Planet of the Apes (1968 film)
Info and Spoiler
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 science fiction film about an astronaut (Charlton Heston) who finds himself stranded on an Earth like planet two thousand years in the future. On this planet, non human apes are a dominant form of life and humans are beasts.
The film is based on the Planet of the Apes novel by French Geezer Pierre Boulle.
Plot details
Spoiler
Astronauts
Taylor, Landon, and Dodge are in deep hibernation when their spaceship (non canonically
known as Icarus) crash lands in a lake on an unknown planet in A.D. 3978. The
astronauts awaken to find a fourth companion, Stewart, died in space and their
ship started to sink. They use a inflatable raft from the ship to safely reach
shore. Once on shore, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable
of sustaining life.
The crew abandons their spaceship. The three astronauts
set off through a desert, finding first a single plant and then others. They find
an oasis at the edge of the desert where they decide to take a swim. While swimming,
someone steals their clothes. Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their
clothes in shreds and the perpetrators, a group of mute, primitive humans, contentedly
raiding a cornfield. But shortly, the astronauts and other humans are being pursued
by gorillas on horseback, hunting the humans for sport and capture. Dodge is shot
and killed during the pursuit, while Taylor and Landon are captured and taken
back to Ape City; Taylor is shot in the throat, but survives due to the surgical
efforts of two chimpanzee scientists, Zira and Galen. Upon his recovery, Taylor
is thrown into a cage with a woman who was captured on the same hunt, the beautiful
Nova. Due to the throat injury, he temporarily lost his voice.
Taylor discovers apes, who can talk, are in control and are divided to three classes: the gorilla police, military, and labourers; the orangutan administrators and politicians; and the chimpanzee intellectuals and workers. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered vermin, fit only to be hunted for sport or used for scientific experiments. This latter fact is illustrated when Taylor eventually finds Landon, who has been lobotomized by the apes. Taylor had already found Dodge in a museum, stuffed as an exhibit (as Dodge is a black man, he is an anomaly in a world of Caucasian light skinned humans; this may be the reason the apes put him on display, although many light skinned stuffed humans are also in the museum).
Taylor discovers apes,
who can talk, are the dominant species on this world. Zira and her fiancé,
Cornelius, take a interest in Taylor because of his lip movements, which resemble
talking. While Cornelius and Zira are talking to their boss, Dr. Zaius, Taylor
writes in the dirt and attempts to call Cornelius and Zira's attention to it,
but he becomes frustrated when they do not notice the writing. Zaius sees some
letters on the dirt and realizes that Taylor possesses intelligence, but hastily
erases the letters with his cane. Taylor's voice eventually heals sufficiently
he can talk to Cornelius and Zira, who take a liking to him.
Taylor
and Zaius at the "monkey trial"Zaius soon discovers Taylor's ability
to talk and puts him on trial when he tries to escape. After the trial, he is
taken to see Dr. Zaius, who threatens to emasculate and lobotomize him if he doesn't
tell the "truth" about where he came from. But Cornelius and Zira execute
a plan (with the help of Zira's nephew) to free Taylor, who insists that Nova
also be brought along. They flee to the Forbidden Zone, where Cornelius (an archeologist)
had, a year earlier, discovered a cave with artifacts of human technology. Zaius
and a band of gorillas manage to find them a after a brief battle, Taylor and
Nova are allowed to escape on horseback. Zaius lets them go without further confrontation,
as he thinks it best for everyone if Taylor and Nova just disappear.
But his experiences so far still do not give Taylor the why on how apes became intelligent, talking creatures and humans the wild animals. But soon after his escape, in the final, iconic scene, Taylor discovers the Statue of Liberty half buried in the beach. He realizes he's really back on Earth (albeit in the future) and mankind had destroyed its own civilization, thereby paving the way for a Planet of the Apes.
This scene frequently makes best moments in film and best endings lists. In the span of a few seconds, it completely changes the conception of the film's foregoing events, many of which are thus revealed to have foreshadowed this conclusion, a plot device emblematic of its author, Rod Serling. As with many episodes of Serling's own Twilight Zone series, this final plot twist sees the protagonist's arrogance undone when he is made to realize that it is precisely this characteristically human arrogance that evidently precipitated a catastrophe (assumed to be a nuclear war, a looming fear in the Cold War era) that has plunged humans into savagery and allowed supposedly "savage" subhumans, the apes, to become masters of the earth.
Credits and awards
The movie
was adapted by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling from the novel La planète
des singes by Pierre Boulle. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.
Academy Awards
Award Person
Honorary Award for outstanding achievement
in Makeup in the movie John Chambers
Nominations
Best Costume Design Morton
Haack
Best Score Jerry Goldsmith
It won an honourary Academy Award for John Chambers for his outstanding make-up achievement. It was nominated for Best Costume Design (Morton Haack) and Best Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical). The score is known for its avant garde compositional techniques, as well as the use of unusual percussion instruments and extended performance techniques.
In 2001 the US Library of Congress deemed the original film culturally significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Themes
The film uses the depiction of ape society to attack notions of human
superiority. In particular, the apes' prejudice against humans, based on religion,
can be seen as an attack both on creationism (Taylor's trial bearing some resemblance
to the real-life Scopes Monkey Trial, and the apes' religious texts to the King
James Version of the Bible) and on the idea of an "evolutionary ladder"
(a common misconception about evolution) with humans at the top. This reaches
its dramatic climax near the end of the movie when Cornelius reads directly from
the Sacred Scrolls at the now-captured Dr. Zaius' request:
“ Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death. ”
The story of the Tower of Babel is reflected in the nuclear war that, the movie implies, abases the human population and elevates the apes — human arrogance and self-assurance cause the humans' downfall (attributes that Taylor displays himself throughout the story).
The contrast between the mute and primitive humans and the cultured apes echoes the relationship between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels. Both the apes and Swift's Houyhnhnms possess reason and speech, and use those capabilities to oppress a more primitive humanoid population; both works satirize human-centric biases by having the speaking creatures commit "reasonable" acts which the audience can perceive as blatantly immoral (the apes' lobotomizing of Landon, the Houyhnhnms' hunting of Yahoos).
Sequels
Planet of the Apes was followed by four
sequels:
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Escape from the Planet
of the Apes (1971)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Battle for
the Planet of the Apes (1973)
and two television series:
Planet of the
Apes (1974)
Return to the Planet of the Apes (animated) (1975)
The movie
was reimagined in 2001; see Planet of the Apes (2001 film).
Marvel Comics produced full comic book adaptations of all the films, plus one original graphic novel-length sequel, Terror On The Planet Of The Apes.
There have been
modifications from the original French novel:
The hero is not a French journalist
named Ulysse Mérou, but an American astronaut named Colonel George Taylor.
The humans wear primitive clothing of animal skins, although they were naked
in the novel.
The technology and general settings of the apes' towns are more
primitive than in Boulle's original concept. This was a deliberate decision to
reduce design and construction costs. Architectural elements were based on observations
of ancient cave cities.
The apes speak perfect English, while they spoke a
wholly different language in the book. Ulysse has to learn it to get acquainted,
while in the movie, Taylor has a throat wound which prevents him speaking first.
The Planet of the Apes is indeed Earth, although in the original novel it
is a different planet very similar. Boulle would later go on to say that he wished
he had thought of Serling's ending.
References in The Simpsons
There
are references to the film in many episodes of the cartoon series The Simpsons.
In
the episode "Deep Space Homer", Homer is chosen to be an astronaut and
in a press interview, is asked about the dangers of space. He replies that "The
only danger is if they send us to that terrible Planet of the Apes". He then
remembers - and finally understands - the film's ending and breaks down like Taylor,
imitating his ground-beating actions and words exactly. Also, it is revealed that
NASA's test chimpanzee astronauts came back super-intelligent.
"A Fish
Called Selma" features Stop The Planet of the Apes, I Want To Get Off!, a
musical version of the film with the big numbers "Dr. Zaius" (a parody
of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus") and "You'll Never Make A Monkey Out
Of Me" ("I hate every ape I see / From chimpan-A to chimpanzee").
In "Bart's Girlfriend", the parents are trying to get their kids
to come back inside from playing to get ready for church. The end result is the
kids being rounded up by their parents in a manner similar to the apes rounding
up the humans in the beginning of the first Planet of the Apes movie.
"Rosebud",
in which Mr Burns tries to reclaim his long lost teddy bear Bobo, ends in a scene
set in a strange future desert. Apes wearing clothes ride in wagons pulled by
mute Homer clones. When cracked on the head by the apes' whips, the clones exclaim,
"D'oh!".
In "Make Room for Lisa", Lisa says, "Get
your stinky paw off me!"
In "Pygmoelian", a flashback scene
features the line, "I wanted Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island ugly, not Cornelius
on Planet of the Apes ugly!"
In "Future-Drama", apes are struggling
for the right to vote. A sign can be seen that says, "Give Apes the vote.
You won't regret it."
An episode of Itchy and Scratchy, The Simpsons'
cartoon within the cartoon, is titled Planet of the Aches, although the episode
actually references the mutant human population in the franchise's second film.
Other references
An episode of Star Trek:Voyager entitled Distant Origin
involves a species of highly evolved dinosaurs discovering evidence of Voyager's
presence on a planet and theorizing about their link to humanity, resulting in
charges of heresy against doctrine.
Cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000
often featured references to Planet of the Apes (and its sequels) during the "riffing"
of the movies that were shown. For example, at the end of the movie The Incredibly
Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, several characters
are seen running across a beach, which prompts one of the characters to say "You
did it! You finally did it! Damn you all to hell!" Similarly, Crow T. Robot
(when portrayed by Trace Beaulieu) often impersonated Heston, using the "Get
your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape!" or some variation of it.
However, the most notable reference to Planet of the Apes (and its sequels) comes
in the show's 8th season (its first on the Sci-Fi Channel), when during the "host
segments" (comedic interludes featuring the cast outside of the show's movie
theater), the show introduced for a few episodes an alternate Earth where apes
ruled over men. However, although the apes could talk, they were definitely not
the intelligent characters featured in the films (for comedic value, of course).
Eventually, one of the apes, Professor Bobo, departed Earth with the apes' "Lawgiver",
Pearl Forrester, when Michael J. Nelson accidentally blew the planet up by helping
a group of mutants detonate a nuclear bomb (which itself was a parody of the first
sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes).
Play Mate of the Apes is a 2002 soft-core
parody starring Misty Mundae.
In the opening minutes of Strange Brew, brothers
Bob & Doug McKenzie debut their homemade post-apocalyptic sci-fi "epic",
which includes Bob finding the wrecked "Statue of Liberty" (a tabletop
statuette, which he picks up) along the shoreline.
At the end of the science-fiction
comedy Spaceballs, part of Mega Maid, the transformed version of the giant spaceship
Spaceball One, crash-lands on a beach, sticking out of the sand (like the Statue
of Liberty). Two apes ride up on horseback. One, using binoculars, spies Dark
Helmet, President Skroob and Colonel Sandurz climbing out of the Maid's nose.
When he announces that they are Spaceballs, the other ape (voice of an unbilled
Michael York) says "Oh, shit! There goes the planet!"
In the Futurama
episode "Future Stock", Fry is watching an Ape Fight and one of the
apes throws a tricycle at Calculon. Calculon then yells "Get your stinking
trike off me, you damned dirty ape!"
In the computer-animated movie Madagascar,
Alex builds a signal beacon in the shape of the Statue of Liberty and copies Taylor
when it all goes up in flames: "You maniac! You burned it up! Darn you! Darn
you all to heck!"
In the 2004 Will Ferrell vehicle Anchorman: The Legend
of Ron Burgundy, reporter Brian Fantana is captured in a net during a gang fight
by two horsemen in an homage to the apes' rounding up the humans in the beginning
of the first Planet of the Apes movie.
The movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back includes a Planet of the Apes spoof in which Jay acts like Taylor.
In
the episode "Bad Bob" of the television show ReBoot, an unnamed character
wearing clothes similar to Taylor's says, "They finally really did it, the
maniacs! They blew it up!" after watching a scene reminiscent of Mad Max.
Rock group They Might Be Giants included seven unlisted tracks inspired by
the film, all of which were improvised, on their 1998 live album Severe Tire Damage.
Pop group Adam and the Ants recorded "Picasso Visita el Planeta de los
Simios" on their 1981 album Prince Charming. It was re-released on the 2003
Antbox anthology as "Picasso Visits the Planet of the Apes". The song's
chorus: "As the Masters rot on walls and the angels eat their grapes, I watched
Picasso visit the Planet of the Apes".
Punk rock group The Misfits recorded
a song, "The Forbidden Zone", inspired by the movie.
The San Francisco
garage/punk band The Mummies recorded the song "(You Must Fight to Live)
On the Planet of the Apes", inspired by the movie. The song appears on the
CD version of Never Been Caught and was also issued on a 7" vinyl.
The
song "Idiots Taken Over", by punk rock group NOFX, contains the lyrics:
I'm startin' to feel a lot like Charlton Heston
stranded on a primate
planet
apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
with generals and
the armies that obeyed them
followers following fables
philosophies that
enable them to rule without regard...
The rock band Clutch recorded the song
"Escape From The Prison Planet", including a reference to the Planet
of the Apes film.
The Chimp Channel featured a short that spoofed the movie.
The name of the short was "Planet of the Humans"; the humans were still
in the majority after a war between apes and humans, and the species roles were
switched (in other words, Taylor was an ape). The ending is similar to that of
the movie, but instead of a ruined Statue of Liberty, a giant monkey toy resided
on the beachside, crashing its cymbals together.
In a episode of Family Guy,
Peter tries to give Quagmire the Statue of Liberty's foot as a wedding present.
Later in the episode Adam West sees the foot and begins to reenact the famous
ending scene from the film.
In another episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin
has been caught by rifle-wielding apes and recites to them a joke, "How many
dirty stinkin' apes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three. One dirty stinkin'
ape to screw it in, and two dirty stinkin' apes to throw feces at each other."
The apes prepare to shoot him for this abuse.
In the Pinky and the Brain episode
"Brain Noir", Pinky tells Snowball (voiced by Roddy McDowall), "Get
your hand off me, you damp, hairy hamster!"
The Boston rock band Damned
Dirty Ape is named for the famous quote from the film. One of the acoustic-punk
group's most popular songs is "Madhouse," a rant against the fictional
apes for their mutilation of humans in the name of science.
In a scene in
the Black Books episode "The Big Lock-Out", Bernard Black marvels at
the special effects in the film with the line, "You'd really believe monkeys
could have meetings".
When Charlton Heston hosted Saturday Night Live
for the second time, on December 4, 1993, the opening skit had Heston suddenly
realizing that he is hosting SNL on the Planet of the Apes. The cast, the crew
and the audience wore ape costumes. The skit extended to the opening credits,
where the cast members wear ape costumes, and simian names are shown instead of
the real ones.
The Chicago rock band The Smashing Pumpkins used samples from
the film heavily for live appearances during their 1996 world tour.
In the
Fairly Oddparents movie Abra-Catastrophe!, the earth is turned into an ape-dominated
world. Denzel Q. Crocker gets pounded by ape guards.
In the episode "Eenie,
Meenie, Miney, Murder" of That's my Bush, President George W. Bush forbids
weapons and is visited by an angry Charlton Heston, who calls him "damn dirty
ape". This goes even further in the German dubbed version, in which he says
"Guns don't kill people. Apes with guns kill people" (while in the English
version he simply says "Guns don't kill people. Bullets do. Guns are just
making them very fast").
The Japanese electronic musician Cornelius gets
his name from the movie.
Horror-punk rocker Wednesday 13 made a song about
the movie simply titled "Planet Of The Apes".
Planet Of The Apes
was a song off Mindless Self Indulgence album Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely
Sexy
Trivia
Dr. Zaius was originally to have been played by Edward
G. Robinson, but he backed out due to the heavy make-up required. (He would later
make his final film, Soylent Green, opposite his one-time Ten Commandments co-star
Heston.)
In order to convince the Fox Studio that a Planet of the Apes film
could really be made, the producers shot a brief test scene using early versions
of the ape makeup. Charlton Heston appeared as an early version of Taylor (named
Thomas, as he was in Rod Serling-penned drafts of the script), Edward G. Robinson
appeared as Zaius, while then-unknown actors James Brolin and Linda Harrison played
Cornelius and Zira. Harrison, who was the mistress of the head of the studio at
the time, would later play Nova in the final film and its first sequel, and have
a cameo in the Tim Burton remake more than 30 years later. This test footage is
included on several DVD releases of the film, as well as the 1998 documentary
Behind the Planet of the Apes.
Shooting began on May 21, 1967, and ended on
August 10, 1967.
The series was one of the first to have a large scale merchandising
tie in. The movies were popular with children and teens, and numerous licenses
were granted to produce related merchandise. Among the best sellers were several
lines of toys and collectibles (including two sets of action figures from Mego
Corporation), picture and story books, trading-card sets, book-and-record sets
from Peter Pan Records, comic books, and a Marvel Comics series of graphic novels,
which both serialised the movies and featured its own running Apes stories.
Taylor's
first name is never mentioned in the film except in the ending credits, "George
Taylor". He is referred to throughout the film simply as "Taylor",
and in sequels as "Colonel Taylor". It has been accepted as canon Taylor's
full name and rank is Colonel George Taylor, but it is not known if Taylor served
in the US Army, US Air Force or US Marine Corps.
Serling's script has elements
from his "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air" Twilight Zone episode. Three
astronauts crash on a "desert planet"; all but one die; and in the end
the survivor discovers that he's "been on Earth the whole time".
At
the end of the scene where Taylor is put on trial, the three judges are confronted
by Cornelius and Zira with words they found difficult to hear. The response of
the three judges was to engage in "Three wise monkeys" poses. Cornelius
and Zira would find themselves in a reversed situation in Escape from the Planet
of the Apes, when they were a species not expected to talk and made to stand before
a panel of humans.
After the crash, during the astronauts' trek through the
desolate Forbidden Zone, thunder and lightning occurs. If you look closely, you
can see the features of an open-mouthed ape in the clouds during the lightning.
This is dead center in the full screen version and to the left in the version
formatted for television.
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