When I first started this marathon, I anticipated thinking mostly about the social themes in
the Planet of the Apes films. That’s because I was most familiar with the first two films, in which the social themes are so important that they often overshadow the adventurous plots. As the series progressed though, those themes became…well, not less important exactly, but simplified.
The first two films addressed several issues in order to explore the complex variety of problems in how people treat each other. They talk about war and prejudice and overpopulation and technology and other issues that I’m not remembering right now. But starting with
Escape from the Planet of the Apes, the intricacy of these issues began to be eroded by familiarity. As the series kept going, it ran out of ways to talk about so many specific things at once and instead began to focus on a general message of tolerance.
Not that I think that was a bad move. It was absolutely the right thing to do. It didn’t contradict the first two films, but by jettisoning the biting commentary in favor of a broader message the series gained some flexibility that served it very well.
Now, I’m also not saying that
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and
Battle for the Planet of the Apes are better movies than
the original film or
Beneath the Planet of the Apes. They’re not (though some will disagree with me about
Beneath). Any five-film series is going to start experiencing some diminishing returns and
PotA is no exception. But I was surprised by how much I genuinely enjoyed the movies, right up to – and including – this last one.
When I
reviewed Boom’s current Planet of the Apes comic for Robot 6, I explained that I hadn’t at that time seen the last two movies “partly because they’re not generally regarded as any good.” A commenter took me to task for that, saying that my statement “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, given that
Conquest is widely regarded among fans as being one of the best films in the series. For many people, it’s the best of the sequels. Very few people, in fact, would say that film wasn’t any good.” He went on to suggest, “It would be a good idea for CBR’s writers to at least do a little research before posting articles.”
I admit to feeling a bit defensive about that last bit, so in response to him, I let
Rotten Tomatoes defend my assertion. They give
Conquest a 44% fresh rating from critics and a 49% rating from audiences. That supports my statement that audiences in general didn’t like the film; an entirely
different statement from saying that it’s the worst of the bunch. For the record, the freshness rating for the movies suggest that critics liked them in this order (from best to worst):
The original
Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
The 2001 remake of
Planet of the Apes
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Audiences rated them differently:
The original
Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes and
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (tie)
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
The 2001 remake of
Planet of the Apes
Clearly, the commenter was correct in saying that
Conquest is regarded as one of the best in the series. That isn’t the same thing as saying that a lot of people liked it, so I stand by my original statement. The irony is that now that I’ve seen it – and
Battle – I’m in the 38-49% that liked those movies. And like I suggested at the beginning of this post, that isn’t the only surprise.
As you can tell from reading the
posts on Escape and Conquest, my attention became much less concerned about the films’ themes and much more about their continuity. As the series streamlined its social message, its timeline got more and more clunky. I struggled to keep it straight, resisting the theory that the films depict different timelines, but
Battle challenges that approach even more.
If
Battle reveals how much time has passed between it and
Conquest, I missed it. The only date I remember being mentioned in the film is in the framing sequence in which John Huston plays the legendary Lawgiver and relates the events of the film to his students. At first look, it doesn’t appear that much time has passed between
Conquest and the main events of
Battle. Caesar (still played by Roddy McDowell) and his wife Lisa look to be the same ages they were during the ape rebellion, but they do have a pre-teen son, so clearly a little time has passed. There’s a scene in
Conquest where Caesar and Lisa are clearly about to mate, so my first assumption was that their son, Cornelius II, was conceived then, placing
Battle 10-12 years later. That’s impossible though. Too much has changed. Which is the major continuity problem with the film.
The biggest change is that all of the apes have now learned to talk. That’s a huge difference from
Conquest and isn’t easily explained by a ten-year time lapse. On top of that, one of the main characters, an orangutan named Virgil (Paul Williams) claims that he studied under another, older orangutan named Mandemus (Lew Ayres). Virgil’s not a kid (Paul Williams was in his 30s when the film was made), so ten years isn’t enough time for Mandemus to have learned to talk and then taught other students. Much more time has to have elapsed.
I’ve been reading Rich Handley’s
Timeline of the Planet of the Apes and he suggests a thirty-year difference between
Conquest and
Battle to account for some of this stuff. That puts Caesar in his 50s, meaning that Cornelius II was born when Caesar was in his 40s. But it also creates new problems, like the age of Caesar’s human aide, MacDonald (Austin Stoker).
Battle’s MacDonald is the brother of Hari Rhodes’ MacDonald from
Conquest who was the aide of the evil governor in that film before switching allegiance to the apes’ cause. The problem is that Stoker was only thirty years old when he made
Battle, meaning that his character would have to have been born around the same time as the events of
Conquest. And since Rhodes was 40 when he made that film, it makes a 40-year difference between the brothers’ ages. Not impossible, but
extremely unlikely.
Regardless of whether Handley’s got the timeline right, you see the problem. Too much history has passed to allow for a short time frame, but MacDonald’s age (and possibly Cornelius II’s) don’t allow for a long one.
Sidebar: I do like
Snell’s theory that the US government took genetic samples from Zira and the original Cornelius and used them to enhance primates and create the apes we saw in
Conquest. That would explain why those apes look nothing like real ones. It might even explain how the new apes learned to talk so quickly. It doesn’t explain Mandemus though. A significant amount of time has to have passed for him to learn to speak.
According to Handley, Ty Templeton (who wrote Mr. Comics’
Revolution on the Planet of the Apes mini-series) had a theory that Mandemus had actually been part of Armando’s circus and had learned to talk by being around Caesar, making Mandemus – not Lisa – the first primitive ape to speak. That’s a stretch, because it doesn’t explain how Mandemus gained the ability unless Caesar had some kind of supernatural powers that gave it to him.
Although... supernatural powers
would help account for Mandemus’ being around early enough to teach a young Virgil. And actually, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s exactly the scenario that Templeton suggests in
Revolution and it’s based apparently on some early production notes from
Conquest that suggest that Caesar does in fact have otherworldly abilities (gained perhaps by going through the time-field while in the womb). Handley even suggests that there’s a way of watching
Conquest so that Caesar’s communicating telepathically with the apes he’s inspiring to revolt.
All of which has probably given you a headache by now, because it has me. By the time we get to the
Planet of the Apes TV series with its dogs (aren’t they supposed to be extinct?) and photos of 22nd century New York (shown completely destroyed in
Battle), I begin to wonder if it’s worth trying to make this all fit.
That makes me want to reconsider
Mike DeStasio’s take about the alternate timelines. Again, not only does his theory allow for infinite inconsistencies, it has the advantage of being advocated for not only by Hasslein in
Escape, but also by Virgil in
Battle.
In his Introduction to
Timeline Handley describes Mike and my theories as a very old debate amongst
PotA fans. “Do the films form a circular chronology, with three through five leading to one and two, then back to the last three…or does the final trilogy creat an alternate, more optimistic future, canceling out the dismal world seen in the first two?” I don’t know that that second view perfectly describes Mike’s theory, but the circular one does express the way I’ve been trying to see the series. Complicating the discussion – as it always does with popular, long-running series – is the question of which stories count. If I can make all five movies fit into a circular timeline, do I also need to make the TV shows fit? Or can they be an alternate timeline
a la Mike’s theory?
The answer of course is, “Sure. Why not?” I can do whatever I want and so can you. Handley explains this too. Based on Hasslein’s theory, “every time someone crosses the time barrier – the Hasslein Curve – in either direction, it’s possible for history to become modified. If so, given the astounding number of time-trips in this mythos[…]this renders the whole 'circular vs. changing' debate a far more complex question, for instead of two or three histories, we now have the potential for many more – infinitely more in fact…
“
Planet of the Apes history could very well be neither a circular loop nor an 'A or B' set of divergent highway lanes, but rather a Möbius strip embedded in an Escher landscape twisted up in a pretzel and tied in a sailor’s knot, continuously looping back upon itself, readjusting with each successive time-trip and enabling all of the various contradictory incarnations to occur on the same continuous, ever-changing loop. Sorting out one timeline from the next thus becomes virtually impossible.”
While that’s not at all satisfying for the me who digs neat, clean, organized stories, it’s extremely liberating for the me who – 1800 words into this post – hasn’t been able yet to say one word about the plot of the film because I’ve been focusing on continuity. I appreciate the permission to shut up about it and enjoy the stories.
As I said above, I liked the story in
Battle. Following the ape uprising in
Conquest, Caesar has started a new society in which apes and humans are supposed to be able to get along. But they’re not equal. Apes still don’t trust humans and have developed strict rules to prevent humanity’s taking over again. The humans are of course chaffing from the restrictions.
Complicating the situation, Caesar mounts an expedition with MacDonald and Virgil to go into the old city and look for archives that may have records of Caesar’s parents. He finds what he’s looking for, but that ends up being inconsequential. What’s important is that there are still humans living in the city, mutated by radiation fallout (the forbearers of the mutants in
Beneath) and resentful of the ape uprising. They follow Caesar and the others back to Ape City and mount an attack, determined to wipe out the apes before the apes can (they assume) return with their own forces to destroy what’s left of the mutant population.
To make matters worse, Ape City’s chief military officer is a gorilla named Aldo (Claude Akins in a sad bit of miscasting; he doesn’t have the presence to play an intimidating villain) who hates humans and wants them all killed. There’s a whole subplot about Aldo’s trying to wrest control of the city from Caesar and he sees the mutant attack as an opportunity to declare martial law and seize power. Aldo of course is the name of the ape who first said “no” in Cornelius’ version of history in
Escape. His role is very different here, but he certainly is an advocate for ape supremacy and an important historical figure. Perhaps by Cornelius’ time the details of his exact actions were lost. Cornelius might have invented a connection between Aldo and the story of Lisa’s “no.”
And here I am again, explaining contradictions. As I said when I wrote about
Escape, it’s too fun not to. The difference now, thanks to Mike DeStasio and Rich Handley, is that I don’t feel pressured to explain
everything. As we’ll see next week when we look at the live-action TV show.