The Incomplete Guide to Planet of the Apes and the best Animal Protagonists

In which Elliot literally doesn't complete his musings about the Planet of the Apes, and Vanessa lists her favourite animals in film

An Incomplete Guide to Planet Of The Apes

Welcome to Planet of the Apes 101, by Elliot Wengler.

Last year, during my sad period of unemployment, I decided I needed to catch up on a couple of franchises. One of them was Planet of the Apes, which was an absolute treat; it’s also one of the strangest franchises there is.

Based on Pierre Boulle’s novel, La Planète des singes, which obviously became Planet of the Apes (but temporarily Monkey Planet in the UK), the original film was the biggest science fiction film of its day when it launched in 1968. It grossed $33m worldwide, even though it was made for a mere $5.8m ($298m and $52m in today’s money).

Full of nigh-on Shakespearean performances from Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, and Maurice Evans, it was an absolute masterstroke. Whilst not enough to invent the blockbuster genre, a landmark that would be left to Jaws and Star Wars, it was acclaimed for its witty drama, and the incredible technical achievement in the apes’ make-up and costume design.

Looking back now, it looks ropey, especially knowing there are people in the costumes, but as pieces of drama that merely ask the viewer to suspend disbelief that these apes are talking with our language the whole thing clicks. Almost.

The weird thing is that the first film, clocking in at 112 minutes, only feels slow because of the filmmaking, rather than the pace of the story it’s telling.

I recommend watching all of the old Planet of the Apes films, as artefacts. If you’re here to catch up for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, you only need to watch the new ones (Rise, Dawn and War). I am going to spoil all of them to go through this . I consider this fair warning, so don’t read on unless you want to know plot points and my feelings on them now.

You can always go back and watch them, as while they’re a strange bunch of films, they’re very much worth exploring, as they form a cinematic universe in a time before sequels had credibility; indeed, each of the sequels were made more cheaply than the original, and suffered at the box office accordingly.

Here’s the screentest trial of the makeup and costumes that led to the making of the original. Notably, it features a much friendlier relationship between the Apes and the test version of the Charlton Heston character.

Planet of the Apes (1968) (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner)

Taylor, Landon, and Dodge are astronauts, and awaken from a deep hibernation in the year 3978 to crash land on a planet’s barren wasteland. They venture out of their spacecraft and find human beings that we would best describe as savages, in caveman clothes, who are suddenly, but clearly routinely, hunted down by apes on horseback armed with rifles.

When Taylor pleads his case to the ape city after their capture, the council of the apes refuse to accept his history. Their civilisation does not recognise the possibility that a human being can talk, let alone have an education. Taylor finds himself in conflict with the enigmatic Dr Zaius, an intellectual orangutan, who holds Taylor in contempt, and puts him on trial for the heresy of contradicting the ape society’s scientific doctrine.

Taylor’s scientist captors, Cornelius and Zira, eventually help him escape, and he comes across the iconic Statue of Liberty. He thus recognises that Zaius had attempted to treat him humanely by preventing Taylor from learning that humankind had fallen to its own destruction, and that he was on Earth all along.

At times it drags, and there are numerous escape-and-capture loops that make 60s Doctor Who serials look like action movies, but the sheer ambition and wonderful dialogue makes this such a great film. It’s a classic. The end twist, if you somehow missed me spoiling it, would have been an incredible experience, no doubt.

Its iconic imagery and Hall-of-Fame dialogue (“Get your damn paws off me, you damn dirty ape”) makes this worth your time, even all these years later. Some scenes are pure horror, while there are other segments in which the apes and Taylor debate politics and philosophy, and it’s all done with a straight face from Heston. It couldn’t be done today.

There’s also some fascinating changes from the book. In the novel, the apes don’t understand their captive humans from our time. That’s right: humans, and not a singular American astronaut, but rather Ulysse, a French journalist, accompanied by a professor and a doctor. And why this lack of understanding? Because the captives speak French, a language that the apes consider too barbaric. Even the iconic ending, where Colonel Taylor sees the remains of the Statue of Liberty, confirming that he was on post-apocalyptic Earth all along, wasn’t in the original novel: the journalists escaped the monkey planet they landed on, and the whole thing turns out to be a framing device of monkeys reading the story, dismissing it as fantasy due to featuring intelligent humans.

There’s also forced breeding, and more emphasis on the satire of slavery. It’s an odd read, and all the changes make it a much more accessible film and it’s more poignant as a statement on the Cold War than it otherwise would be.

It’s success meant a sequel had to happen, and then it does get weird on the planet of the apes.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) (dir. Ted Post)

This is such an odd and bad sequel. 20th Century Fox wanted a sequel, the original novel did not have one, and furthermore, Charlton Heston didn’t want to come back as they had nailed it the first time. Therefore, Taylor goes missing in a mystical forbidden zone within minutes, leaving his female companion, Nova, as baffled as the audience will be for the remaining 90 minutes of film.

Another astronaut from the past crash lands on 40th century Earth: Brent. He is basically a carbon copy of Taylor, played by James Franciscus. He does his best with the material he’s given, but he lacks the charisma and powerhouse nature of Charlton Heston’s performance.

He meets Zira and Cornelius (notably, this is the only entry without Roddy McDowall in Cornelius’ and later Caeser’s ape outfit), and they help him and Nova escape into the underground of the forbidden zone. In this mad dungeon-bunker, he finds a civilisation of mutants, who worship the remains of a nuclear bomb. Oh, and they have psychic powers. It is as mad and lacking substance as it sounds. Wheres Planet had subtlety and philosophy, Beneath goes ham fisted with sign-posted metaphors and dumb ideas.

Meanwhile, the apes are in disarray, debating conspiracy theories and fearful of whatever might be in the forbidden zone. The militaristic gorillas take control, and the fact that it plays on the word guerilla-warfare is just a bit too on the nose. Eventually, they go on an expedition to the forbidden zone, and this all leads to the inevitable clash between the mutants and the apes.

This is one of those sequels from a pre-Godfather Part II / The Empire Strikes Back age, where sequels broadly speaking, doesn’t work. It’s cheap, its hashed out, tries to just repeat certain beats from the first one and does a poor job disguising what little differentials it manages. The mutants might be an attempt to reveal something weird and twisted about humanity but achieve neither on screen. The cold war metaphor does not really do anything new in this rehash.

It’s all over the place and surprisingly dull. It does, however, have an ending that is either wonderfully shocking or irritatingly predictable. The apes and mutants accidentally blow up the Earth in their conflict. Sort of. I won’t spoil exactly what happens, but there’s a sense of hubris, undermined by awkward editing.

What a definite final ending now that Earth has been destroyed.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) (dir. Don Taylor)

To quote a telegram, received by screenwriter Paul Dehn from producer Arthur P. Jacobs, the visionary who personally paid for the screen tests to get the original film made: “Apes exist, sequel required.”

Escape therefore became a sequel as well as a prequel. As it needed to be cheaper than its predecessor, there are only 3 apes in this one: Cornelius, Zira, and their friend, Dr Milo. It turns out that they rode the shockwave of Earth’s destruction in Taylor’s ship, and landed in the then-present of 1973. The apes become celebrities due to their fascinating story, wit, and obviously unique existence. The sequences where the apes are subject to give testimony to a Presidential Commission are hilarious.

This is actually a really good film. It’s very funny. The apes go shopping, scientists debate the philosophical problems of time travel, there’s an intelligent President of the United States, and there are chases and surprises and tension from the thriller aspects of the story here. There’s a lot of satire on the concept of celebrity and popular culture, which is what Cornelius and Zira become, unwittingly, and there’s consequences for this. There are some cracking plot twists, and it doesn’t look as cheap as the $2m it was allegedly made for.

It’s clever to take apes who were sympathetic villains from the first film and make them the protagonists in this weird and wonderful third entry. The fact that they made a sequel that was also a prequel, before the concept of a prequel was even a thing, with complicated time travel and continuity-heavy nerdy storytelling is something to be lauded.

Then things get grim.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) (Dir. J. Lee Thompson)

In Escape, Cornerlius prophesied to his human captors that a flu would wipe out cats and dogs as pets, leading to apes becoming pets and servants in society. This is that movie. Roddy McDowall returns, this time as Caeser, the ape that leads the revolution. This film depicts their revolution. It’s a bit blander and more predictable, but it’s well executed. Subtlety is gone, this is a world where human civilization lives in concrete jungles, led by a governor and officials in SS-level black uniforms. The human characters are layered and flawed to the point of realism.

It’s incredible that the by-then 6-year old ape costumes and make-up were being acted opposite people treating it like Shakespeare. The apes are properly enslaved at the start of the film, and are bloodthirsty fighters by the end.

The most notable thing about this entry is that it originally ended with Caesar, the revolutionary leader ape, (again, Roddy McDowall) downright murdering the governor of the city he’s rallied against. However, the producers wanted a lower rating, so edited a new speech about forgiveness over the ending, against awkward close-ups of Caesar's eyes.

What a clear and definitive confirmation of the time loop. A clear ending. Sort of.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) (dir. J. Lee Thompson)

The cheapest and schlockiest of the lot. There’s a battle. That’s it.

There’s some continuity nods throughout, which is quite surprising given that this time travelling saga was written and directed by different people upon almost every entry (this one in particular is the only of the sequels to not be written by Paul Dehn, instead written by John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington after they had success with The Omega Man). This one is some years, but in the near future, after Conquest, with a sequence taking place in the exact bunkers saw most of Conquest’s action.

Whereas Avengers Endgame is something of a The Best of the Avengers, this almost a The Worst of the Planet of the Apes. There’s lengthy debates, there’s slow action, there’s conspiracies to murder children that make no sense. There’s no money on show, the titular battle is pathetic. I’m not exaggerating when I say it ends with some scared humans in jeeps and gun-mounted-school-buses driving slowly at the apes.

There’s a strange attempt at a profound final ending for the series. There’s also an extended cut, but I’m not paying to watch an even slower version of this film.

Planet of the Planet of the Apes

The apes carried on, mostly remembered for the original classic rather than the time travelling shenanigans and conflicts from the sequel/prequel saga. They had a short-lived TV series, and a cartoon, but it’s fair to say that it took a long time for anyone to work out what else they could do with the costumes. They appeared at the academy awards, SNL, and left their mark on popular culture.

There was talk of reviving the franchise in the 1980s and 90s - of course, such a franchise couldn’t lay dormant forever - but said revival didn’t really occur until Tim Burton’s 2001 film. More on which next time.

If you’re keen to explore the Planet of the Apes films, these five films are distinct and intriguing relics. The original is fantastic and well-worth your time, and if you’re open minded about the ambition of the ideas explored in the low-budget and quirky sequels, they’re worth your time.

Next week: Planet of the Apes 102, in which I’ll look at the 21st Century Apes films. In the meantime, behold the greatest plot twist in history as spoilt as it was delivered for entire generations in one of the finest sequences in the entirety of The Simpsons.

All of the Planet of the Apes films are available on Disney+.

An Incomplete List of the Best Animal Stories

So Elliot has found that, at the end of the day, apes are the top dogs. But dogs are often considered so precious that we don’t deserve them (there’s literally a movie about this). So who sits at the top of the hierarchy? Maybe cats, who we characterise as believing they’re above it all? There are certainly enough films that see the animal kingdom take centre-stage. Here are Vanessa’s favourites.

1. The Secret Life of Pets

It’s a well-worn trope for a newcomer to make an old-timer insecure. Even in animation. The voice talents of folks like Jenny Slate and Eric Stonestreet make this take on the story soar, giving personality beyond the visualisation to the assorted domesticated animals. It also enamours itself to the PG crowd in how it deals with its villain.

The Secret Life of Pets is available on Sky Cinema.

2. Babe

Adapted from one of Dick King-Smith’s children’s books (sadly vastly untapped material), it’s both a masterclass in visual effects and emotional story-telling. The crew used both live animals and animatronics in a seamless fashion, receiving the appropriate nomination and win at the Academy Awards. We’re only a month away from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, so is there a better time to catch up on the George Miller back catalogue?

Babe is available on Channel 4.

3. The Adventures of Blinky Bill

I was 30 when I found out that I grew up with a censored version of Blinky Bill in Germany - will you join me in my support group if you didn’t know that his community was forced to move at the hands of human developers, instead of the wildfire that my opening credits seemed to indicate? Anyway, there’s lots of mischief, as it should be.

The Adventures of Blinky Bill is possibly available on YouTube, but if it disappears it’s not our fault.

4. The Animals of Farthing Wood

More uplifting than the other woodlands cartoon I saw in my youth, this series is still not a complete happy-go-lucky endeavour. Chastising the effect humans have on nature, it charts the course of many creatures of the forest, as they avoid development (what a universal plight). 90s content just feels grittier than contemporary stuff.

The Animals of Farthing Wood is available on Amazon Prime.

5. Felidae

Was my childhood actually really scarring? I seem to have a lot of fond memories of age-inappropriate films that were cartoons, featuring animals as lead characters. I won’t spoil Felidae, but if you can get a hold of it (as it’s quite rare, being a German production), savour it and its adult mystery.

Felidae (German) is possibly available on the Internet Archive or YouTube, but if it disappears it’s not our fault.