When thinking about the longest running and most successful film franchises of all time, one franchise I almost always forget about is Planet of the Apes. Despite starting over fifty-five years ago, the franchise laid dormant for nearly thirty years and releases since then have been sporadic at best. But with the upcoming release of the tenth film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, I’m taking a look back at the whole franchise, starting with the 1968 original.
After floating in space for two thousand years, astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) finds himself captured and experimented on by a race of intelligent apes when he lands on their planet. Taylor must prove to them that he’s as intelligent and as deserving of life as they are, aided by animal psychologists Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), and relentlessly pursued by Zaius (Maurice Evans) who hopes to hide the truth from them all.
I think it only seems appropriate with Planet of the Apes to start with the ending, because it’s one of the most iconic endings in all of cinema, with it even being known by those who have never seen the film, and it still being a prevalent item of popular culture today. I mean I couldn't even find an appropriate image for the page header that didn't depict the scene in question. Taylor’s discovery that the planet he is on is in fact a far future Earth where humanity have wiped themselves out following nuclear annihilation would have been jaw dropping at the time and is perhaps the second most famous twist ending beaten only by ‘I am your father’ in Empire Strikes Back. But despite its age and highly spoiled nature, it’s an ending that never fails to land perfectly following the events of the film. It hammers home all of the film’s themes perfectly, and whilst it is extremely nihilistic, given the apes are seemingly following suit, it played perfectly into the Cold War paranoia of the time as humanity feared it faced the end of days at the hands of the atomic bomb.
After floating in space for two thousand years, astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) finds himself captured and experimented on by a race of intelligent apes when he lands on their planet. Taylor must prove to them that he’s as intelligent and as deserving of life as they are, aided by animal psychologists Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), and relentlessly pursued by Zaius (Maurice Evans) who hopes to hide the truth from them all.
I think it only seems appropriate with Planet of the Apes to start with the ending, because it’s one of the most iconic endings in all of cinema, with it even being known by those who have never seen the film, and it still being a prevalent item of popular culture today. I mean I couldn't even find an appropriate image for the page header that didn't depict the scene in question. Taylor’s discovery that the planet he is on is in fact a far future Earth where humanity have wiped themselves out following nuclear annihilation would have been jaw dropping at the time and is perhaps the second most famous twist ending beaten only by ‘I am your father’ in Empire Strikes Back. But despite its age and highly spoiled nature, it’s an ending that never fails to land perfectly following the events of the film. It hammers home all of the film’s themes perfectly, and whilst it is extremely nihilistic, given the apes are seemingly following suit, it played perfectly into the Cold War paranoia of the time as humanity feared it faced the end of days at the hands of the atomic bomb.
Now time for my controversial take, I think Planet of the Apes has aged terribly. That’s not to say it’s a bad film, because for 1968 it’s fantastic and I'd argue an essential part of film history. But it is incredibly hard to watch this film in 2024 and not find it tediously constructed and outrageously problematic. No, I’m not calling for censorship, but I completely understand why modern audiences probably wouldn't be interested in it.
Just looking at the structure of the film, the pacing is painfully slow. It starts off quite promising with Taylor’s final message to Earth before entering hypersleep, as well as the initial panic of the crash being gripping stuff. But then there’s about fifteen minutes of just walking through the desert. Taylor and his fellow surviving astronauts, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton), aimlessly wander with nothing of any particular note happening. That is until the films first, and best (but that’s not much of a compliment) major action sequence. Here the astronauts find humans but are quickly rounded up by apes on horseback. The sequence really does feel like several random shots of people running around flailing their arms in the air. Every time the humans are caught in a net they seem to escape just by crawling out of it. The apes don’t really seem to have much organisation in capturing the humans, but they still manage it. It’s just the same three or four shots of people running to one area of a field and getting either shot, temporarily stuck in a net, or jumping off a cliff into water.
The film’s later action sequences never reach the same scale or complexity and usually just involve Taylor being chased around a small environment by apes, stick on the Benny Hill theme and it wouldn’t feel out of place in a sketch show. The film is at its worst when its focusing on Taylor trying to escape, but before I get to what the film is best at I want to address the other elephant in the room that doesn’t help the film’s age.
I find it peculiar that this is one of Charlton Heston’s most beloved and iconic roles because honestly the man was pretty despicable. An actor turned political activist, in his later life Heston stood against much of what the film preached. I mean the man was the President of the National Rifle Association, he defended school shootings and the continued destruction of society by firearms simply because he believed it to be his right as written in a constitution to own weapons. When you look at the pro-peace, pro-logic, and anti-traditionalist values of Planet of the Apes, it’s just baffling to me that Heston was glad to remain affiliated with that film until his death in 2008, because what he stood for as a person certainly didn’t match the values of the film or the character he played. I can’t really hold this against the film because it doesn’t affect the quality of it, but it’s definitely something that hasn’t made it age particularly well.
Just looking at the structure of the film, the pacing is painfully slow. It starts off quite promising with Taylor’s final message to Earth before entering hypersleep, as well as the initial panic of the crash being gripping stuff. But then there’s about fifteen minutes of just walking through the desert. Taylor and his fellow surviving astronauts, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton), aimlessly wander with nothing of any particular note happening. That is until the films first, and best (but that’s not much of a compliment) major action sequence. Here the astronauts find humans but are quickly rounded up by apes on horseback. The sequence really does feel like several random shots of people running around flailing their arms in the air. Every time the humans are caught in a net they seem to escape just by crawling out of it. The apes don’t really seem to have much organisation in capturing the humans, but they still manage it. It’s just the same three or four shots of people running to one area of a field and getting either shot, temporarily stuck in a net, or jumping off a cliff into water.
The film’s later action sequences never reach the same scale or complexity and usually just involve Taylor being chased around a small environment by apes, stick on the Benny Hill theme and it wouldn’t feel out of place in a sketch show. The film is at its worst when its focusing on Taylor trying to escape, but before I get to what the film is best at I want to address the other elephant in the room that doesn’t help the film’s age.
I find it peculiar that this is one of Charlton Heston’s most beloved and iconic roles because honestly the man was pretty despicable. An actor turned political activist, in his later life Heston stood against much of what the film preached. I mean the man was the President of the National Rifle Association, he defended school shootings and the continued destruction of society by firearms simply because he believed it to be his right as written in a constitution to own weapons. When you look at the pro-peace, pro-logic, and anti-traditionalist values of Planet of the Apes, it’s just baffling to me that Heston was glad to remain affiliated with that film until his death in 2008, because what he stood for as a person certainly didn’t match the values of the film or the character he played. I can’t really hold this against the film because it doesn’t affect the quality of it, but it’s definitely something that hasn’t made it age particularly well.
But enough of the negative, Planet of the Apes is a classic for a reason and almost all of that comes down to the films philosophical and ethical ponderings on religion, evolution, self-destruction, animal rights, and the pursuit of knowledge. Planet of the Apes shines its brightest when it sticks its characters in a room and has them debate. Taylor’s trial around the end of the second act is among the best scenes in the entire film because of the way reason and logic are applied to break down the barriers of religious tradition that impede the exploration of new ways of thinking. Charles Darwin only published ‘On the Origin of Species’ just over one hundred years earlier, and its adoption particularly in the United States is still spotty now, often glossed over, ignored, or outright refuted in favour of the story of Genesis. The fact that Planet of the Apes had the gall to be a major Hollywood production in the 1960’s that actively questioned and deconstructed that way of thinking is worthy of applause. Just a shame that lessons seem not to have been learned.
One last thing before I wrap up, the costumes. It’s really quite impressive how the costumes for the apes were created, giving each of them personality and expressive emotions whilst being covered in so much makeup and prosthetics. They’ve aged pretty well too, obviously the modern films in the franchise use motion capture CGI to create the apes which already shows its age around a decade later, but the original film’s costumes are top tier design.
The original Planet of the Apes may not have aged particularly gracefully but there’s still a damn good film in there. Modern audiences may struggle with the slow pace and the awkward, unsatisfying action sequences, but the philosophical and ethical debates of the big questions at the centre of its story are really impressive. The costumes and sets are fantastic, and obviously the incredible ending speaks for itself.
Planet of the Apes is an important film for any cinephile, but I can hardly blame modern audiences being hesitant or avoiding it completely.
One last thing before I wrap up, the costumes. It’s really quite impressive how the costumes for the apes were created, giving each of them personality and expressive emotions whilst being covered in so much makeup and prosthetics. They’ve aged pretty well too, obviously the modern films in the franchise use motion capture CGI to create the apes which already shows its age around a decade later, but the original film’s costumes are top tier design.
The original Planet of the Apes may not have aged particularly gracefully but there’s still a damn good film in there. Modern audiences may struggle with the slow pace and the awkward, unsatisfying action sequences, but the philosophical and ethical debates of the big questions at the centre of its story are really impressive. The costumes and sets are fantastic, and obviously the incredible ending speaks for itself.
Planet of the Apes is an important film for any cinephile, but I can hardly blame modern audiences being hesitant or avoiding it completely.