Hollywood’s in trouble. Send apes. What did the producer tell a writer in 1970 when Beneath the Planet of the Apes was a success? “Apes exist. Sequel required.” There have been 10 Planet of the Apes films since the 1968 original with Charlton Heston and directed by Franklin Schaffner. The following four sequels, the best movies in the franchise, came out one per year from 1970 to 1973. By the time Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was directed by J. Lee Thompson in 1972, the Apes were leading slave revolts in then-futuristic 1991, Roddy McDowall as Caesar leading a band of red-caped apes against a small army of black clad fascists. Their only human sympathizer is a black man, and Caesar implores him at once point that, “You, of all people, should know our struggle.” Don Murray, fantastic as the villain, learned his lines in German first to give his English delivery something particularly menacing and real.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was shot in Century City, then relatively new. Thompson uses the sterile empty cityscape to great effect along with the monochromatic color palette on the apes and humans. All of these original films were shot somewhere, whether it was beaches or near-future 1973 Los Angeles.
I’ve no idea where Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was shot. Was it made entirely in a computer?
Movies shouldn’t be made if everything on screen is digital. There’s no point in making any more movies like this—it’s not a movie, it’s a video game. I understand that actors like Owen Teague and Kevin Durand star as apes via motion capture, and their performances come through—they’re good. But I would’ve rather seen them in a suit. Some digital is okay: I was surprisingly moved by the last Apes film, War for the Planet of the Apes, but I never looked at Matt Reeves’ other two entries in the franchise. What’s the point? It’s all computer. William H. Macy and Freya Allen do appear as humans, and I’m sure they’re excited to join ranks with Ricardo Montalban and Natalie Trundy. But Reeves’ reboot trilogy, this new one, and Tim Burton’s awful 2001 remake (which I saw at the United Artists Union Square 14, a terrible and dull introduction to Apes) all miss the point of the original series completely.
Planet of the Apes isn’t supposed to be done on an “epic” scale. It doesn’t work. The material is only interesting as a way to talk about riotous sociopolitical issues in a massive popcorn entertainment format. I’m amazed there were five films to begin with, they have some of the most down endings in Hollywood history. One can only imagine what it was like to see the Statue of Liberty on the beach at the end in 1968 and to walk out of the theater to the sound of waves and Charlton Heston screaming. The second one ends in the end of the world, and a voiceover reiterating that everyone and everything you’ve ever known and loved is gone forever. The End. The next one is too tragic to go into; it primes you for revenge in Conquest. Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a victory lap.
There’s nothing to say about Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes because it doesn’t reveal its setup until the last 10 minutes. If you like watching digital apes swinging around and bashing each other against tress, great, go see it; the next ones might be better. But I’m sick of waiting for reboot sequels to “get better,” like Scream VI, graded on a curve last year. Kingdom doesn’t understand that no one gives a shit about a new universe, and that our universe is the Planet of the Apes universe. That’s the whole fucking point! Otherwise it’s just Animal Planet, but rendered poorly. I’ve played PlayStation 2, I’d rather see a movie.
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