Apes Retrospective: Battle for the Planet of the Apes & Planet of the Apes (2001)

Battle for the Planet of the Apes opened in 1973 and had J. Lee Thompson return as director and Roddy McDowall back as Caesar. Set years after Conquest, this entry finds Caesar and company living with apes and (the leftover) humans alike after mankind had finally nuked themselves to oblivion. 

For the most part, apes and humans are living as equals, and to help ensure it never goes back to how it was, Caesar implements one single, but important rule; humans must never tell apes “No.” This worked for a number of years, and as such, their community is flourishing. Caesar is even a father now to a little Cornelius, named after Caesar’s late father. 

Conflict comes when gorilla General Aldo, long sick of Caesar’s acceptance of humans, begins plotting a coup. Oh, there’s also the mutant underground humans Caesar has to deal with as well. 

Honestly, this is without a doubt the weakest of this five-picture run. The film had the same budget as Conquest, but this particular story needed a bit more to help sell the necessary action and tension. The titular battle feels small and dragged out, ending the series on a particularly unexciting note. 

The filmmakers tried though! McDowall is as good as ever, and Aldo (played by an actor named Claude Atkins) is a perfectly despicable villain. There’s plenty of heartbreak as well obviously (it wouldn’t be an Apes movie without tragedy) as Caesar’s son Corlelius is violently beaten by Aldo and eventually dies of his wounds. Sad! 

It should of course be mentioned that Paul Williams (THE Paul Williams) stars in the film as Virgil, right hand orangutan to Caesar. Also, John Huston (THE John Huston) bookends the film as The Lawgiver, a character only referenced in earlier installments, because he lived about 1000 years before Taylor crash-landed. If anything it just shows how popular these movies were that they could get such insane cameos. 
Battle for the Planet of the Apes opened in 1973 and ultimately grossed $8.8 million, or about $62 million today on a budget of $1.7 million. Still not bad, but it was clear that the series needed to be put to bed. The studio tried its hand at an Apes TV show, but it only lasted 14 episodes and was truly the final nail in the coffin for the next thirty years or so. 

As you may know, Hollywood loves an established property—something the public already knows and thus easy to sell to audiences, and with a property like Planet of the Apes, all bets are off. Not only is it a familiar franchise that adults at the time loved and remembered fondly, but teens and kids were at least aware of it (the original loomed large over pop culture for decades, having been famously spoofed by The Simpsons and SNL in the ‘90s). Not only that, but the title alone sells itself. The time had come for a remake.  

Oddly enough, I first became truly interested in the franchise when it was announced that Tim Burton would be directing a remake of the original with Rick Baker doing the makeup. Baker is one of the best to ever do it, having done makeup for An American Werewolf in London, Coming to America, Harry and the Hendersons, Ed Wood, Men in Black, and The Nutty Professor to name a few. Anyway, this was during the infancy of the internet, when information about filmmaking was no longer relegated to a monthly magazine or the new episode of Entertainment Tonight. 

We’ll get to Burton’s film shortly, but for now, just remember the streak the filmmaker was on. His feature debut was Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and then went on to make Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks! (1996), and Sleepy Hollow (1999). Even if you don’t love all of those flicks, you gotta admit the dude was on fire. So to say that I was absolutely rabid for his take on Apes would be an understatement. Plus, AMC had been running the originals for months ahead of the premiere and I was having a blast watching the movies for the first time. 

Aside from Marky Mark, Burton filled his cast with top-tier talent. Folks like Tim Roth, Paul Giamatti, Helena Bonham Carter, Kris Kristofferson, Michael Clake Duncan, David Warner, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and even a cameo by Taylor himself Charlton Heston! Seeing all of these wonderful and amazing actors work with Baker’s elite talent is a true wonder to behold. Everyone seems to be having an absolute blast and hearing voices like Michael Clarke Duncan’s coming out of that incredible makeup sends chills down the spine! The acting and make-up alone are worth a viewing. 

As for the film itself? In the immortal words of acclaimed and fictional film critic Jay Sherman, “It stinks!” 

This remake is only interested in the concept of the Planet of the Apes, not the ideas that the original series would wrestle with within that concept. Instead, it’s just ape action for the blockbuster era that’s poorly shot (though I am forced to give it credit for its use of practical stunts and effects) in a plot that doesn’t make any sense (Wahlberg is an ape scientist who got lost in a space cloud?) The film’s ending attempts to be as shocking as the original but instead, it’s just head-scratching. Wahlberg somehow ends up in a timeline where Tim Roth’s character inexplicably became Abraham Lincoln?!? It’s funny, a lot of fun action franchises get a lot of mileage from being dumb, but unfortunately, Apes only thrives when the filmmaker’s brains are turned on. Suffice it to say, this film is truly the one and only straight-up bad movie in the entire franchise. You hate to see it, but you gotta love that batting average though. 

Planet of the Apes opened in the summer of 2001 and was surprisingly a massive hit, grossing $180 million domestically and just over $360 million worldwide on a budget of $100 million. Money! The problem though, was that not many people liked it. Typically a gross of that size would guarantee at least one sequel, but word of mouth was so bad that the franchise completely stalled. And thus, the franchise would go back to hibernation. 

The series as we know it today started with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, a prequel focused entirely on establishing the very first moments that the dynamic shifted between humans and apes. There were two big differences from the rest of the series though. First, this particular version is told from the apes' POV from the beginning, something the original series didn’t do until its third installment. Second, the apes would be portrayed via motion capture rather than traditional makeup. I remember at the time, this felt almost sacrilegious. “How dare they?” I screamed through tears. Luckily, the miracle workers over at WETA FX killed it. Plus, it didn’t hurt that they got the godfather of the motion capture medium Andy Serkis to play Caesar, future king of the apes. 

The film also stars James Franco, Frida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, David Oyelowo, and Tom Felton. All of these actors do great work with their characters (Pinto probably has the least to do here except to be a love interest, unfortunately), but Rise makes it abundantly clear that these movies are about the apes now. In fact, the Caesar trilogy doesn't dig deep into social commentary nearly as much as the originals, but it makes up for it with fully realized ape characters and performances that shine through the technology. 

The filmmakers make another significant change from the original run where mankind nukes itself to oblivion. Here, it’s Franco’s scientist character that does them in. While trying to find the cure for Alzheimer's he accidentally made something that not only made apes smarter (they’re the test subjects after all) but also turned out to be extremely deadly for most of the human population. Oops! Maybe next time. 

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