1. Planet of the Apes - remake
2. Planet of the Apes - Original
3. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
4. Escape from the Planet of the Apes
5. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
6. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
I've been a fan of the movie franchise since I was a kid and managed to collect all the vhs versions of the first 5 films several years ago. (Haven't sprung for the dvds as yet.) I also bought the Tim Burton adaptation when it first was released.
It's been years since I watched all 5 of the original films in one clump and until just this week have never included the remake. Now I've experience a close side by side comparison of all of the films and have been left with a few impressions. First and foremost is the unsurprising conclusion that the original 1968 film is superior in most respects to any of the other films. I originally remembered watching the Tim Burton remake and thinking "Hey that's pretty good. Not terrific but..." and just based on my fading memory rating it in most respects as better than the original. I have since change my mind about that in almost every aspect. The original film is IMHO a better effort all around (with the exception of creature makeup) it features a much more coherent story, better all around acting, Roddy McDowall establishes himself as "THE" ape actor (Charlton Heston draws your attention to him in every scene where Mark Wahlberg tends to blend into his environment in an unspectacular way. I realize that these are two very different roles but I couldn't help but notice the difference in each actor's presence and performance. And of course the original film boasts a shock ending equal or surpassing that of the Sixth Sense or the final episode of Newhart...wait forget I mentioned Newhart. No one on earth or on any of the nearby planets could have guessed or predicted how Newhart was going to end. It in itself is a masterstroke of utter genius. But I digress.
Now the sequels to the original film.
Beneath is not up to the standard set by its predecessor. Though it features Heston in little more than a cameo, the film is pretty clumsy though you can clearly tell that intelligent and creative minds are trying to work here. The execution isn't close to spot on but you get what the story tellers are trying for and for that I applaud them. Beneath also sets a kind of standard theme for the next few movies. Leave them sad and upset. The end of Beneath is (since it's been around since 1970 I won't worry too much about spoilers) features the end of the entire planet after a rather bloody battle. I won't go into the details but our human protagonists are machine gunned to death even before a doomsday bomb is intentionally set off by a mortally wounded Taylor (Heston). Pretty grim.
The next film Escape is at first surprisingly light hearted as three Apes manage to do the impossible and salvage Taylor's crashed space ship and escape before the earth is destroyed in the previous film. Escape is a better directed effort than the previous film with moments of surprisingly intelligent reasoning and dialog but is spoiled somewhat by large doses of the exact opposite. The Apes travel back in time to the point where Taylor and his crew had left earth. Once the shock of finding talking apes instead of the human crew in the ship wears off, the apes are paraded around as celebrities, being treated to fancy hotels and a new wardrobe. You wouldn't guess that the film would end with the adult apes shot to death and their newborn son hidden away in the care of a circus. Pretty grim.
Conquest is a grim story from start to finish, a stark contrast from the previous film. There is nothing positive in the story though the film is competently directed and features Roddy McDowall,s Caesar as its main character. The world established in Escape was that of typical early 70s America or at least hollywood's view of it. Conquest begins several years later and something terrible has happened. Just about every human being on Earth has suddenly turned into a colossal butt hole. Something resembling the Nazi party has taken over the country and Apes are openly used as slave servants, enduring constant brutality. None of this is explained to the audience's satisfaction and you simply have to accept it if you plan to watch the rest of the film. Inevitably the Caesar character (the offspring of the two parent apes killed in the previous film) somehow manages to orchestrate an ape uprising. What isn't explained in the film is exactly how he does it outside of just staring at certain apes at certain times. Does Caesar possess some kind of mind control power? WTF? Needless to say at the end of the film just about all the humans are dead and the city is in flames. Pretty grim.
Then there is Battle. The film opens about 1000 years after the end of the previous film but is suddenly thrust backward in time to only a few years after the end of Conquest due to the narration of an ancient tale told by the often referred to "lawgiver" character. You'll end up with whiplash if you aren't careful. Somehow the world has gotten worse than it was before. In the intervening years between the end of Conquest and the beginning of Battle there was a nuclear war that has destroyed civilization. (with the Nazi's in power I'm not surprised.) Caesar is alive and leading a tree village not far from the irradiated ruins of New York city. Now all the apes are talking. WTF? How is that? Some of the orangutans sound as if they had studied at an Ivy League university for years and posses intellects equal or surpassing that of Stephen Hawking. I think the creative team are taking huge liberties with circumstances here but we're talking far fetched sci fi channel level story telling so I guess you have to just roll with it. Anyway Caesar travels back to the city to have a look at video tapes of his parents and ends up stirring up a nest of mutated human survivors of the war. Yep, there is a battle as implied by the title. The humans attack with overwhelming force and end up being brutally machine gunned to death by gorillas as they try to flee for their lives. I guess this clumsy effort is supposed to setup the world that Taylor finds in the original film.
Pretty grim.
I'd like to have a look at the short lived live action tv series from 1974 just to see yet another take on things.
All in all I enjoy watching all of these films to one degree or another but to be honest I have to be in the right mood. The exception is the original film. If I stumble across it on tv I usually can't help but stop and watch it.
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