself to few hours of exposure to this theatrical extravaganza, she had postulated that it is not actually a Janet resemblance, but actually a Jackson resemblance. Probably now you are extending your reach for that triple shot of scotch, but wait.
Her ideas flowed thus......
After repeated attempts by Michael to integrate himself in to stable heterosexual relationships, Michael's frustrations had led him to take procreation into his own "hands", literally. His only trusted long term companion up until then had been his adorable pet bubbles. I am certain all of you kids are aware of this tacit and well weathered team, Michael and Bubbles had reached higher levels of understanding after Bubbles helped in choreographing, costuming and producing Michael's blockbuster hit, "Bad".
Having no one to turn to, and money running low, Michael had decided to pool his resources, and relocate his Neverland Ranch, and his ridiculous theme park to a desolate planet in a neighboring Galaxy. The rocket construction and the subsequent departure were conducted under the cover of shooting a video for his "Scream" track. The intergalactic trip was arranged in the strictest secrecy. As per Jackson insiders, the departure was an emotional one, especially for his illegal immigrant Mexican maid Rosa Mendoza. She had claimed that at this time Jackson had drifted deeper into the grips of his skin debilitating condition, and lost a lot of pigments. The only other life form accompanying Jackson, she said, was Bubbles!
Cheers!, a triple shot of scotch can be a bitch. #:(
Morpheius
It was not - and cannot be earth. Through the entire movie there were clearly TWO moons shown in the sky. I defy anyone to explain how earth suddenly grew another moon within a mere couple thousand years. The answer to the horses is that Tim Burton thought that apes looked cool riding horses and that he needed a plot devise for the crossing the river sequence.