Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I totally disagree with you and I agree 100% with TFK: BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is the best of the series IMO. It has a perfect conclusion to the first, has more science fiction concepts and the series should had ended there. Since it was so successful they pulled out the ridiculous premise that somehow Cornelius Zyra and the other soon to be dead ape repaired Brent's crashed & burned ship (WTF???) and SOMEHOW learned how to pilot it to the same timewarp zone in space to return to earth in the past to kick start a 'Caesar trilogy' of which 'Conquest of The Planet of The Apes' was the more watchable one, but still pretty stupid.

 

How is a bad story? Charlton Heston wanted out of the sequel and reluctantly agreed to a glorified cameo role with the condition that his character will die in this one. Under those circumstances it was logical that a 'rescue mission' was launched to follow Taylor's same trajectory. Brent meets Nova and discovers Ape City with Ursus urging for invasion to get rid of the human pest. Nice action sequences during the capture & escape. Mutants living in the Forbidden Zone provided the creepiest factor in the series when they reveal their true selves (I still remember the audience reactions when that scene played...it was as shocking as the decapitated head in 'JAWS'). The Lawgiver statue bleeding sequence alone was worth the ticket price. The ending was grim and perfect. I'll give you that Brent's character wasn't as developed as he should have in this 90 minutes film. But I loved the pace of this one while the others drag at times.

 

IMO. I know the first one is the one revered by movie pundits. Some people like The Godfather Part II more than the first. I like Beneath more than all the others combined.

 

[video=youtube;PkycgrscWVM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkycgrscWVM[/video]

 

fucking christ

beneath the dawn of the beginning of the bacteria that populated the world that would eventually be populated with the apes

 

You Guinness addicted sonuvabitch.

 

I like James Franco in a weird way as a personality, but Jason Clarke is a definite step-up the acting ladder.

I hope they give us a least 120 minutes, and the Apes don't take over the world in less time then it takes to watch an "American Pie" movie.

 

James Franco is busy filming a new romance, co-starring Willow Smith as his love interest.

 

They're making Annie II already?

 

I loved the previous one and this one looks badass, but I just can't wait until it looks 'recognizable' in connection to the older films This is like watching the Star Wars prequels...waiting three films for Darth Vader's mask helmet to show up the end of the third one.

 

Oh yes they do. In the previous film we even saw a tv report of the launching of Taylor's spaceship. These films are prequels.

 

"the apes that call themselves African-Americans":l3:

 

You are right in stating they won't show anything about Taylor landing because his story occurs 2000 years into the future of Caesar's rebellion, so it will make no sense at this point. The films after Beneath The Planet of Apes cannot be viewed as prequels since by having Cornelius & Zira travelling to the past and birthing Caesar in the 20th century, they altered the events of the future dramatically with Battle for The Planet of The Apes last scene finishing in a more harmonius scenario between humans and apes as equals...with a big question mark left unanswered by the tears in Caesar's statue. Of course these new films are a reboot, but they wisely started chronologically from the beginning with no time travel to mess things and a different origin. Rise of The Planet of The Apes was a 'small film' loosely based on Conquest of The Planet of The Apes while Dawn of The Planet of the Apes plays more along the lines of Battle For The Planet of The Apes. It even has the outdoors Ape School like in Battle. After this one we will most likely see the last chapter in the Caesar story as the Apes get more 'civilized' and humans somehow become mute brutes. After that third one I speculate that probably they will either go straight to the Taylor story or they will choose to tell the story of The Sayer of The Law and continue milking the franchise and not jumping so fast into the future. Me for one can't wait to see Ape City and gorilla soldiers chasing humans.

 

True, but according to Cornelius explanation in Escape from The Planet of The Apes it was an ape called 'Aldo' not 'Caesar' the one that rebelled against the humans masters after five hundred years of ape slavery and his first word was 'No'. By birthing Caesar the whole timeline was altered. Also in Battle after Caesar listen to the discovered tapes in the Forbidden Zone, he decides to alter the events so the scenario will be different when Taylor arrives and the destruction of earth be prevented.
http://planetoftheapes.wikia.com/wiki/Circular_vs_Linear_Timelines

 

i need to rewatch the original...is it just the very first one that is worth seeing? or are the others ok?

 

Start in the order they were released to avoid confusion:

Planet of the Apes (1968)
Beneath The Planet f The Apes (1970)
Escape From The Planet of The Apes (1971)
Conquest of The Planet of The Apes (1972)
Battle For The Planet of The Apes (1973)

by all means stay away from the Tim Burton remake from 2001 since it was its own weird thing

 

Yes. This is a new origins story, but it hints it will not end with the 'positive note' of a peaceful co-existence between humans and apes as was the ending in Battle where we saw human and ape children fighting then being admonished by the Sayer of The Law, who is now a pacifist as opposed to the anti-human prophet quoted in the first two Apes films. By the time Taylor's Icarus spaceship lands centuries after Caesar (from the reboot), it will be the same scenario as the first film from 1968, which I think will be great.

 

Let's just hope they get that far without feeling the need to reboot first.

 

Let me point out that the original French novel Planet of The Apes by Pierre Boulle wasn't so great. In fact it was kind of dumb since the Apes civilization wasn't different at all from ours except that they were apes instead of humans. They have cars, modern machines, even airplanes. The ending you saw in Tim Burton's film was paying homage to Boulle's book and ironically was the dumbest thing about that film. Kudos to Rod Serling for changing the whole thing into a more primitive culture and making the Apes planet to be Earth in the future instead of an alien planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse.

 

Agreed. The book was a big let down. It's definitely a rare case of a movie being better than the book.


TFK