The
previous film ended with the apes gunning down a load of skinless
freaks and Charlton Heston going all 'fuck-this' and nuking the
Earth. So how the fuck do you follow that? Well, apparently as this
was happening, three other apes; Zira, Cornelius, and Monkey
McRed-Shirt, re-built themselves a spaceship that sent them back in
time to the 1970's. So now you have a reversal of story in which the apes are the strangers in our world as our politicians try to figure
out what to do with them. Although, the scientists investigating them
don't seem to take too many precautions, for instance, willingly locking
themselves in cages with the apes to perform experiments without any
knowledge of how safe our new visitors might be. I guess these
scientists have a similar attitude to health and safety as Steve
Irwin did after uttering the phrase “Watch me jab this Stingray in
the tits, fellas” Anyway, once this is complete, the apes are then
paraded around as celebrities, with us then becoming suspicious that
their existence is a risk to the future of humanity. For a film
that starts off as a fish-out-of-water comedy, I have to say that I
was somewhat surprised when we ultimately decide to shoot the living
fuck out of the apes in an ending that was like The Wild Bunch
crossed with Dunstan
Checks In.
What's
the subtext?
There's a brief comment on celebrity culture when the apes are tarted
up and paraded around in front of flashing cameras. Although there's
a good chance that the press just thought those monkey-looking freaks
were a few members of the band Supergrass, because this aspect isn't
really developed.
The main crux of the story however is in its dealing with the topic
of vivisection. The 1970's humans learn that the apes of the future
will experiment on us in much the same we that we currently
experiment on them. In which case, can we really be angry at them for
committing the same evil that we're already doing? Well.. maybe.
Because all they do is chop our brains up, but at least we sometimes
make them look pretty by testing a bit of lipstick on them too.
The
film also deals with the idea of fate. Maybe the future isn't as set in
stone as we learnt in Terminator
2.
Or as we then re-learnt in Terminator
3... oh.. maybe
it is? There's also a discussion regarding killing these innocent
apes in order to protect the future of our species which is equated
to the morality of killing Hitler's ancestors in order prevent the
Second World War. Although the way this film ends with the Government
guy unloading his gun into a baby fucking chimp John Wick-style, I'm
not too sure that killing a baby Hitler would be much of a problem for
these trigger happy bastards.
What's the best bit
of the film?
Without
a doubt, it's the scene in which Cornelius delivers his speech about
the rise of the apes. I figure I'll just include it here because it's
interesting to see how Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes adhered
to it. Although fuck knows who 'Aldo' is...
“They
became alert to the concept of slavery. And, as their numbers grew,
to slavery's antidote which, of course, is unity. At first, they
began assembling in small groups. They learned the art of corporate
and militant action. They learned to refuse. At first, they just
grunted their refusal. But then, on a historic day, which is
commemorated by my species and fully documented in the sacred
scrolls, there came Aldo. He did not grunt. He articulated. He spoke
a word which had been spoken to him time without number by humans. He
said 'No.' That's how it all started.”
What's the worst bit
of the film?
Nothing
major but the end goes a little off the rails, I suppose. A mad-man
chasing after the monkeys is a bit less credible than having the
actual authorities send them to the big banana in the sky in a Night
Of The Living Dead kind of way.
Also - the bit where the two apes ask for help in case they need to
commit suicide and the vet they're talking to responds with “I
thought you might ask that”, before casually pulling a fucking gun
out of his pocket was a bit too close to that scene in Team
America: World Police in which
the main character asks the same question and is given a hammer.
What's the best
line?
As
I write this now, we in the UK are at the end of a pretty interesting
election in which the usual shit as been thrown about and so I have
to say that I did like the line that the president of the film uses..
“I consider it dispassionately as a possibility and not
hysterically as a fact”
However my favourite line of the film was probably the much more
simple..
“They are not astronauts, they are apes!”
I think that's the line that I'm now going to start using when I see
people I think are thick.
Is it actually worth
a watch?
Trust
me... it definitely is.
No comments :
Post a Comment