The Return of the Planet of the Apes

One of my friends asked me if Rise of the Planet of the Apes ( 2011 ) is a sequel to the 2001 Tim Burton film, or a prequel to the films from the late '60s and early '70s. No, I said. This film is a reboot, planned to be the beginning of a brand new Ape series that has nothing to do with any of the previous films. "Why bother rebooting?" he asked. "The series is going to be nothing but guys in monkey costumes no matter how many times they change the series origin." I agreed with him. The original film series was flawless, unlike other film series where God awful sequels make a reboot necessary. And yes, after the initial origin film, the rest of the series will just settle down to stories about talking apes in conflict with humans. But studio executives these days love reboots. Even relatively new franchises like Spiderman and The Fantastic Four are going to get the reboot treatment.

Actually, there is nothing that surprising about rebooting the Ape series. It has already been rebooted at least six times, and technically seven times. The franchise began in 1963 with Pierre Boulle's novel The Monkey Planet. The story begins 500 years in the future. The technology finally exists to build a spacecraft capable of traveling to another solar system. The only problem is that it will take 350 years to travel to the closest system, although thanks to the effects of traveling near the speed of light time on board the ship will slow down so that it will seem as if the trip only takes 18 months. But this does mean that whoever makes the trip will not return for another 700 years, by which time everyone he knows will have been dead for at least 600 years. Three scientists, Ulysse Merou, Arthur Levain and Professor Antelle, agree to make the journey, ending up in the Betelgeuse system where they land on an Earth like planet. They are captured by a tribe of primitive cavemen like humans who rip apart their spacesuits, but then in turn a hunting party of apes attack the tribe. Levain is killed while Ulysses and Antelle are captured along with some of the other primitive humans to be sold as slaves. They are taken to a technologically advanced city ruled by the apes. Ulysses is sold to scientists and after proving to be highly intelligent is adopted by a researcher named Zira and her fiance named Cornelius. Together they teach Ulysses the ape language, and after discovering he can learn to speak take him to the President of the apes where he asks to be granted the same rights as the other apes.

Ulysses becomes a bit of a celebrity, although other scientists refuse to believe a human capable of intelligence and accuse him of just imitating Zira and Cornelius. When Ulysses takes a primitive human named Nova as his wife and succeeds in impregnating her the scientists see this as proof that he is primitive. He later becomes seen as a threat when archaeologists uncover evidence that the humans on the planet were once intelligent and ruled over the apes. What the archaeologists discover are ancient scrolls that say early apes were dumb and humans were intelligent. The humans had enslaved the apes who over the years became bred to be more intelligent while the humans gradually grew lazy and incapable of doing any work. Inevitably the apes overthrew their masters who in turn fled to the woods where they reverted to dumb brutes. Most scientists refuse to believe the scrolls, but one named Dr Zaius sees this and the arrival of Ulysses as a threat, and begins to insist that all humans be exterminated to prevent them from regaining power. Ulysses ends up fleeing the apes, and along with Nova and his infant son get back into the spaceship and make the 350 year journey back to Earth. It has now been 700 years since he had left, and to his shock he discovers that Earth is now ruled by apes just as on the other planet. The humans on Earth made the same mistake as the humans at Betelgeuse. The book ends with Ulysses and his family returning to space to try to find a planet still ruled by humans.

The Original Film Series, and the First Reboot

In the late '60s Rod Sterling was hired by 20th Century Fox to write the script for a film adaption of The Monkey Planet. Charlton Heston became attached to the project and in turn brought director Franklin J. Schaffner onto the project. The studio was reluctant to make the movie because the futuristic world portrayed in Sterling's script would involve expensive sets and special effects. Schaffner suggested the script could be rewritten to eliminate all special effects. The ape planet could be primitive instead of futuristic. Sterlings script was rewritten, only retaining one major scene. Sterling favored shock endings to his stories, as evident in his series The Twilight Zone. Sterling's script did away with the ending where Ulysses returns to Earth and replaced it with an ending where the hero discovers that the ape planet was Earth all along after discovering the remains of the Statue of Liberty. The wreckage of the statue would be the film's only special effect.

Retitled Planet of the Apes ( 1968 ) the film featured Charlton Heston as American astronaut Colonel Taylor, along with fellow astronauts Dodge, Landon and Stewart ( the lone female on the journey ) travel in a space ship to explore a distant star and it's planets. Once again the journey will take centuries, and it is evident in Heston's opening monologue that by the time they return to Earth it will have been hundreds of years later. The astronauts go into suspended animation for the duration of the journey, but while they sleep something goes wrong. Stewart's pod gets an air leak and she dies without ever waking ( or ever uttering a single word of dialogue. ). The ship crash lands into a large lake. The surviving astronauts awake and evacuate the sinking ship, realizing it is now 2000 years since they left Earth and they are now marooned on a strange planet. Schaffner was able to eliminate any use of special effects by using sped up point of view footage shot from a helicopter and sound effects to suggest the ship crashing. Not once is the ship ever seen with exception to it's nose cone after it has landed in the water. From this point on the film follows most of Boulle's novel, with the obvious exceptions that the apes live in a bronze age society ( although they also have guns ), the new ending supplied by Sterling, and suggesting that Zaius knew along of the apes history, which he and the other orangutans were keeping secret.

Planet of the Apes was a huge hit for Fox, and a sequel was immediately planned. Pierre Boulle submitted a script for the sequel, but it was rejected by the producer. The problem was that the studio insisted that Carlton Heston return for the sequel, but Heston was reluctant. In later interviews Heston claimed he felt that any sequels should be about the apes rather than Colonel Taylor, who's story had been told in the first film. Heston finally agreed to do the sequel, but under two conditions. One, that his character would be in only a few scenes. The other, that the film ends with the planet being blown up, therefore eliminating any chance of any further sequels. The resulting script was for the film Beneath the Planet of the Apes ( 1970 ). Picking up where the original left off, Taylor continues to explore a mysterious desert called Forbidden Zone and vanishes into thin air leaving Nova alone. She later discovers the wreckage of another space ship and it's lone survivor Brent ( James Franciscus ) who was part of a team of astronauts sent as a rescue party when Taylor's ship did not return. ( This is the first time that it is suggested the astronauts could have made a return trip through time, although this is not supported by actual science. ) Brent recognizes Taylor's dog tag around Nova's neck, and insists that she show him where Taylor is. A confused Nova takes him to Zira and Corneliu's home in ape city, and Brent ends up facing many of the same problems that Taylor did in the first movie. After escaping from ape city Brent and Nova take refuge in a cave at the edge of the Forbidden Zone and discover that it is actually the ruins of a subway station. For the first time Brent realizes he is back on Earth. Following some tunnels they discover the underground ruins of New York City, and stumble onto a tribe of mutant humans who can not only talk, but have psychic abilities which they use to torture Brent for information. Angered that Brent has lead the apes to their secret city the mutants put him and Nova into a cage with Taylor. There they attempt to use their abilities to force Brent and Taylor to fight to the death. An army of gorillas lead by Dr Zaius invades the underground city and begins to kill the mutants. Taylor and Brent use the distraction to overpower their captor and escape their cage, but Taylor reveals that the mutants have a nuke bomb that they have been worshiping. Worse, it is the Alpha-Omega bomb, a device that is capable of destroying the entire planet. Brent and Taylor attempt to disarm the bomb, but end up getting shot for their troubles. The film ends with a mortally wounded Taylor falling dead onto the bomb's control panel and setting it off. A voice over confirms that the planet has been destroyed.

This should have ended the franchise then and there, but it made so much money that Fox wanted a third film. Producer Arthur P. Jacobs was stumped, knowing that he had just incinerated the planet along with every ape in the last film. But he soon realized that Taylor's space ship was submerged but still intact at the bottom of a lake. He came up with the idea that some apes could have discovered the ship, salvaged it from the lake, and used it to escape the explosion. Escape from the Planet of the Apes ( 1971 ) opens in contemporary times with the discovery of Colonel Taylor's ship off the coast of California. Expecting that the lost astronaut has finally returned the ship is opened up, only to discover Zira and Cornelius inside. From there the story is the reverse of Monkey Planet, with the scientists eventually discovering that in the future apes take over and humans are dumb. Zira and Cornelius go from beloved celebrities to hunted criminals, ending with both of them and their baby getting gunned down at the harbor. But what the humans do not know is that Zira had switched her baby with another chimpanzee baby at a circus, and the movie ends with a baby chimp calling out "Ma Ma" letting everyone know that the door was still open for yet another sequel. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes ( 1972 ) takes place decades later, in the year future year of 1991. Humans have by now enslaved apes. Zira and Cornelius' son is now full grown, and hiding out as a slave named Caesar. The humans soon discover that he is in fact the son of the two intelligent apes and attempt to have him killed, but Caesar turns the table by staging a slave revolt and capturing the city. The final film in the initial series was Battle for the Planet of the Apes ( 1973 ). The title had a double meaning. Shortly after the events of the previous movie, a devastating nuclear war broke out between the United States and Russia. Caesar and the other apes sought refuge in the forest, bringing along some humans as their slaves. Meanwhile back in the city they left, humans who survived both the ape uprising and the following nuclear war are now reorganizing in tunnels under the ruins. Now well armed they decide to invade the ape village and wipe Caesar and the rest out. This battle shall decide if humans or apes dominate in the future. The title's other meaning was an internal battle among the apes between Caesar and the gorilla General Aldo who wants to take over as ruler. It is suggested that in the original time line it was Aldo who first said no to the humans and was the one who lead the original revolt. By returning through time and having their child Zira and Cornelius created and alternate time line where Caesar was the one who started the revolt. Aldo hates the humans and would like nothing more than to see them exterminated. Caesar is sympathetic to the humans, knowing he had many friends among them over the years who helped him out. After winning the battle with the humans from the city, Caesar faces an attempted coup from Aldo. But when it is discovered that Aldo was responsible for the death of Caesar's son, both apes have a one on one fight in a treetop with a furious Caesar pushing Aldo to his death. Caesar decides that humans have a right to be the equals of apes, creating an alternate time line and in effect rebooting the series. If only a sixth movie was made.

The TV Series, and the Second Reboot

Fox decided that the series had run it's course and ordered no further films for the franchise. This decision turned out to be premature. Shortly after the final film hit the theaters the first film in the series made it's television debut on CBS. The ratings were so impressive that CBS secured the air rights to the rest of the film series, and in addition sought the rights for a weekly television series based on the movies for the 1974-75 season. While Roddy McDowell agreed to star in the series, it's producer had no interest in picking up where the movie series left off. Instead he wanted something more like the series The Fugitive. Much like the original film, three astronauts from present day Earth take a trip through space, accidentally enter a time warp, and end up crash landing in the future. One astronaut is killed on impact, but the other two, Virdon ( Ron Harper ) and Burke ( James Naughton ), survive long enough to be captured by the apes. General Urko wants the humans killed, but Dr. Zaius ( the only character retained from the film series ) wants them brought back for questioning. Years earlier other astronauts had arrived in the same time zone and were killed by Urko because he determined they were threats, both for their attitudes that humans were equal to apes, and because they brought weapons with them including grenades. When Urko sets out to capture the new astronauts and bring them back to ape city, Zaius sends his assistant Galen ( McDowell ) along to make sure the gorillas don't kill them. Galen finds the astronauts fascinating, and is mesmerized by a book they have with pictures of humans building and operating machines and apes in zoos. At first he does not believe them when they say that in the past humans were the dominant species and apes were still wild animals, but then gradually changes his mind as the episode progresses. Urko arranges for one of his soldiers to assassinate the astronauts, and Galen foils it, but in the process Virdon and Burke escape and the soldier is killed. Galen is arrested for murder, but is later rescued by the astronauts because they feel they owe him a debt. All three end up on the road together as fugitives with Urko in pursuit.

In the movies humans in the future are dumb brutes. Only in Battle for the Planet of the Apes are they able to talk, mostly thanks to the alternative time line created by Zira and Cornelius where chimpanzees create early society instead of gorillas. In that movie humans were the servant class only briefly, and by the end of the movie were considered equals. In the television series humans can talk and think, but are reduced to slaves for the ruling apes. Producers felt keeping humans mute would put limitations on the stories they could write for the series. But this also meant that it did not mesh with any of the established time lines from the movie series. Much like the series The Fugitive, the two astronauts and Galen travel from town to town, ending up solving problems before setting off for the next town. Virdon had removed the ship's flight recorder before they went on the lamb, and through most of the series they seek a computer to play it on so they can figure out how they entered the time warp and then somehow use this information to return to their own time. The series itself only lasted 14 episodes, cancelled mid season due to low ratings. This left the fate of the fugitives unresolved for years. And since so few episodes were made there was no way to put the reruns into syndication.

When CBS's broadcast rights to the ape movies expired, Fox sold them to syndication where once again they made a lot of money. This created a demand for more ape movies which Fox hoped to fill with the television series. By editing together two episodes Fox was able to create new ape movies. Back to the Planet of the Apes ( 1981 ) was a combination of the first and third episodes. This was followed by another cobbled together movie Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes ( 1981 ) then Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes ( 1981 ), Life, Liberty and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes ( 1981 ) and Farewell to the Planet of the Apes ( 1981 ). In addition Roddy McDowell was rehired to play Galen again in some host segments. The videotaped segments which only aired in a few markets had Galen introducing each movie, and for the final movie telling the viewers that Virdon and Burke eventually did find a spare computer and space ship somewhere in the ruins left behind by humans, and used them to return to their own time. In markets where the host segments were not shown the episodes played as ape movies, which from that point on created a second movie series of five films.

The Saturday Morning Cartoon, and the Third Reboot

Fox was not done milking the Planet of the Apes franchise. NBC was interested in a Saturday morning cartoon version of the movies. Fox turned production over to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, a company best known for the Pink Panther series. the result was Return to the Planet of the Apes which aired during the 1975-76 season on Saturday mornings. Much like the prime time television series, the cartoon series was cancelled mid season due to low ratings. Once again producers had no interest in continuing from either the movie or television series. The reason for this was simple. DePatie-Freleng wanted characters their studio owned. The new characters were three astronauts Bill Hudson, Jeff Allen and Judy Franklin, marking for the first time a female astronaut survived. Once again the story has three astronauts going through a time warp and crashing into the future where they discover that humans have reverted to dumb brutes and apes have evolved to talk. Producers borrowed from all the previous ape incarnations, including the book ( the apes live in a technically advanced society ), the movies ( the mutants living underground ), and the prime time series ( the character General Urko ). Cornelius, Zira, Dr. Zaius, and Nova are among the characters from the films and original novel that appear in the cartoon. But other than that the cartoon portrays an all new version of the Monkey Planet story.

Tim Burton's Re-imagined Fourth Reboot

With production stopping on the cartoon series in the late fall of 1975, 20th Century Fox was finished with their Planet of the Apes franchise, the only exception being a comic book series published through Marvel. Meanwhile at that same time the studio was just beginning production on what would become the first film in their most successful franchise, Star Wars ( 1977 ). The amazing success of that film, followed by the success of Speilberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind later that year, began what would become a new era for the major studios. There was now a push for special effects fantasy films. Warner Brothers released Superman ( 1978 ), Universal continued releasing Jaws movies with Jaws II ( 1978 ) while Paramount released Star Trek: The Motion Picture ( 1979 ) giving the popular but cancelled sci-fi series a second lease on life and relaunching what was believed to be a dead franchise. With studios now looking to manufacture blockbusters, Fox began to take a second look at the then extinct ape franchise. Soon after the television series was cut up into television movies, the studio decided they wanted a sixth theatrical film. For the next twenty years Fox announced again and again plans for a new ape movie were in the works. Scripts came and went. Some sequels, some reboots. Directors who at one time or another went into pre-production on an ape movie included Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus, James Cameron, Michael Bay, and The Hughes Brothers. Actors connected to a possible ape movie included Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and of course Roddy McDowell. The reasons as to why films were green lighted, delayed, and eventually cancelled were numerous. It began to look as if a new ape movie would never be made.

Tim Burton was yet another director who got a green light for an ape movie. His concept was what he described as a re-imagining of the original film. A completely different version of the story that was neither a sequel nor remake of any of the previous films, nor an adaption of The Monkey Planet. All that would be retained was the concept of a human traveling through a time vortex to a planet dominated by apes. Burton lucked out and the film made it to production. Planet of the Apes ( 2001 ) begins in the future. Mark Wahlberg is Leo Davison, a scientist working on a large space station where they train intelligent apes to fly space ships, presumably to send them places deemed too dangerous for humans. When his favorite chimp is sent into an ion storm and vanishes, Leo jumps into a space craft and attempts a rescue, only to get sucked through a time vortex and crash on a strange planet where, you guessed it, talking apes rule and humans are primitive. The human tribes in this version talk, missing the point of The Monkey Planet and the first ape films. And once again the apes live in a world with little technology. But for the first time since the novel, this ape planet is not Earth. But this re-imagining also does away with The surprise twist here is later in the film when Leo discovers the true origin of the ape planet. While he and a group of slave humans and fugitive apes are fleeing the rest of ape civilization, they come across the remains of a crashed space station, his. Recordings on the ship reveal that after he had disappeared into the ion storm, his fellow scientists attempted their own rescue mission using the space station itself, ran into the same time vortex, and ended up crashing on the same planet, only thousands of years earlier. The intelligent apes on board soon staged a revolt, and somehow this all evolved into their descendants being intelligent talking apes while the descendants of the scientists ended up as primitive tribes. Theo's pet chimp finally shows up and is able to land his ship rather than crashing it. Theo uses it to return through the vortex to his own time, but once returning to Earth discovers that history was changed and it is now ruled by intelligent apes.

The ending of Burton's film confused just about everyone, so much so that when the DVD was released it included a chart explaining how the apes on the planet were able to build their own space ship, enter the vortex, end up in Earth's past, and end up dominating that planet as well. The problem here, without the chart the ending makes no sense. Another major problem with Burton's re-imagined version was that he dispensed with the separation of class distinction between the apes. In the past it was the gorillas who were the warriors, the orangutans who were the civic and religious leaders, and the chimps who were the scientists and pacifists. The new film had warriors and pacifist, morons and intellectuals all randomly dispersed throughout the ape kingdom. Most fans of the past franchise entries found nothing to like in this new version and rejected it outright.

The New Film Series, and Fifth Reboot.

Tim Burton claimed that the confusing ending to his film was meant to be explained in a possible sequel. The problem was that inevitably no one wanted to do that sequel. Burton reportedly said that he would rather jump out a window then direct a second ape film. Stars Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham-Carter were uninterested in doing a sequel that was not directed by Burton. But more important, although the movie was a box office hit making the studio $250 million, more than any other ape movie before it, there was so much ill will towards the film from fans of the original franchise that Fox ultimately decided against it.

Meanwhile, thanks to the several aborted attempts to make an ape film prior to Burton's, Fox had several ape scripts lying around. One they claimed they were always in love with was for a reboot called Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but had never green lighted it because they felt that it was unfilmable. It would have required using live apes as performers instead of actors in ape makeup, and studio heads realized that it would have taken forever to get these apes to act exactly the way they wanted them to. Within the past few years computer technology advanced enough that human actors could be substituted for the apes, but still look authentically like the animals they are portraying. Whatever the reason, the new ape movie is a complete reboot. Caesar is not the son of two intelligent apes from the future as in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, but rather a normal ape who has had his intelligence enhanced during an experiment. The events in this movie take place long before the apes learn to talk, and director Rupert Wyatt has said this is the first stage of the apes origin story which will span into more sequels. This reboot does mark one important milestone. It does not begin with a scientist or astronaut traveling into the future, but for the first time begins at the beginning, instead of beginning at the end.