How the orig­i­nal Plan­et of the Apes reflect­ed the coun­ter­cul­ture of the 1960s

Since the release of Franklin J Schaffner’s orig­i­nal Plan­et of the Apes in 1968, itself an adap­ta­tion of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 nov­el, there have been four sequels, an unsuc­cess­ful reboot helmed by Tim Bur­ton, and anoth­er much more suc­cess­ful reboot that has spawned two sequels. This is in addi­tion to mul­ti­ple spin-offs across oth­er media, includ­ing comics, video games and tele­vi­sion series (both live action and ani­mat­ed), and of course a hilar­i­ous Simp­sons par­o­dy fea­tur­ing a bedrag­gled Troy McClure singing ​“I hate every chimp I see / From chimpan‑A to chimpan‑Z.”

Amid all this clut­ter, mem­o­ry of the orig­i­nal film has become dilut­ed – every­one recog­nis­es the image of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty denot­ing the twist end­ing, as well as Heston’s clas­sic ​“take your stink­ing paws off me” line, but details of the film as a whole are hazy. Revis­it­ing the film now and look­ing beyond its icon­ic moments and images, what emerges is an unnerv­ing, excit­ing sci-fi, with a sharp satir­i­cal edge that astute­ly expos­es and explores the anx­i­eties of the time.

Released in 1968, Plan­et of the Apes was part of the wave of fresh, exper­i­men­tal­ly inclined films that came to be known as New Hol­ly­wood. Var­i­ous hall­marks of the era can be found in Schaffner’s film. Jer­ry Goldsmith’s sound­track, for instance, rejects con­ven­tion­al­i­ty in favour of cre­at­ing a dis­qui­et­ing tone through a per­cus­sion-ori­en­tat­ed score full of dis­so­nant nois­es and irreg­u­lar rhythms.

There’s plen­ty of loose, inno­v­a­tive cam­er­a­work, includ­ing a series of dis­ori­ent­ing point of view shots at the begin­ning as the space­ship board­ed by Charl­ton Hes­ton and his crew crash lands on a plan­et they do not recog­nise. And the major­i­ty of the film is shot on loca­tion in Ari­zona rather than a stu­dio, its dusty, untouched land­scapes per­fect for evok­ing the sense of alien remote­ness of the plan­et the char­ac­ters find them­selves strand­ed on.

The film is also iden­ti­fi­able as prod­uct of its era in the way it relates to to the wider social con­text of coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ism. The film’s apoc­a­lyp­tic aes­thet­ic, con­sol­i­dat­ed by the infa­mous rev­e­la­tion that this ​‘unknown’ plan­et is in fact Earth post-nuclear war, in an explic­it reflec­tion of the fear of the bomb by a soci­ety liv­ing through an unprece­dent­ed­ly dan­ger­ous arms race. It has also often been remarked upon how the top­sy-turvy soci­ety Hes­ton dis­cov­ers on this plan­et, where a species of sophis­ti­cat­ed, talk­ing apes rule while mute, sav­age humans, func­tions as a sub­ver­sive alle­go­ry for race rela­tions, and there­fore reflects the ten­sions in Amer­i­ca at the time regard­ing the ongo­ing fight for Civ­il Rights.

But giv­en the social upheaval of the late ​’60s, it’s safe to say that the alle­go­ry can be broad­ened to reflect the social land­scape in gen­er­al, where the hith­er­to under­priv­i­leged groups of the younger gen­er­a­tion helped reshape the tra­di­tion­al dynam­ics in soci­ety. To the old­er gen­er­a­tions used to the con­ser­vatism of the 1950s, it must have felt as though soci­ety was not being run by a whole new, strange species of hip­pies, fem­i­nists and rock stars.

In this sense, Plan­et of the Apes is an expres­sion of the fear felt by the estab­lished priv­i­leged order of this new gen­er­a­tion and their eager­ness to uproot every­thing. The cast­ing of Charl­ton Hes­ton is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy – hav­ing built a star per­sona around being a tra­di­tion­al­ly macho white, alpha male in epics such as Ben Hur and The Ten Com­mand­ments, he rep­re­sent­ed a throw­back to the kind of hero of yore, who audi­ences believed could bring order back to this world gone wrong.

Sim­i­lar­ly, despite the New Hol­ly­wood look and sound, the plot and sto­ry­telling gen­er­al­ly sub­scribe to the old-fash­ioned stu­dio mod­el of an adven­ture yarn, with plen­ty of chas­es, fights, and even a romance with damsel in dis­tress in the form of Lin­da Harrison’s Nova.

None of this is to say that Plan­et of the Apes was a work of some kind of reac­tionary con­ser­vatism – quite the oppo­site. Again, every­thing hinges on the end­ing, which is still jaw-drop­ping despite its famil­iar­i­ty, thanks large­ly to the bril­liant deci­sion to accom­pa­ny the reveal with a stunned silence on the sound­track. It invites us to ques­tion every­thing we’ve just seen.

Although the apes had been por­trayed as rea­son­able beings, they were still clear­ly the antag­o­nists to Hes­ton and the humans – but with the final reveal that the humans had in fact been the archi­tects of their own down­fall, sud­den­ly man’s sta­tus as the film’s de fac­to heroes is brought into dis­re­pute, and the inher­ent worth of what they and Hes­ton rep­re­sent is ques­tioned. Maybe the basis for Heston’s hero­ism isn’t quite as infal­li­ble as we’d assumed – maybe those that fear a plan­et run by apes should be more afraid of their own hubris?