Planet Of The Apes was released in February 1968, only 2 months prior to the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film is an adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s novel Monkey Planet with the script having originally been written by Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone. However, his vision had been considered too expensive to recreate, as he had envisioned the Apes living in a contemporary modern-day urban setting and so, the Apes were placed in a primitive setting to keep within the $5 million budget. The executives at Twentieth Century Fox were nervous. The film was an undoubted gamble and many were pessimistic in their prognosis for the film’s success even with Charlton Heston as their leading man. They believed that a film with talking apes would (if not carried out sufficiently well) make them the laughing stock of Hollywood. How wrong they were?! Franklin J. Schaffner’s provocative allegory led to four sequels, two television series and a remake of the original series.
The first film details the adventures of Taylor (Charlton Heston) and two fellow astronauts ( a third female astronaut dies in the crash ) on an interstellar mission which crashes on a seemingly barren and deserted planet. Taylor had informed us on board that eighteen months had passed on their journey but we notice as the ship is sinking, that the clock on board has registered an elapsed time of two thousand years, probably due to time dilation caused by the relativistic effects of moving at the speed of light. The crew are completely unaware. On exploring the planet they discover that they are not alone and the evolutionary ladder has been turned upside-down where humans are mute slaves, hunted down by intelligent talking apes. The gorillas, who form the military in Ape Society, kill his fellow astronauts. One is stuffed and exhibited in a Human Zoo and the other is lobotomised.
Only the chimpanzees who form the science caste, Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and his wife Zira (Kim Hunter) demonstrate any compassion for poor Taylor’s plight. Dr Zaius (Maurice Evans), the head of the ape assembly, tries to cover up Taylor’s existence, for fear that it might lead to an unearthing of the truth about the ape revolution that took place centuries before. Taylor is tried and sentenced to death but escapes and, along with a mute female, Nova (Linda Hamilton), heads into The Forbidden Zone. It is here that the adaptation returns to the script by Rod Serling and we get perhaps the finest shock ending in cinema when Taylor discovers the upper-half of the Statue of Liberty with the rest buried. Here is the proof, that Taylor is on Earth, in the future and the inverted evolutionary ladder he has found was caused by man’s own stupidity.
It was this apocalyptic aspect of the story that struck a chord with audiences in 1968 and has every year since as new audiences have lived with the threat of nuclear war for over half a century now. However, the anti-nuclear message is not the only socio-political subtext to be found in Planet of the Apes or in any of the sequels. The apes’ world is starkly authoritarian, operating on strict race/class/gender divisions, with humans designated to the bottom rung of that ladder, slavery. The film holds up a mirror to us and what we see is our own world in great clarity and high definition. In 1968 the Tet Offensive had just taken place in Vietnam, Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia, Robert Kennedy’s assassination had ended ‘Camelot’, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, had been a deep blow to the civil rights movement, the escalation of anti-war protests had begun and of course the Cold War was as hot as ever. All this is mirrored in the first film, but it would be imaged and reflected deeply throughout each sequel, in its own particular way.
However, for me, the great conceit of the whole franchise is the time-loop premise which is cleverly sustained and built upon through all of the five iconic films. The first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), presented the ruins of human civilisation buried underground and run by mutant survivors of the nuclear holocaust who continue to worship the doomsday machine. Brent (James Franciscus), a fellow astronaut, is sent to investigate the disappearance of Taylor’s ship. Like his predecessor, Brent is captured by apes and manages to escape, only to find himself stumbling into the clutches of the mutants. There he finally locates Taylor, who, driven insane by it all and mortally wounded, proceeds to exact revenge on humanity by detonating the Alpha-Omega weapon himself, thereby bringing history (human and ape) to an end. But we know that in cinema nothing ever has to end.
The third entry in the series seemed to take a lighter tone in comparison, but even this proves to be deceiving. In Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Cornelius and Zira repair Taylor’s spaceship and escape the destruction of the earth in 3955, taking a reverse trajectory back to Earth in 1973. A rather clever deus ex machina. There they are treated like celebrities by the media until the authorities begin to realise the implications of Zira’s becoming pregnant. The two chimpanzees are forced into exile as the military tries to hunt them down before they can trigger the end of human civilisation. Zira’s baby survives and it is here that the time loop enters the story, much like the one in The Terminator. The film resonates strongly as an obvious perhaps heavy-handed allegory on migration in America but in the end the subtle, time-loop narrative of the series prevails; the conclusion of Escape is another despairing one, as the saga drives relentlessly towards the predestined cataclysm.
The race relations subtext would come to the fore in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), with critics of the time reading social comment into scenes of the enslaved apes taking to the streets. The images in this film clearly resonated with the real racial intolerance and violence that plagued modern-day American society. Set in 1991. Yes I know. 1991?! Zira’s baby has now fully grown and is named Caesar (Roddy McDowall, again). Emerging from his circus hideaway having been named Caesar by the circus owner, he is shocked to find America a police state and his fellow simians imported by the boatload to be used as slaves. He leads them in an uprising, the moment of ape revolution on Earth. The rise of The Planet of the Apes has begun. Conquest ends with Caesar’s triumphant proclamation: “Tonight we have seen the birth of the planet of the apes.”
Those words might perhaps have offered a salvation of sorts, the possibility of negating the saga’s self-fulfilling prophecy, but the final film in the franchise, Battle of the Planet of the Apes (1973), dashes any such hope. Indeed, Battle sees the survivors of the apocalypse (it’s revealed that humans eventually resorted to nuclear weapons to try to quell the ape uprising) engaged in a final war for control of the planet.
A potent remnant of that final conflict is found by Taylor (the Statue of Liberty), which is both the last piece in the time loop jigsaw and a shattering of the faith in the permanence of both American freedom and democracy and, in the very concept of human progress. Taylor’s reaction is a fitting, and a now iconic, testimony (he really speaks for us all), when he breaks down and, pounding the wet sand, cries out to us:
‘‘You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!’’
Marc Barham
Latest posts by Marc Barham (see all)
- ‘Dark’ Season 3 Episode 8 ‘Paradise’ - August 25, 2020
- ‘Dark’ Season 3 Episode 7 ‘Between the Time’ - August 19, 2020
- ‘Dark’ Season 3 Episode 6 ‘Light and Shadow’ - August 12, 2020