Planet of the Apes: Lessons in the Apocalypse | Little White Lies

Plan­et of the Apes: Lessons in the Apocalypse

10 Jul 2017

Protesters carrying placards reading "Don't join war", "Peace not war", and "Free the humans, unite for peace" at an anti-war demonstration.
Protesters carrying placards reading "Don't join war", "Peace not war", and "Free the humans, unite for peace" at an anti-war demonstration.
There are per­ti­nent lessons to be learned from the orig­i­nal simi­an-based film series.

The suc­cess of the reboot­ed Plan­et of the Apes series is proof that there’s still an audi­ence for simi­an sci-fi, and the long-run­ning series has always had the mar­ket cor­nered in apoc­a­lyp­tic cin­e­ma. Charl­ton Hes­ton curs­ing human­i­ty at the end of the 1968 orig­i­nal is fond­ly remem­bered, but how much do we remem­ber of the less­er-known instal­ments of the orig­i­nal series? Each of the first five POTA films satiris­es human­i­ty while expos­ing the weak­ness­es that lead to our fall from grace – cri­tiques which in these times we’d do well to remem­ber. Let’s take a look back at some of the lessons in the apoc­a­lypse which these films have taught us.

The first entry in the series is a thin­ly-veiled metaphor for big­otry and dog­mat­ic think­ing, a con­tem­po­rary issue in 1968 but no less per­ti­nent today. Crash­ing on what appears to be an alien plan­et ruled by apes, Charl­ton Heston’s astro­naut, Tay­lor, finds him­self at the mer­cy of a simi­an soci­ety that hunts wild’ humans for sport.

After being cap­tured, Tay­lor is hauled before a tri­bunal of orang­utans. He faces the obdu­rate Dr Zaius, whose unwa­ver­ing dog­ma blinds him to the obvi­ous fact that Tay­lor is sen­tient. Taylor’s plight in the face of prej­u­dice has par­al­lels with the civ­il rights move­ment, but so too does the apes’ high­ly seg­re­gat­ed soci­ety, with orang­utans, chim­panzees and goril­las all fixed to the rungs of a rigid hier­ar­chi­cal ladder.

When Zaius final­ly admits that human­i­ty once ruled over apes, he warns Tay­lor not to seek too much truth: you might not like what you find.” Indeed he doesn’t – the wrecked stat­ue of lib­er­ty stick­ing out of the sand is one of the most dev­as­tat­ing twists in cin­e­ma. When asked what Tay­lor will meet in his search, Zaius’ dry reply, his des­tiny” is a bleak state­ment on humanity’s cat­a­stroph­ic impulse to destroy.

The first sequel picks up where the orig­i­nal left off, with Tay­lor and his mute com­pan­ion, Nova, mak­ing their way across the for­bid­den zone. James Fran­cis­cus’ Brent soon arrives in a sec­ond ship, tak­ing over lead duties from Hes­ton. Beneath, while a step down from its pre­de­ces­sor, remains worth­while for explor­ing how the original’s theme of big­otry leads to mil­i­tarism and reli­gious fundamentalism.

With the apes whipped into fear, the goril­las stage a fascis­tic take over, impris­on­ing dis­si­dent chimps with the tac­it approval of the arro­gant, self-serv­ing orang­utans. Mean­while, Tay­lor is impris­oned by an under­ground cult of psy­chic humans who wor­ship an unex­plod­ed nuclear bomb. This may be a mediocre film, but bomb wor­ship as a metaphor for reli­gious extrem­ism is espe­cial­ly potent, and inven­tive com­bi­na­tions of set design and mat­te shots result in some won­der­ful­ly bleak imagery.

Despite its less­er sta­tus, the film remains influ­en­tial, with its visu­al style inspir­ing the video game series Fall­out. When the apes and humans inevitably clash, the unfor­tu­nate Nova and Brent are both killed and so, in the most nihilis­tic state­ment of the series, Tay­lor choos­es anni­hi­la­tion, set­ting off the dooms­day bomb and destroy­ing the earth.

Think that the total destruc­tion of earth would spell the end of the series? Wrong. Escape from the Plan­et of the Apes cir­cum­vents the tricky issue of plan­e­tary armaged­don by retroac­tive­ly hav­ing the original’s Zira and Cor­nel­lius escape using Taylor’s crashed space­ship, some­how flung back in time to 1973. This is eas­i­ly the sil­li­est entry of the series, but with no less a satir­ic eye fixed on humanity’s destruc­tive tendencies.

Here, that ten­den­cy is con­sumerist and celebri­ty cul­ture. In a rever­sal of Charl­ton Heston’s orig­i­nal predica­ment, the apes quick­ly find them­selves celebri­ties, enjoy­ing the excess­es of opu­lent con­sump­tion. How­ev­er, it isn’t long before the pub­lic inter­est in them quick­ly turns to mis­trust, and when the author­i­ties suss out that Zira’s unborn baby holds the key to humanity’s ulti­mate destruc­tion, the apes are forced to go on the run.

The cli­max is emo­tion­al­ly ruth­less and Zira’s baby mouthing the word mama’ is both intense­ly creepy and a chill­ing fore­shad­ow­ing of humanity’s has­ten­ing demise.

Con­quest picks up 20 years after Escape in the far-flung future of 1991, where spe­cial­ly-bred apes are used as slaves in a qua­si-fas­cist dystopia. Milo is now an adult chimp in hid­ing under the assumed name of Cae­sar. After his guardian Arman­do (Star Trek II’s Ricar­do Mon­tal­ban) is killed, Cae­sar finds him­self in the ser­vice of the car­toon­ish­ly evil Gov­er­nor Breck. With the help of Breck’s sym­pa­thet­ic assis­tant Mac­Don­ald, Cae­sar teach­es the oth­er apes to fight back and stage a revolution.

Con­quest depicts a pro­found­ly unequal soci­ety sup­port­ed by an ide­ol­o­gy of essen­tial supe­ri­or­i­ty. But in dou­bling down on the series’ long-run­ning racial sub­texts, Con­quest makes some winc­ing­ly uncom­fort­able con­nec­tions to the apes and real-world his­tor­i­cal slav­ery. And a seri­ous amount of dis­be­lief must be sus­pend­ed in order to accept that apes have become domes­ti­cat­ed and advanced in only two decades.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s sat­is­fy­ing to see the series arc loop­ing back on itself towards the orig­i­nal film. Plus, the final act’s fiery simi­an rev­o­lu­tion is fun, and very sim­i­lar to Rise’s cli­max. In fact, the 2011 reboot makes numer­ous ref­er­ences to Con­quest, includ­ing the first ape who said no”. Zira first men­tions this as an ori­gin myth in Escape, lat­er depict­ed in Con­quest when female chimp Lisa, says no” to tem­per Caesar’s prophet­ic rage.

Round­ing out the series, Bat­tle for the Plan­et of the Apes suf­fers from a deplet­ed bud­get but is saved by a smart premise and some meaty sci­ence fic­tion writ­ing. Set sev­er­al years after Con­quest, human­i­ty has ful­filled its apoc­a­lyp­tic des­tiny and is liv­ing in the after­math of a dev­as­tat­ing nuclear war. A group of humans now live along­side apes in an uneasy truce while in the ruins of LA, an irra­di­at­ed band of humans plot an attack on the apes in a bid to restore their dominance.

Bat­tle drops the dubi­ous racial pol­i­tics of its pre­de­ces­sor in favour of depict­ing a soci­ety on the brink of sav­agery. While Cae­sar main­tains the frag­ile human-ape colony, his own Bru­tus, the goril­la Aldo, waits in the wings to stage a mil­i­tary coup. Big­otry and dog­ma were the trag­ic flaws in the pre­vi­ous films: here the fruition of those flaws comes in the vio­lent desire for power.

Large­ly for­got­ten now, Battle’s influ­ence on the new Apes films shouldn’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed, with the schem­ing Gen­er­al Aldo an obvi­ous tem­plate for Dawn’s vil­lain Koba, his shoot­ing of Cae­sar mir­ror­ing Aldo’s killing of the orig­i­nal Caesar’s son, Cornellius.

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