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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 02/13/2007 : 10:29:17 PM
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FOREWARD: This review will contain references to the previous Planet of the Apes movies, and will be rather spoiler-heavy; hence, this review assumes the reader is already familiar with the PotA series.
I wanna write a insightful and fact-filled introduction like Ken does, but I can’t think of anything because I’m assuming that most readers have already seen all the PotA movies. So there’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know. So here we go.
The movie begins in 2678 AD. The Lawgiver, played by John Huston, recaps the events in Escape From… and Conquest of… in scriptural fashion, with footage from those films to refresh the audience’s memory. This is just fine.
The Lawgiver states that the hero of this movie, Caesar, “led a remnant of those who survived [the nuclear war that occurred between Conquest… and this] in search of greener pastures where ape and human might forever live in friendship according to divine law.”
The Lawgiver is totally full of s**t here. Caesar’s idea of “friendship” will soon be shown to be questionable; and if his idea of “friendship” is based on divine law, I gotta wonder what divine law Caesar was adhering to. He was separated from his parents at birth in Escape, so nobody taught him ape divine law. I suppose Armando, the circus trainer, may have taught him a slightly misanthropic moral code, since Armando is an animal handler who was unhappy with human treatment of animals. If so, it wasn’t in evidence in Conquest. At the end of Conquest, Caesar mentioned the will of God, but only as a reluctant cop-out for not killing every human in sight.
So Caesar was pretty much making up ape law as he went along. For the Lawgiver to imply that ape divine law already existed during Caesar’s revolution tells me that the Lawgiver’s religion has doctored history to give the faith more credibility. I wonder if the Lawgiver is a Bene Gesserit. Missionaria Protectiva, and all that.
The Lawgiver announces that the story we’re about to see occurred in “those far-off days.”
Seque to opening credits over a gorilla on horseback riding across grassy hills. I really don’t like the soundtrack during the credits. The first minute has too-blarey horns, and the rest features a repeated marchy phrase whose second half sounds like its deliberately a half-step higher than it should be; it’s as if the composer, Leonard Rosenman, did that just to be different. When the ape-on-horseback gets to the ape village, the music burst into triumphant coda, although there’s absolutely nothing happening.
The ape on the horse is Urko, played by Claude Akins. He dismounts (mercifully ending the music), does some mild bullying of the humans, and cusses one human out for not addressing him as “General.” This establishes that he’s a military ape and that he doesn’t like humans. This scene is short, so it works okay.
Cut to an outdoor classroom. School is in session! The human teacher has written “Ape shall never kill ape” on the board, and the young chimps (the scientists) and oranges (political/religious) repeat it, while the adult gorillas (military) sit there looking baffled. As a Navy veteran, I bristle at the idea that the military are a bunch of know-nothing goons, so I’m thinking, “F**k you, movie.” Urko hurriedly grabs a seat at the back of the class with the rest of the gorillas. A general who sweats being late for class? No wonder the humans don’t address him with his rank. There’s about a minute of Welcome Back, Kotter-style classroom banter that would be engaging if this wasn’t a PotA movie. Seriously, this is a limp way of starting.
Brief shot of Virgil the orang, played by Paul Williams. Williams’ voice sounds a tiny bit garbled by the makeup. He makes a witty time travel joke that has nothing to do with anything.
In class, Cornelius, the son of Caesar, demonstrates his diplomatic skills by totally kissing the teacher’s ass. “Ape shall never kill abe.” Abe the Teacher than calls Urko to show what he’s written, and totally humiliates Urko in front of everybody. I notice that Abe mentions “Your capital A” and “Your capital K.” Since all the letters on the board were in all caps, and they were writing what he had written, I don’t know why he mentions “ capital” anything.
Urko goes apecrap (one pun is my limit, promise). Abe tells him, “NO!!!” All the apes gasp in horror. Virgil, who was just happenin’ by, tells Abe that Caesar has forbidden humans to say “no” to apes (See earlier about Caesar’s “friendship”), and to apologize at once as damage-control. I don’t see how Abe could be unaware of the Just Say No To “No” clause, especially because a line during the Kotter scene established that he answers directly to Caesar. **shrug** Abe apologizes, Urko is having none of it, and all the gorillas trash the school. The school-trashing takes seconds, as I think the castaways on Giggilan’s Island could’ve built something sturdier. Abe flees for his life, with the gorillas in pursuit. During the chase, we hear the cat-on-piano style riff that Jerry Goldsmith used in the original PotA. It’s great to hear, but it’s too good for this boring chase. Don’t think it’s boring? Look at the other apes and humans. No one is screaming or running for cover; they just stare in silent notice.
The gorillas catch Abe just as he reaches Caesar’s Treehouse (How do you say “No Girls Allowed” in Latin?). Urko tells on Abe, Abe tells on Urko, and this is so embarrassing. Every one of the PotA movies have some solidly memorable scenes and lines. For this movie’s first act to feature a double-tattle-tale among a general and an educator of the youth is just pathetic.
Virgil arrives and gives Caesar a Brainy Smurf account. Caesar doesn’t get it, and tells him so. This is unlikely. How did Caesar go from being the only talking ape on the planet in Conquest to being leagues behind Virgil now?
This also brings up the question of how much time has passed between Conquest and this movie. On the one hand, Caesar now has a son who looks to be ten or twelve, and all the apes can talk, some of them eloquently. On the other hand, Abe says that he’s old enough to remember when humans told apes “no” all the time, and Caesar himself seems physically fit. **shrug** Caesar, after initially appearing shocked at Abe’s violation of Caesar’s own First Law, gives Abe a total free pass and tells Urko to put the school back in order. Note the chimps in the shot where Urko ape-runs away. They’re wearing immobile masks, just like in the war-rally scene in Beneath.
I’ll continue tomorrow unless I’m totally suckin’ and someone tells me to shut up.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2007 : 12:48:31 PM
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Inside Caesar’s Treehouse, Caesar waters his plants while chatting with MacDonald, brother of the MacDonald who was Caesar’s human accomplice in Conquest. My guess is that the actor from Conquest was unavailable, so a ringer was hired and cast as a brother.
While Caesar may still be physically fit, his spirit certainly has mellowed out since his revolution. Watering plants, faulting humans for eating “dead cattle, dead chickens, dead pigs.” I can’t image Caesar the revolutionary having much interest in either botany or veganism. MacDonald complains about the enforced herbivority humans now have to suffer at the hands of their masters. This leads to an Am-I-Reading-This-Right bit. Here it is:
Caesar, with weary distraction: “We are not your masters.”
MacDonald, with mild bitterness: “We’re not your equals.”
Caesar, more earnestly: “MacDonald, I believe that when you truly grow to know and trust a person, you cannot help but like him. Now, when we grow to know and trust your people, then we shall all be equals and remain so until the end of the world.”
Ummmm…..how best to put this…..When I watch the PotA movies (or any other movie), I do so for entertainment first, and everything else second. I’m well aware of the franchise’s reputation for gripping intelligent commentary on modern American race relations (a reputation that didn’t become the least bit justified until Conquest). That ain’t why I’m watching. I’m watching to have a good time. If I need insight into a real-world phenomenon, it won’t be cinema that I turn to for it. However, there are plenty of folks who really dig the racial parallels. So what to make of Caesar, the leader of the revolution that threw off the shackles of slavery in Conquest, now enforcing a second-class citizen code on humans on the grounds that the apes just don’t like the humans enough yet? Certainly, had this been a brand-new character in the series, that bit would’ve pegged him as a bad guy. Imagine if George Wallace had tried using a cop-out like that to excuse segregation. Would anybody buy it? I would hope not! So I don’t know what in the world the movie wants us to think or feel here. I can only tell you what I do think and feel: Caesar’s a bit of a prick.
MacDonald tells Caesar that the world is not long for this…um…universe. Why he’s only now getting around to telling Caesar this, I don’t know. MacDonald exposits that under the dead city, the archived video images of Caesar’s parents might still be intact. He also says that his brother, who helped Caesar prevail in Conquest had told him all about it, including their location (Presumably, his brother also told him about the contents of the exact archives of Caesar’s parents, because there’s no other way MacDonald could be aware of Earth’s not-too-distant-future annihilation). How it was that the Conquest MacDonald told the Battle Macdonald about the archives but never told Caesar himself is not explained. Caesar is excited, and he and MacDonald decide to go for it.
Caesar has a nice brief I-have-to-go scene with his wife, and a nice wake-up-kid moment with his son, Cornelius. These are nice bits because Roddy McDowell is good at this sort of thing. While he was also good in Conquest, I get a kick out of imagining how it would’ve looked had he performed his hellfire speech at the end without makeup. Woulda been hilarious. Here, though, it’s well done and just a nice family scene.
Caesar, MacDonald, and Virgil the orang go to the village armory. Mandemus, played by Lew Ayres, is the keeper of the weapons. He is also the self-described “keeper of Caesar’s conscience.” I can believe that, if he doesn’t let the supreme leader of the entire ape population have access to his own weapons. I wonder what Caesar did to cause him to enforce such a restriction on himself. After asking a battery of cautious questions, Mandemus opens up and lets the trio have rifles and one pistol.
While Mandemus has only one other scene besides this one, I like how this character is handled. He can best be described as NON-Odious Comic Relief. He’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but he doesn’t try to be. The character is just there to give the viewer an amused smirk, with a septuagenarian’s mild distractedness. It works well. He’s never irritating.
Now armed and ready, the trio of knowledge-seekers sets out to the city to find the echoes of the past.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2007 : 2:53:18 PM
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Sidenote: I just noticed that I misspelled the very first word of the review. It should be “Foreword,” not “Foreward.” See, it’s things like that that make me uncomfortable.
There’s about one minute of footage of Caesar, MacDonald, and Virgil hoofing it across the desert. This isn’t bad, but it calls to mind the higher-budget on-location long shots of Heston and Co. doing the same in PotA. Compared to that, this is limp. Still, it’s not this movie’s fault it had a budget of less than two million. And there’s nothing in these shots that suggests to me a lost opportunity. This bit does what it can with what it has to work with. It’s fine.
They reach the crest of a sand dune. Caesar says, “There it is….or was.” We get a matte painting of a wrecked city, accompanied by the sloppiest Horns of Shock I’ve ever heard. It sounds like half the players missed the cue and were a half-second late.
Virgil says, “Like a storm at sea….it solidified.”Uh……...do what?
The stroll through some sets of city wreckage that just don’t pack any punch. Except for a few burnt-out cars, they city wreckage could be the semi-buried ruins of Pompeii or a half-completed-then-discarded project.
Elsewhere in the city, the remaining humans who survived the nukes are….I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re keeping busy at it; and they’re all wearing knit caps that cover their ears, as well. A nugget of exposition tells us that they’ve been living in a “hell of radiation for all these years.” The leader of the irradiated humans is Governor Kolp, played by Severn Darden. In Conquest, Kolp was an assistant to Governer Breck, played by Don Murray.
Kolp exposits that “If the bomb hadn’t killed the old Governor, boredom certainly would have.” I’m guessing Don Murray wasn’t available this time around. There was a lot of that going around in the PotA series. Kolp goes on a bit about how boring it is being trapped in an irradiated city. When one of the security alarms goes off at the presence of the three intruders, he orders his ambiguously-accented lady friend to summon Mendez to the control room.* It may be a blooper here, I don’t know, but she begins to speak into the mike to summon Mendez, then gives an “Oh,” turns on the mike, and resumes speaking.
* - The actress is Frances Nuyen, whom IMDB describes as French-Vietnamese. I spent the whole movie trying without success to place her accent.
Kolb and Co. watch Caesar and Co. on the security monitors. Caesar and Co. find the archives room, find the tape they’re looking for, and have a seat to watch the footage. Kolb orders security forces to apprehend them, saying “Shoot to maim.” Like it’s that easy.
Caesar gets the information he needed: The tapes reveal, through his father’s testimony, that an ape war in the year 395? will destroy the earth. Virgil gives a speech about the fluidity of the future, but is cut off when they hear someone coming. Virgil sees the security camera move, and blasts it to pieces.
Kolp’s lady assistant, (credits list her as Alma, so that’s what I’ll call her henceforth, although I don’t think her name was ever spoken), reports to Kolb the crash of the monitor they’re watching the intruders on. Kolb proves to be a doofus by replying, “I’m not interested in equipment failures.” Not even equipment that’s monitoring the intruders you’ve just sent a squad to capture? What are you interested in, then?
The next ten minutes are a totally boring and thrill-free escape scene, featuring worse-than-Stormtrooper accuracy, spatial agnosticism, gratuitous use of a firearm substitute when the firearm itself would’ve done just fine, and no injuries even of a minor kind. It generates no suspense or excitement at all. Even Governor Kolb, who was openly pining for something to alleviate the boredom, found it boring; we know, because he gives only a half-hearted cuss-out to the squad leader who failed to capture/kill them.
Kolb tells his men to send scouts to follow the trio to find out where they came from. A beanpole guy whose name is never given tries to change his mind. Beanpole recommends giving the apes the benefit of the doubt that they came in peace, and to let them leave in peace. Kolb overrules him and says that he’s gonna kill ‘em all.
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Edited by - Food on 02/14/2007 2:55:21 PM |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2007 : 7:37:15 PM
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Returning to the city, Caesar and Co. are rudely met by General Aldo. Aldo wants to know what Caesar has been up to, and Caesar plays the I’m-the-king-so-shut-up card.
Cut to Cornelius and a human friend playing with tree branches as pretend rifles. Human friend “shoots” Cornelius, and Cornelius does what no kid ever does: Takes his simulated demise in stride and dies. I never did that. When my assassin screamed, “I got you, I got you,” I’d scream back, “No, you didn’t!” Stupid movie. No realism. Cornelius’ mother comes outside and cusses him out, saying “Hasn’t [your father] forbidden you to play with guns?” Waitaminute, how did Caesar become such a pacifist as to forbid his kid to play bang-bang with branches as pretend rifles?
Three of the City humans unstealthily case Ape Village (I know it’s called Ape City, but its just huts and stuff). They spy Caesar giving a speech to the high council, which looks like it constitutes half of the population. Caesar tells the apes that there are potentially unfriendly humans in the dead city, and that preparations for their eventual invasion of Ape Village must begin. Then MacDonald and a few other friendly humans show up. Aldo objects to the presence of humans in a council meeting. Despite Caesar speaking up for them, Aldo and all the other gorillas get up and leave in protest. Does every point of contention in this ape society have to fall along chimp/orang/gorilla lines?
Back in Dead City, Beanpole is trying to talk reason into Governor Kolb. Kolb isn’t too interested, and drops the subject entirely when his scouts come back. The scouts report Ape Village to be small enough to capture and large and fertile enough “to feed hundreds!” I wonder at this point what exists in the direction away from Ape Village, if food is the problem. The journey from Ape Village to Dead City is said to be three days. Could similarly green pastures exist in the opposite direction a reasonable distance away, as well? The only hint would be the map Cornelius shows to Taylor in PotA, but we only got a short glimpse of that with Taylor’s hand in the way, and I don’t feel like doing cross-referencing right now. Kolb tells his Captain to gear up to invade.
Kolb calls Alma over. I was mistaken: He does address her as Alma, several times. My mistake. He tells her that if the mission fails, she is to launch the nuclear missile he has handy at Ape Village. We get a look at the alpha and omega signs on the left fin that identify this missile as the doomsday missile from Beneath. Good decision by the makers to not have a close-up of the fin, as that would’ve been to “ooooh, lookee.” We can see the fin and make the connection just fine with the missile tastefully in the background.
Caesar’s wife makes a similar case for restraint that Beanpole made to Governor Kolb. It seems that Caesar is every bit as convinced of the Dead City Humans’ madness as Kolb is of the apes’ animality. Poignancy! Will the cycle of violence never end? Can we not lay down our swords and embrace each other with the empathy of beloved kin? Can we not trust in one another?
Brief shot of Kolb giving the order to move ‘em out! ‘Em being a few halftracks and a couple dozen men moving through the wreckage with a lofty battle march theme that just highlights how lame this is.
Cut to Caesar’s Treehouse. Cornelius spots his pet squirrel escaping from his cage and out into the night, and goes out after him. After a while, Cornelius notices what is supposed to be a secret meeting of Aldo and the gorillas. It might actually be a secret meeting if not for the fire and the grunting racket the apes are making. Aldo wants to take the guns, kill the humans, and overthrow Caesar. The gorillas are all up for it except for the Caesar part, but before anyone can say so, Cornelius is spotting up in a tree eavesdropping. Aldo corners Cornelius on a thin limb and hacks it with his blade. Cornelius falls to what will eventually be his death. I’ll be generous and say that he must’ve smacked his head on that rock there, because the fall itself doesn’t seem like it would be fatal at all.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/15/2007 : 11:06:16 PM
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Sidenote: I made another goof: In the first post of this review, I refer to General Aldo as General Urko. That was pretty careless. Urko was the ape Mark Lenard played in the PotA TV series. I’m totally suckin’ at this.
Hearing someone approaching, Aldo gestures for everybody to scram, and they do. The someone is Cornelius’ mother. Seeing Cornelius’ inert form, she screams, “CORNEELLIUUUSSS!!!!” It’s not actress Natalie Trundy’s fault that a female voice saying “Cornelius” just doesn’t sound right if it’s not Kim Hunter. Trundy does just fine as Caesar’s wife, but…**shrug**…I miss Kim Hunter’s Zira. She was so sweeeeet, wasn’t she?
Cut to the matte painting of Dead City, only this time with the human forces on the move. The forces number two jeeps, one flatbed truck with canvas awning, a Chevy, a station wagon, school bus, and a what looks like about a hundred men.
This is another aspect in which the low budget is really hurting this movie. Now, one could say that since it’s post-apocalyptic, then of course there wouldn’t be that many people gearing up for battle. But I don’t buy it. Let’s say the city’s population before the nuclear war was 10 million. Say 95% of them died. That’s enough to qualify as apocalyptic, isn’t it? So there would be 500,000 survivors. It’s been 12 years since the war.* The radiation everybody keeps talking about doesn’t seem to be doing that much of a number on anyone, just some skin lesions on the older folks like Governor Kolb. Even Alma, who looks to be in her early/mid-20s, and hence would’ve been a kid at the time, seems fine. Let’s say….I dunno….50% of the remaining 500,000 either died from radiation, left in search of whatever you search for after an apocalypse, or just plain aren’t part of Governor Kolb’s jurisdiction. That still leaves 250,000 people remaining. Let’s say that 5 percent of that number would’ve been in Governor Kolb’s post-apocalyptic military (a conservative figure, I think; because in a world where money is no longer the standard for power, brute force would be the new standard for power, making a military role attractive). That’d be 12,500 people, far more than the hundred or so we see here.
* - Beanpole does indeed mention to Governor Kolb that it has been 12 years since the war. I missed it the first time.
There’s a few seconds of the men marching alongside the vehicles, and their manner of walking makes it look like they’re returning from a war. They look dog-tired.
Cut to the indoor set of the scene of Cornelius’ soon-to-qualify-as-murder. I guess the attack itself was also filmed indoors, but it was so dark, it never occurred to me to wonder. MacDonald sees the branch Cornelius fell from, notices something fishy, and pulls it free from the tree. He examines the blade marks in the branch and furrows his brow in realization. If the apes have an equivalent of CSI, he’d be, like, in so total deep poop for messin’ up the crime scene.
At Cornelius’ Treehouse, Cornelius’ pretty human nurse paces around, pausing in the window to look out into the night. Cut to outside, and it’s broad daylight! The chimps are gathered in what I guess is vigil, but it looks more like they’re placing wagers on Cornelius’ survival. Cut to back inside the Treehouse, and it’s night gain! Cornelius is feverish and barely responsive. The nurse tells the mother that it ain’t lookin’ good for Cornelius. The mother says that she won’t tell Caesar just yet. She looks into the distance and says, “I still believe we can change the future.” I don’t know where on earth that came from. How does changing the future have anything to do with Cornelius’ health status or Caesar’s knowledge of it? How will telling Caesar about Cornelius’ worm-food-in-waiting status screw up changing the future? Garbage.
About 40 seconds of the humans trudging through the desert. They still stagger as if they’re coming back from a war rather than going into one, and a couple of them collapse to the dirt. This is never elaborated on. Is it the large trek that’s worn them out? The radiation? They didn’t look too ill to me.
The come to the top of a sand dune. Two gorillas hiding at the bottom of the dune spot them. A lone human motorcyclist goes forward, and one of the apes makes to dispatch him. Due to some sloppy editing, I can’t tell where the cyclist is in relation to either the apes or the humans. The ape ambushes him by simply leaping into the scene and stabbing him in the back. Then there a shot of the ape cresting a dune and tossing the human corpse down it. The actor playing the cyclist is a lousy corpse the whole way down, especially at the bottom when he goes from face-down to face-up.
Governor Kolb watches the two apes through his binoculars. He has such a clear view of them that I wonder how the apes aren’t noticing him in return. They pantomime the slaying of the cyclist, then have a pantomimed belly-laugh. This upsets Kolb (inasmuch as Kolb ever gets upset. He plays a bored character, but even so, the actor is really low-key throughout). He orders the main jeep’s cannon to open fire. It fires two shots, and takes out both apes.
We get a close-up of the ape corpses lying there, and in the background we see the human army resume its advance. This shot was a bad idea, because the human army looks to have only two vehicles and two dozen men left. I’ll be generous and say that Kolb prefers a single-file formation.
One of the ape corpses is not actually dead, and long before the humans are out of sight, he staggers off. Might wanna wait ‘til there gone, ape. It also doesn’t speak well of their accuracy of the gunner who took them out, either, as two shots from a jeep-mounted cannon failed to take out two apes? Inefficient.
Cut to Ape Village, where Virgil is telling MacDonald that Caesar isn’t giving up hope for Cornelius. MacDonald tells Virgil that it was no accident, the tree branch was cut. As this is at least the very next morning, and probably more if the all-day vigil wasn’t an editing error, I’d think MacDonald would’ve mentioned this some time ago. They’re interrupted by Aldo rushing into council to announce that the human invasion has come. He tells his men to lock the humans in the corral. MacDonald protests, saying that this is against Caesar’s orders. As Aldo’s men drag MacDonald away, Aldo plops himself on Caesar’s uncomfortable-looking stone throne and says with pleasure, “Caesar is not here.”
Brief shot of humans being rounded up into the corral. None of the humans look too bothered by this. They seem as bothered as you or I would be if told that we could only enter the building by the South entrance, not the East entrance. None of this inspires any emotion in the viewer at all.
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Edited by - Food on 02/15/2007 11:06:56 PM |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2007 : 9:01:33 PM
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Close up of Aldo’s ugly mug as he says, ‘We…want…guns! Guns…are…power! No we go and get guns!” We’re not supposed to like Aldo, but I find him to be the most believable ape in the movie. Because at the time of Conquest, apes were….**shrug**….apes, as we know them in the real-world sense. In the 12 years since, the apes have become impossibly well-spoken. So Aldo’s extreme bluntness, however unlikable he’s supposed to be, is actually a bit refreshing. As is his interest in power through the most expeditious manner possible. That’s how social animals are when push comes to shove. So that, too, is refreshing in its semi-realism.
Cut to the armory, where Aldo demands guns, and Mandemus denies them on the grounds that only Caesar can issue guns. There’s an interesting bit in here:
Mandemus: What will you do with them?
Aldo: We will do with them what we will!
Mandemus: “Do what you will” is the devil’s law!
Waitaminit. The movie has already established that Caesar made the laws. He made the law of humans never saying “no” to an ape, he made the law of “Ape shall never kill ape,” and he put the Forbidden in Forbidden Zone. So “Do what you will” being the devil’s law must also be one of Caesar’s edicts. Caesar is topping his namesake in the dictatorial category. Bend the public to your will through religious fright. Lovely, Caesar.
Aldo ain’t taking “no” from apes any more than from humans, so he and his man crash the place and start grabbing guns, grenades, and ammo. Mandemus stands aside and yells, “Stop! Stop! Caesar forbids yooooouuuu!!!!” His tone of voice is the same as that of a cinematic priest if this scene were in a church, only replacing “God” with “Caesar.” I think Caesar should’ve called himself “Mao.”
Cut to the human invaders on a grassy hill scoping the city through binoculars. Seeing the Gilligan’s Island-style huts, Governor Kolb says, “There it is: Ape City.” Since he seemed unaware of the place’s presence before the two apes came into his own city, I find it unlikely that he would refer to this village as City. Noting the barricade in front of the city, Kolb’s X.O. says that it’s “nothing that a few flame bombs won’t take care of.” Hell, the whole village is nothing that a few flame bombs won’t take care of!
Kolb radios home to Sergeant York (that’s his name. I checked the subtitles just to make sure. I don’t know if we ever actually saw him, although it’s probable that it’s Beanpole). Kolb says that they’re going to attack just before sunrise, and that “if fate shouldn’t smile on us, bring that message to Alba.” Meaning, of course, that if Kolb doesn’t survive, detonate the bomb. At first, I thought he said “should smile on us,” until I used the subtitles again.
Virgil is sneaking to Caesar’s place in the pre-dawn light, avoiding the apes who have declared martial law and ordered all apes to remain in their homes (Pretty poor strategy, seeing as how said homes offer no protection against anything more than strong breezes). Virgil tells Caesar that Aldo has seized power. Caesar, who had stayed by Cornelius’ side and consequently out of the loop, is shocked. The nurse calls Caesar back to witness Cornelius’ dying gasp. Here’s the exchange:
Cornelius: They…hurt me. They want…to hurt you.
Caesar: Who? Who hurt you? The humans?
Cornelius: No.
Caesar: Then who?
Cornelius: Sh…Shall I be….Shall I be…malformed?
Caesar: No. One day, you shall be as tall as a king.
With that, Cornelius’ soul is slashed to ribbons by the ape-reaper’s deadly scythe. I don’t know what dying feels like, especially for apes, so I can’t fault Cornelius for not answered his father’s crucial-for-the-future-of-apekind question.
The “tall as a king” bit is odd, too. It was mentioned earlier in the movie when Caesar and Cornelius had the heart-to-heart before Caesar went to Dead City. It’s supposed to be the kind of nonsense-but-inspirational words a father would say to his kid. No problem there; but since Caesar himself is a king, and since several of the gorillas, including Aldo, stand over him by a few solid inches, I don’t know if Cornelius really got much of a thrill out of the words.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2007 : 01:01:10 AM
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Cut to the human army. Despite Kolb saying the invasion would be just before sunrise, the shadows of the trees give the time of day to be somewhere around noon. Sloppy. He orders his men to lay the smoke screen, then to start the bombardment on his signal. The advance begins.
In Caesar’s Treehouse, Caesar wonders to Virgil about who would hurt Cornelius. Rather than just tell Caesar point-blank that Aldo did it, Virgil gets Sen Master cryptic. When Caesar asks with suspicion, “What do you know?” there’s a jump cut to Virgil shouting “THAT’S what I know,” as the two of them are now outside looking at the corral holding the Ape Village humans. Caesar cusses out Aldo, Aldo says the incarceration was for security. MacDonald yells pleadingly for Caesar, and the apes who are guarding the corral begin to jab the butts of their rifles at the humans. Like all the other action in this movie, it doesn’t conjure up any emotion at all. There’s no sense of oppression, no sense of unfairness. There’s just the image of gorillas jabbing rifle butts at humans in a Gilligan’s Island corral. I don’t particularly mind movies that don’t want to emphasize violence, but this would’ve been a good place to have some. Let’s see some blood!
I will give the scene credit for one thing, though: The long shot of the armed gorillas encircled around the corral is pretty neat. Gorillas holding rifles naturally is neat, so it’s kinda hard to screw it up.
The scene is interrupted by the first salvo from the invaders. The first shot takes out a treehouse. Excellent! Something blew up! Aldo says see tol’ja, and half the gorillas guarding the corral take off to take on the invaders. Then there’s a long shot of the advancing humans, and it’s another poor decision, because while the meadow is quite pretty and would be useful in a Bigfoot movie, there’s simply too few humans to make this seem like the epic battle that it’s supposed to be.
The battle scene is about seven minutes long. Lots of shooting, lots of smoke, very few casualities, a couple somersaults, about seven shots of treehouses exploding (at least two of which are re-used), Governor Kolb posturing on top of a jeep. The apes man the barricade, then fall back to the village, the humans enter the village, and none of this is exciting.
There are two weird bits: First, When a shell lands near the corral, the caged humans panic but do not burst through the corral walls, despite the walls being made of, as Peter Benchley would put it, “Kleenex and spit.” Second, at one point, Virgil and Caesar are on the frontline firing away. Virgil says to Caesar, “Where’s Aldo?” Caesar answers, “Probably on the other side of the valley by now.” Waitaminit. Aldo may be a creep, but he hasn’t done anything to indicate cowardice of any kind. We clearly see the gorillas get on horseback and ride join the battle before the chimps or orangs. Shut up, Caesar.
Finally, the humans enter the village proper. Bloodless ape corpses lie everywhere. Governor Kolb finds quickly finds Caesar picking himself up and has a total James Bond villain moment. Here’s the whole spiel:
Governor Kolb: “Caesar! Your people* weakened our city by rebelling against your human masters. But we who survive will create a new race, and you and yours will be brought low, and you shall learn again what it is to have a master.” [Caesar cowers from all the guns pointing at him] “Ha! You’re learning already….clever…ape! Ape. Clever…ape! But then, you always were…clever. I was told how you chose your own name. But every Caesar must have his Brutus.** Did you know that…APE? Do you understand that…APE?!? And now Ape city is about to lose its king!”
* - “People,” Governor?
** - Not the best analogy. Brutus was a friend of Caesar who later betrayed him. Kolp was never Caesar’s friend. Now, if Kolp had said, “Every Caesar must have his Roman Senate,” we’d’ve been good.
Kolb braces to shoot Caesar, (and I mean visibly braces, like a little kid firing a gun while afraid of the loud bang it’s gonna make) but Caesar’s wife shouts, “No, Kolb, no!” This distracts him, and two apes throw grenades that each explode a human vehicle. The second vehicle is already careening down a hill when the explosion happens. It took me a couple viewings to notice, but it’s there.
Caesar shouts “NOW, FIGHT LIKE APES!!!” There’s a visual blooper here that the movie tries to cover up. You can actually see Roddy McDowell’s real teeth behind the fakes as he says those four words. There’s a blurry patch over his mouth to hide it. It’s not something you’d be likely to notice on first viewing, though. I didn’t. According to IMDB (god, I hate using that phrase), McDowell’s makeup was starting to come loose and the blurry bit was the best they could do.
Upon this battle cry, all the bloodless ape corpses spring up and, through the magic of poor editing, are immediately dogpiling the bad guys.
This is absolute garbage. Absolute garbage. Was this the reason there was no blood in the movie? So we’d be surprised by this supposedly brilliant strategic ploy? And was supposedly brilliant strategic ploy the best they could come up with? I’ve heard this movie described, accurately, as being more like a TV movie. This scene is like a BAD TV movie.
And it gets no better. We see about one minute of unconvincing beatings with gun butts, a few unconvincing punches, the same net being dropped on the same humans twice, no blood, no death. It’s so lame that even Caesar stops pretending anymore. At one point, he yells, “Stop! Stop! No killing! Take them captive!” A war for survival, and he’s saying “No killing?” This is a bad NICKOLODEON movie!
A flatbed truck filled with humans is surrounded by apes. Caesar says not to kill them, but to take them captive.
Kolb makes his escape on the school bus, with a jeep and a motorcycle right behind. Virgil aims to shoot, but Caesar says to let them go. If the real Caesar was like this, the Roman Senate could’ve just ignored him to death.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2007 : 8:50:00 PM
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Cut to the top of a hill, where Aldo sees the approaching remnants of the invaders army. He shouts “NO PRISONEEEERS!!!” and the gorillas all charge on horseback down the hill. They surround the school bus with an assist by the driver, who was kind enough to stop the vehicle
This attack scene is less than a minute long, and it’s the closest thing to good as this movie’s action gets. The humans in the bus must’ve left their weapons behind, because they never return fire. The gorillas try their best to entertain us, smashing the bus windows, firing their wicked-cool antiquated machine guns into the bus, one of them lobs a grenade into the bus. All the humans are killed, no gorillas are killed.
This scene could’ve been longer, because the image of these gorillas firing these particular automatic weapons is pretty potent for the brief time its there. I don’t know how the decision was arrived at to have them holding what look to me like WWI-era machine guns (I know nothing about automatic weapons) rather than the M-16s that we see both humans and apes holding elsewhere in the movie, but I think it was a good decision. How best to put it….I’ll try analogy: Think of the aesthetic difference between an M-16 and these archaic guns as the difference between a regal Arabian scimitar and an assassin’s dagger. The former has a deadly beauty of craftsmanship, while the latter is built simply to be deadly and looks all the more wicked for it. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but that’s how I see it. These wicked-deadly-looking guns, the brutal-looking gorillas, and the belligerent-looking costumes combines to give an effectively bad-ass image. In particular, at 1:23:18, there’s a shot of a gorilla firing a stream of rounds into the bus that is just the kind of image that this movie could’ve used a hell of lot more of.
There are a couple eyebrow-lifters, though. At 1:23:32, a gorilla is firing into the trees, while all the others gorillas are still paying attention to the bus. What is he firing at? I dunno. Also, there are two grenades thrown in this scene, both of which explode literally one second after being thrown, and the second of which explodes one second after the pin is pulled. Uh….I think I’d’ve left those in the armory.
The slaughter ends with a shot inside the bus of bloodless human corpses, including the wide-eyed corpse of Governor Kolp. I would wonder if the humans aren’t trying the same thing the apes did by playing possum in this bloodless-corpse universe, but the apes did put an extreme amount of bullets into the bus, plus one grenade, so I guess they humans are satisfactorily cold oatmeal.
Aldo stands on top of the bus as his men burst into cheers. They hold their guns aloft and shout, “Aldo! Aldo!” So do I; because it was his men, under his leadership, who tried to make this movie interesting by not insisting on “no killing” in a war for the very survival of their species. If my species was faced with immediate existential peril, I’d want Aldo in command of the defense. When my interest in this movie was faced with immediate existential peril, Aldo and his men tried to effect a rescue while Caesar was totally uncaring about my plight. So watching Aldo bask in his well-deserved glory, I felt like throwing roses unto him through the screen. Although his mission to defeat the forces of ennui was ultimately a failure, I know that he and his men have done their best. And I thank them for it. God bless each one of you, gorillas.
Back at Ape Village, the townsfolk are giving Caesar similar treatment, chanting “Hail Caesar! Hail Caesar!” Obviously, the juxtaposition is supposed to imply something here. Had the movie not been totally ignoring Caesar’s less-than-admirability from the start, I’d say the message was something along the lines of “Look at these foolish factions, deifying their leaders while not recognizing that their enemies are just mirror images of themselves.” But since we’re supposed to automatically think of Caesar as the good guy and Aldo as the bad guy, that can’t be it.
Caesar orders the humans in the corral released at once. Aldo, returning on horseback with his army, countermands him. They bicker a bit, and Aldo orders his men to kill the humans. There’s a brief reaction shot of the humans in terror at Aldo’s order, but it’s blown by the fact that of these few dozen humans in the corral, only two or three of them scream, and halfhearted screams at that.
Gorillas form in a semi-circle around the corral and aim their weapons on the humans. Caesar blocks the line of fire, or at least he tries to, because one chimp can’t block the line of fire of all the gorillas in the semicircle. The ones at the ends could’ve blown all the humans away, Caesar or no Caesar. Aldo says that he is in command now and tells Caesar to get out of the way, “or we shall kill you!” Those five words are unintentionally funny to listen to, because they have a rhythmic quality to them. Score it in 6/8 time, with “we” on 1, “shall” on 2, “kill” on 3, “you” on 4, a rest on 5, and “or” on 6, then loop it ad infinitum, and you’ve got a metronome that AC/DC could write a song to. “The Jack,” in particular comes to mind. I got a giggle out of it.
The apes gasp in shock and the human have blank faces in….something. Aldo and Caesar have a glaring contest, until Virgil says, “Ape has never killed ape, let alone an ape child.” Caesar and Aldo both give Virgil looks of surprise, as the rest of the apes growl in…whatever apes feel that makes them growl. Virgil totally steals MacDonald’s credit by announcing that the branch did not break, it was cut. He says this in wise-old-man fashion, like he’s the one who figured it out in the first place.
One by one, the apes vocally realize that Aldo has killed Caesar’s son.
Waitaminit. How did anyone go from “the branch was cut” to “the branch was cut by Aldo?” And even if it was proven, we saw Cornelius’ death, and it looked more accidental than anything else, especially as the fall wasn’t anywhere close to being believably fatal. I guess Caesar’s not a big fan of the whole “Innocent until proven guilty” thing. Great and wise ruler, our Caesar.
In the corral, an unnamed human asks MacDonald what’s with the apes. Doofus. You’ve heard the discussion, what do you think is with them? MacDonald is diplomatic and doesn’t laugh at his friend, instead telling him, “They just joined the human race.” Uh…no. Humans do not have a sacred law that states “Human shall never kill human.” Some religions do, but most cultures have a general unspoken blaseness regarding its enforcement. These apes don’t. So as far as maintaining principle goes, these apes are outclassing humans by a fair bit.
They all start slowly chanting “Ape has killed ape.” We get various close-ups of Caesar looking increasingly angry, Aldo looking increasingly uncomfortable, and the other apes’ mouth not quite in sync with the audio. At 1:27;37, there’s a shot that I can’t account for. We see three of Aldo’s gorillas simultaneously hold up their swords. This shot is not referenced again. If the idea was for these gorillas are showing their disillusionment from Aldo, it doesn’t work. It looks more like a show of solidarity with Aldo. Strange.
The “Ape has killed ape” chant goes on for a bit longer than it needs to, i.e. I start saying “OK. I get the point. ‘Ape has killed ape.’ Splendid.” Aldo’s eyes get all red, and in the last shot before he turns away to begin the final “battle,” there’re tears streaming down his face. He’ll take on irradiated madmen who wish to exterminate his race, but he lets the court of public opinion walk all over him without even putting up a fight. C’mon Aldo.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/17/2007 : 11:08:55 PM
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Aldo begins climbing a large tree, with Caesar is cautious pursuit. The chanting fades away and is replaced by a minimalist percussion/low brass soundtrack. This is a nice touch. It effectively communicates that this is now a lonely one-on-one “battle.” I say “battle” because the whole two-minute scene is Aldo running away from Caesar. There’s no trace of the general who just a few minutes ago shouted “No prisoneeeers!” In fact, at 1:29:45 there’s a shot of Aldo gently shaking his head as if to say, “I can’t believe it’s come to this.” There’s another of the same at 1:29:53. On the Behind the Planet of the Apes documentary, Roddy McDowell describes this as “the final battle;” but in his tone of voice, I could swear that he doesn’t believe the “battle” part, either.
Finally, Aldo runs out of branch, and turns to face Caesar. Caesar glares at him and says, “You murdered my son….You murdered my son….You murdered my son!” Aldo draws his sword, and we get some very sloppy editing here. We go immediately from a shot of him swinging the sword to a shot of him holding it at his waist. A couple seconds later, we go from a shot of him beginning a backhand slash to a shot of him making a forehand slash. Sloppy.
Caesar grabs Aldo’s wrist with one hand, then both hands, and this is sufficient to send Aldo plummeting to his death. To be fair, it is a pretty long drop, and although we don’t see him land, it’s pretty obvious from his body’s angle that he landed on his back. Ouch! I wonder how common it is for real-world apes to fall out of trees; and if so, how what sort of damage do they sustain. I imaging that they wouldn’t take as much damage as humans would. But in this movie, where Cornelius dies from a fall that every American boy lives through with a minimum of fuss, I guess anything’s possible. Looking at Aldo’s presumed dead body, Caesar’s face goes into contortions that could be interpreted however the viewer wishes.
Back on the ground, Caesar asks Virgil, “Should one murder be avenged by another?” Virgil answers, “Only the future can tell. So let us start building it.” Nice try, movie; but if the whole “Ape shall never kill ape” thing is as rigid as you’ve already made it, it’s far too cheap and far too obvious to give Caesar a free pass like that.
The humans are freed. MacDonald now gives us a racial parallel that the PotA series is well-known for (although, as stated earlier, the PotA series had no racial paralleling at all until Conquest). Here it is:
MacDonald: If we seem to be lacking in gratitude, we have we to be grateful for? If you mean to set us free, then free us completely!
Caesar: What do you mean?
MacDonald: We are not your children, Caesar. We have a destiny, too. As equals. Respecting each other. Living together. With love.
Caesar, with mild disgust: Love. The human way is violence and death.
Virgil: Aldo wasn’t human, was he, Caesar?
Caesar, with deserved embarrassment: Virgil, you are a good and wise ape.
Caesar’s wife: And you, Caesar, are a good and wise king.
I don’t think Caesar is particularly wise if he needs Virgil to point out the obvious to him, nor do I think it wise for Caesar not to have long-since recognize his own hypocrisy about the whole second-class citizen thing.
Back in the Dead City, Beanpole and Alma are playing checkers. For some reason, the camera angle is tilted. Sergeant York (who I guess isn’t Beanpole after all) returns and reports that they have lost and Kolp is dead. Beanpole and Alma aren’t too busted up over it. They keep playing checkers until Alma decides to launch the missile as per Kolp’s orders. Beanpole gets understandable agitated over it, and tries to talk her out of it. His approach, while hitting the major selling point of not wanting to blow up the whole earth and themselves along with it, is still strangely oblique. Here it is:
Beanpole: Kolp can’t win. He’s determined to destroy the entire world! He’s mad! This is the Alpha-Omega bomb. It could destroy not only Ape City, but the entire Earth! Activate it, and we become nothing! Leave it, and its very presence will ensure that at least we remain something….and may become something better. It must never be exploded.* It must be respected. Even venerated! For one of its ancestors made us what we are. And what we are shall, from this day forward, be called beautiful.
* - The subtitles say “exploited,” but I’m hearing it as “exploded.” Of course, the subtitles also list screams as “Aah!”
Obviously, this is to set up the bomb-worshiping cult in Beneath. Fair enough, and I think that, given the general implausibility of a bomb-worshiping cult, this is as good of an explanation for it as any. But damn, it’s bizarre. The “one of its ancestors made us what we are,” in particular. What we are….meaning what? Irradiated for life? That wouldn’t inspire much respect in me. And the “be called beautiful” bit, I just don’t get. What in the world is he talking about? Be called beautiful by whom?
In the Ape Village armory, Caesar tells Mandemus that he may live in the armory for the rest of his days, now that all the weapons have been returned. Mandemus mild-comically says that he’s sick of the armory and wants the place blown up, being as how dangerous being the keeper of the weapons is. Virgil says, “The greatest danger is that danger never ends.” This is a very good statement of vigilance by Virgil. There’s just one problem: That was Aldo’s unspoken rationale. The philosophical motivations of the main ape characters in this movie isn’t very consistent.
Time for the epilogue. Fade back to The Lawgiver, 600 years after Caesar’s death, and about 1,300 years before Earth’s annhilation. He says that he sees apes and humans now living together in peace. He does not say that he also sees apes and humans living together with not one drop of technological advancement in 600 years, but that’s okay, because the fact of it is pretty self-evident. He says he has hope for the future. A black girl who looks like Rudy from The Cosby Show asks, “Lawgiver, who knows about the future?”
Then we get something that I’m pretty sure was meant to be ambiguously representative of something. The ape standing next to Rudy gives one of her pigtails a rather harsh yank, she shoves him to the ground, he stand back up, and they both seem to forget about it then and there. Maybe it illustrates that ape and human are cozy enough with each other that they do the mock-brutal things that elementary school kids do to each other every day; or maybe it illustrates that no matter what, apes and humans just can’t be in close quarters with each other without trying to kill each other.
The Lawgiver answers, “Perhaps only the dead.” Zoom in on a statue of Caesar. It weeps a single tear, and the camera freezes. Roll credits.
The weeping statue is almost meant to be ambiguous (the Making Of documentary says as much), but I find it far less ambiguous than the pigtail seconds earlier. You could say he’s weeping with joy over the possibility of global disaster averted; or you could say he’s weeping with despair over certain doom for all. To me, there’s no question that the latter is correct. Two reasons:
1. When have you ever seen someone weep with joy over a possibility? When someone weeps with joy, it’s never over a possibility, but over a certainty; something that has already happened.
2. The four previous Planet of the Apes movies all harshly unhappy endings. Giving the final chapter in the series a happy ending, even an ambiguously happy ending, would’ve been totally out of character. It’d be like a happy ending to Hamlet, or a happy ending to the Alien series. Ridiculous!
That about covers it, I guess. The Planet of the Apes franchise whimpers and limps to a finish with a movie that really didn’t need to exist for the overall tale to have sufficient closure. There’s no really lousy acting to fault, and the principals (McDowell, Akins, and Severn Darden as Governor Kolp) are very good; the sfx are about as good as the limited budget would allow; but the combination of that limited budget and a story that really doesn’t have much to do with the overall PotA tale make this movie seem like what it is: An attempt to wring the last few bucks out of a franchise that still had some fumes left. As for Battle’s story, if you’ve ever read any of the Star Wars or Star Trek novels, you’ve noticed how the authors will take a plot device from a movie/TV episode and build a whole story around how it came to exist in the canon’s universe, with everything else in the novel being just filler-by-creative-indulgence. That’s what this movie feels like. If there was a cottage industry of PotA novels, Battle’s story is one that I would expect some fanboy author to come up with.
To give it Battle credit, the movie did turn a profit, grossing over eight million dollars, more than quadruple its cost. And to give 20th Century Fox credit, they had already decided early in the making of Battle that it would be the last of the franchise. So even the suits knew that the fumes were just about gone.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a good try to give the series a grand finale, but what it had to work with simply wasn’t anywhere near enough, and it winds up relying solely on the viewer’s preset interest in the PotA series to be interesting.
This concludes the dissection. Thank you for your attention. |
Edited by - Food on 02/17/2007 11:21:55 PM |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2007 : 11:12:17 AM
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My observations, Food:
First, this is the first time I've ever heard of the "let's worship the bomb" scene. I've seen this movie twice on TV, so I guess they cut it out.
Second, if you look at the fight at the barracades, you will see an actor in gorilla mask and uniform fighting beside the chimps and orangutangs. This negates the suggestion that the gorillas ran away before the battle.
Finaly, you wrote quote:
“Ape shall never kill ape” on the board, and the young chimps (the scientists) and oranges (political/religious) repeat it, while the adult gorillas (military) sit there looking baffled."
So what did the LEMONS and GRAPEFRUIT think of it? (Ha ha)
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2007 : 11:40:48 AM
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A couple of things I've thought about when I saw the Behind the Planet of the Apes special on TV:
When making the first PotA, an interesting thing occurred. The chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas split off into their own groups offstage, during lunch and coffee breaks. It didn't matter that they were just people in costumes; they separated themselves according to what mask they wore. It'd be an interesting study; I suspect that at least some of our prejudices, sadly, are hard-wired into our system: one tends to give more trust to people who resemble oneself.
The racial parallels shown in Conquest give Battle a real problem, though. It's pretty hypocritical to preach about race when gorillas — who have darker skin than the chimps or orangs — are shown to be mindless brutes. Bad form, filmmakers.
One other thing this movie completely screws up: in the earlier PotA movies, the chimps, orangs, and gorillas also each wore a certain costume. Chimps wore green suits, oranges wore tan, and gorillas wore either dark maroon or black. One could presume it was just the fashion in the first two movies, and it was Cornelius and Zira's way or reminding them of home in the third. In Conquest, these uniforms were gone.
And in Battle? They're back — never mind that NONE of these characters have ever seen these uniforms before, and the costumes wouldn't be used in this world for over 1,000 years.
Okay, maybe the low budget dictated that the filmmakers reuse whatever costumes, equipment, etc., they already had in stock. But this was just lazy. |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2007 : 8:14:48 PM
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I thought of something today:
quote:
MacDonald: If we seem to be lacking in gratitude, we have we to be grateful for? If you mean to set us free, then free us completely!
Caesar: What do you mean?
MacDonald: We are not your children, Caesar. We have a destiny, too. As equals. Respecting each other. Living together. With love.
Why doesn't he (Or any other human) think to go away and rebuild the HUMAN civilazation? And he wants to be "equal" to the apes? Is he saying that their his moral superior, or just that ONLY those in power (The apes in this case) can bestow rights? (the word for the day is "communism")
Then there's this one to consider:
quote:
“They just joined the human race.”
It sounds like MacDonald has a bit of a self-loathing problem. I'll bet when the apes took over, he was one of the first to come bowing and scraping to them.
The best moment in the movie was General Aldo's tears. He had caused the death of one of those he was sworn to protect, and a CHILD at that! Caesar didn't throw him to the ground, he jumped!
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2007 : 9:32:36 PM
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Killing time online tonight, I found that you're right, Greenhornet: The two set-up scenes for the bomb-worship in Beneath were part of the Extended Edition and not in the original theatrical cut.
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2007 : 2:22:10 PM
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Ah, that explains it. Thanks again, Food.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
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