Planet of the Apes - Insert Appropriate Monkey Joke Here

Planet of the Apes - Insert Appropriate Monkey Joke HereSo like I broke into to Chucky's house and stole his Box Set of the entire Planet of the Apes series which is the original, Plant of the Apes and four sequels.

I saw this film as a kid back in the day when we only had two tv channels and thought it was a cool movie about apes. Nowadays as a grown up (of sorts, I'm still watching ape movies) I was able to enjoy the movie's themes as well.

The movie explores all kinds of themes, man's doomsday death wish and love of war. Racism and class war. Vivisection and the youth rebelling against the ideals of the dominant generation. It explores the hypocrisy of religion and the quest for scientific knowledge. With all these things packed into the film you sometimes forget that our hero is being chased by 12 monkeys with guns. It almost sounds like Snakes on a Plane but less farcical. The farce comes in the sequels...

The score is excellent. At times the music mimics the jungle so we get a riotous cacophony of gorillas and chimp in the chase bits.

I presume you've seen at least the original so you know the basic premise and probably that the film has one of the most famous twists in a movie. No, our hero Taylor (played by a swaggering Charlton Heston) is not a ghost but a man who faces his destiny when he realizes he has been on the planet Earth all along.



At this time one is presumably to supposed to reflect on the title of the film and how it not only refers to the apes but also the men that sent Taylor to his ultimate destiny.

Here's a great discussion on the other endings that were thought of during the scripting process.

And here's a video of the ending with a suddenly very depressed Charlton Heston crying "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" which I realised I could still remember most of from when I saw it as a kid, it was that it had a cool twist ending.