It’s such a nice feeling to be surprised by movies. That’s why I keep my cynicism buried underneath a giant pile of ridiculous and unwarranted optimism; that way every bad movie is a mild disappointment and every good one is delightful. But what usually ends up being a real rarity is when almost an entire franchise is not only decent, but a high water mark for Hollywood blockbuster storytelling in general.
Over the last two weeks I did a complete deep dive into the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, watching every single one of the 10 (!) theatrical releases going all the way back to the 1968 original and finishing with last week’s new “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” Has anyone other than me dared to watch the entire series to glean deeper meaning from what’s widely considered a ridiculous sci-fi series about talking monkeys? Absolutely, they have! Did they do as good a job as I will? Probably! But here we go anyway.
Minor spoilers
Honestly, the only thing that keeps the original “Planet of the Apes” from being a perfect film is the performance of Charlton Heston as an astronaut who ends up on a planet full of talking apes who’ve become the dominant species and treat humans as pets. Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall give genuinely touching and subtle performances as the apes Dr. Zira and Dr. Cornelius, to the point where when Heston appears, madly gesticulating and desperate to appear hyper-masculine, the film almost falls off the rails. Luckily, the pacing and direction are so much fun that the movie doesn’t really rely on him.
Next is 1970’s “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” which most people hated but I am subjectively positive is one of the high points of the series. Heston didn’t want to be very involved, so Paul Franciscus shows up as a new stranded astronaut who has a really similar adventure to Heston in the first one, except this one has a sect of psychic mutants who live in the subway tunnels beneath a destroyed New York and worship an undetonated nuclear bomb. This movie is genuinely insane and unpredictable. It might not be good, but I love it and its Vietnam-era nihilism about the fate of humanity.
Even stranger is 1971’s “Escape From the Planet of the Apes,” which sends talking apes Cornelius and Zira to the West Coast of the U.S. in 1973 and plays (at least in the first half) like a fish-out-of-water comedy. But when the American government finds out that apes end up taking over the world in the future and that Zira is pregnant, they quickly decide to not allow her to have the child. The performances of McDowell and Hunter, the not-so-veiled allegory to the just-filed Roe v. Wade and the genuinely bleak but humanist look at bureaucratic evil makes this an unforgettable piece of speculative fiction.
The next three films are pretty rough, but each has its positives. 1972’s “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” is set in 1983 when the U.S. has become a police state where all apes are imprisoned and used for slave labor. The main character is Caeser (played by Roddy McDowell), the son of Cornelius and Zira, who leads an uprising to free the apes. While the concluding revolt takes way too long, the deeply angry script focused on American racism is far ahead of its time.
1973’s “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” had such a low budget that the final battle is barely a skirmish. Maybe a kerfluffle. It’s just dull and without nuance.
The worst of the 10 films is easily Tim Burton’s 2001 reboot “Planet of the Apes.” Mark Wahlberg is terrible and miscast, the plot is genuinely nonsensical and it has nothing to say about modern society that the previous five films didn’t cover better. The only thing that makes the film worth watching is the incredible prosthetic ape makeup by the great Rick Baker.
It took 10 years, but the franchise returned with 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” featuring groundbreaking motion capture work by Andy Serkis and more empathy toward the plight of laboratory animals. Watching Serkis’ ape Caeser lead the apes to freedom is rousing and very exciting, making “Rise” a flawed, but strong opening for an entirely new “Apes” timeline.
The next one, 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is quite possibly the first masterpiece in the franchise with visionary director Matt Reeves telling a gut-churningly intense fable about the inhumanity of man, placing “Dawn” firmly in the same conversation with other classic second films like “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Two Towers.” In a just world, Serkis would have been nominated for an Oscar here for his performances as Caesar.
In 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes,” Caesar’s quest to protect his people comes to an end with one of the most intense and well-made sci-fi films of the 2010s. In my review back then I compared the film to “The Great Escape” and “Apocalypse Now” and I stand behind that completely.
And now finally we have “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” set 300 years after the events of the last film and setting up which will most definitely be another multiple film storyline. Long story short: it’s fantastic. Character driven and leisurely, the film sets up a future where humans are borderline feral and non-verbal. So much of “Kingdom” are these lovely scenes of apes just sitting around and talking about life and what it means to live a meaningful life.
Yes, these are big sci-fi movies with explosions and lots of action set-pieces, but they’re also thoughtful looks at what it means to be human and how our lives are controlled by a mercurial balance of judgement and empathy. What did I learn from watching these 10 movies? That some of the best writing in films comes when we get to see what possible futures look like based upon our behavior as a species. And that I like psychic mutants that live in the subway.
If you don’t want to watch the other nine movies in the series, “Kingdom” is a great place to start as it begins an entirely new narrative arc that we’ll probably get another three to five movies exploring. That might sound exhausting, but I’m for one looking forward to meeting our eventual ape overlords.
Sisters Movie House
This article appears in Source Weekly May 16, 2024.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
