After
leading his revolution in the previous film, Caesar is now living a
happy life as king of his monkey village. General Aldo, a Gorilla,
however, is being as typically right-wing and dumb as every other
military type in this franchise ever has. He particularly dislikes
the humans that are living in peace within the village because it's
impossible to make these films without making racism a part of the
subtext. Caesar discovers that recordings were made of his parents
and decides to hunt them down in an underground network where some
scabby looking humans are hiding out. Because looking for amateur
films of your parents is always a good idea... Anyway, the scabby
humans spot Caesar and decide that now is time to fight back against
the apes because we humans are also right-wing fuckheads that are
incapable of learning from our mistakes.
What's
the subtext?
Well, there's the same old messages as in previous Apes films, I
suppose. However this one mostly deals with the nature of violence
and whether or not it can ever be justified. It seems that all of the
right-wingers in the film are hell bent on fighting, which, as we can
see from previous films, will only lead to total destruction.. again,
this instalment was made during the Cold War and with the nuclear
threat still hanging over the world. Caesar must therefore attempt to
learn from the previous mistakes of his history without simply
allowing his enemy to take control.
What's the best bit
of the film?
I
suppose it's probably the end. In the final scene we see ape
children living in peace with human children and it's implied that
integration has finally happened, and after four previous movies of
pure nihilism, perhaps everything is going to be okay. Apparently
there was an alternate final draft in which we not only saw the two
species living together but we saw children that were half ape/half
human. Although I do completely agree that when given the option, a
human will eventually try to shag anything.. I'm kind of glad we
didn't end the series on the message that interspecies-fuckery is the
way we'll achieve peace on Earth.
What's the worst bit
of the film?
Probably
the bit at the end in which Caesar is held at gun-point and in an
inescapable situation. All of his ape friends have been killed and
the humans are about to put one final bullet in his head. After
enough time that Caesar could have been turned into a lead salad, it's
revealed that the apes are only pretending to be dead, they get up,
fight back, and chase the humans away. But fuck me did they leave it
a little while before they did anything. Lying down on the job is
frowned upon at the best of times and so I can only imagine that
after the battle is won and the credits roll, Caesar must have given
them one hell of a bollocking. Oh, I also didn't like the John Huston
cameo at the beginning and end of the movie which essentially plays
out like cheap TV series's “And previously on Planet Of The Apes”
type introduction.
What's the best
line?
There's lots of philosophical musings in this movie, with plenty of
loaded bits of dialogue scattered throughout. However simply because
it made me laugh, I think I'm going to have say that my favourite was
when one of the radioactive humans tried to warn his leader about
going to war...
Human Pleb.
If we shoot first we break twelve years of peace
Human Leader.
Yes. It has been rather boring hasn't it?!
Is it actually worth
a watch?
Well,
the reviews for the film when this originally came our were pretty
terrible. Although the reviews for Blade Runner were
terrible when that came out so I wouldn't let that put you off.
Having said that, Blade Runner is
now considered one of the greatest films of all time however if you
ask people what the final one of the original Apes movies
are called, most of them think it's title is, “I couldn't give a
shit”. Personally I loved it so I would strongly recommend it. I
think the great thing about these movies is that with each sequel the
budget was cut, meaning that extra effort was put into the quality of
the script with the filmmakers realising they could no longer just rely on
spectacle. Plus as this film went on it became pretty apparent that
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes has
taken a lot from it. There are parallels between the humans and the
apes and the film climaxes with a fight between Caesar and a bad Ape.
So it's worth watching just to see the comparison. I will say that
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes did
do the final battle slightly better, however I'd be lying if I said I
didn't find the sight of a fat man in a slightly tatty monkey costume
as he runs up a tree to be slightly entertaining.
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