{"id":15693,"date":"2014-07-16T17:40:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T07:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15693"},"modified":"2014-07-16T22:22:09","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T12:22:09","slug":"planet-of-the-apes-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15693","title":{"rendered":"Planet of the Apes [1968]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"planetoftheapesposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Franklin J Schaffner
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Michael Wilson and Rod Sterling
\nCast:\u00a0 <\/strong>Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, James Whitmore<\/p>\n

“G<\/span>et your hands off me, you damned dirty ape!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Ah, God bless Charlton Heston and his glorious jaw-jacking performance as astronaut George Taylor.<\/p>\n

I love the original Planet of the Apes<\/em>.\u00a0 Franklin Schaffner’s sci-fi classic is based on the 1963 French novel La Plan\u00e8te des singes<\/em> by Pierre Boulle which takes a wonderful concept – man finds himself on a planet where apes, not humans, are the dominant species – and really gets an incredible lot of mileage out of it.\u00a0 The story is filled with playful wordplay (“human see, human do”), visual puns (see the image below) and role reversals in which the apes treat humans as mindless savages, creatures to be locked in zoos for academics and scientists to study.\u00a0 It’s such a wonderful film and remains a fixture of popular culture nearly fifty years after its release.\u00a0 Everybody knows the line about the damned dirty ape.\u00a0 Everyone knows the final scene even if they haven’t seen the film in its entirety.\u00a0 Yet I believe its Charlton Heston’s fantastic and absorbing performance as the desperate astronaut looking to make sense of and escape his ape captors that make the film what it is.\u00a0 The weirdest thing about it all is I have no idea what Heston is even doing in a film like this.<\/p>\n

Planet of the Apes<\/em> begins slow and steady.\u00a0 It’s over 30 minutes before we see the first ape.\u00a0 A team of astronauts – Taylor, Landon and Dodge – are in outer space, awakened from a cryogenic sleep.\u00a0 They discover that they have overshot both the year and galaxy that they are supposed to be in.\u00a0 Unfortunately for them, their only female crew member is dead too, thanks to a faulty cryo-chamber.\u00a0 If they are the last remaining humans, there isn’t much hope for pro-creation and starting anew.\u00a0 They land on a barren desert planet and begin searching for signs of life.<\/p>\n

Before they start their journey, Dodge takes the American flag and plants it in the soil.\u00a0 Taylor finds this to be an amusingly shallow and foolish gesture.\u00a0 He cannot contain his laughter and ridicule.\u00a0 It’s an interesting foot note that Heston’s act of laughing at this type of American exceptionalism predates Neil Armstrong landing on the moon by a full year.\u00a0 Considering the flag waving All-American Republican activist that Heston would become in his later years, it’s quite the sight seeing the character he plays here.<\/p>\n

The astronauts soon find signs of life – humans, even – but they are not like any that they recognize from Earth.\u00a0 They are mute, stand around in herds, apparently grazing on the foliage.\u00a0 Then, the all conquering apes make their memorable first appearance.\u00a0 They round up the humans like cattle and soon Taylor learns what he has gotten himself into.\u00a0 A planet where humans are no different from other animals and apes are king.<\/p>\n

\"seenohearnospeakno\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The beauty of the film is in the detail.\u00a0 The apes have a distinct culture and social hierarchy.\u00a0 They are a religious community, following the beliefs and practices taught by their elders.\u00a0 The different species are broadly considered to be equal but its interesting to note that all the figureheads are orangutans that are conferred the title of Doctor.\u00a0 Despite their titles, they are skeptical of and eager to quash the scientific intellect and curiosity of the biologist Zira.\u00a0 There is a continuous ideological struggle between Doctor Zaius and Zira about the origins of apes which lies at the heart of the film.<\/p>\n

The best sci-fi films are full of imagination and create a world that feels cohesive and believable.\u00a0 Planet of the Apes<\/em> succeeds in doing just that.<\/p>\n

As Taylor’s situation becomes more desperate, he reverts to a savage animal instinct as he tries to overpower and escape his captors.\u00a0 It is during a failed attempt to escape the Ape City that he roars that<\/em> famous line.\u00a0 He eventually forms an alliance with Zira but he never loses his edge and his utter disdain for his plight.\u00a0 He is smart mouthed and happily uses those around him.\u00a0 His romantic relationship with another human in captivity, Nova, seems to be the ultimate act of sexual objectification.\u00a0 Nova is beautiful but mute and with the intellect of a squirrel.\u00a0 A pregnancy was written out of the original script because even in 1968, they could see its kind of messed up for Taylor to do that.<\/p>\n

Planet of the Apes<\/em> is a film filled with ideologies and political subtext.\u00a0 It is a film that rails against organized religion.\u00a0 It profoundly supports scientific questioning over religious doctrine and champions those who challenge the institution.\u00a0 It is about humanity and evolution.\u00a0 It asks us to rethink the relationships between humans and animals.\u00a0 And because its 1968, it even shunts in a Scrappy-Doo quality youngster at the end of the film who idolizes Charlton Heston and is the apparent embodiment of younger generations that will reshape society.\u00a0 As a parting piece of advice, Heston suggests “never trust anyone over 30”.\u00a0 Whatever you say, Charlton!<\/p>\n

All of these ideas and progressive politics is what has me wondering what on Earth a dyed in the wool conservative like Charlton Heston is doing in Planet of the Apes<\/em>.\u00a0 Did he just have a change of heart as he got older?\u00a0 Did he not understand the film he was making?\u00a0 I’ve tried researching it online and have come up empty.\u00a0 Regardless, I’m just happy he was cast as Taylor because his performance is note perfect.<\/p>\n

Planet of the Apes<\/em> was a critical and commercial success when it released all those years ago.\u00a0 It spawned many sequels, mostly terrible.\u00a0 It lead to a spin-off tv show.\u00a0 It’s been rebooted twice.\u00a0 Once unsuccessfully by Tim Burton and a second time with Rupert Wyatt which was shockingly great.\u00a0 But I’ll always come back to the original.\u00a0 Franklin Schaffner’s film is a well crafted blend of thrills, comedy and imagination.\u00a0 I’ve raved about Heston a lot in this review but I would be remiss not to mention the great performances from Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall.\u00a0 You can watch\u00a0Planet of the Apes<\/em> today and it still holds up.\u00a0 If anything, my enjoyment is heightened as I wait in anticipation for the films famous lines and high points.\u00a0 That scene where Taylor rides along the shoreline, sees the Statue of Liberty and collapses to his knees in his despair still gets me every time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three astronauts crash land on a planet in the distant future ruled by intelligent talking apes that enslave humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1800,5],"tags":[2006,2029,1025,2030],"class_list":["post-15693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-films","tag-charlton-heston","tag-kim-hunter","tag-planet-of-the-apes","tag-roddy-mcdowall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15911,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15693\/revisions\/15911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}