Recent market and focus group testing has drawn our attention the fact that the name, and the protagonist of last week’s article both came off as a little too aggressive. Therefore, we’ve given the guy that wrote that article the sack, and brought on a new team to produce a more ‘family friendly’ reboot of the reboot series. Keeping that in mind, we’ve decided to explore subject matter that could be interpreted as being ‘more universally appealing’, or at the very least, ‘less unappealing’ to the average reader. With that out of the way, let’s look at this week’s reboot, Planet of the Apes.
As I stated last week, this was my first proper exposure to the film reboot. And as my previous article on the original movies should demonstrate, I really like this franchise. I own everything ever filmed for the PotA franchise, including the live action TV show, and the cartoon show that were done back in the day. I’ve stuck with the franchise through thick and thin, and sometimes I’ve been rewarded, and other times, I’ve been less than impressed. Either way, the concept that the original series used was, and still is, captivating, and thought provoking. However, at the tender age of 18, all that I cared about was that Tim Burton, the guy who made my favorite Batman film, was going to make a movie in another franchise that I really enjoyed. See, this was the point when everyone finally realized that ol’ Timmy B wasn’t completely infallible. He had done a few movies up to this point that maybe weren’t as well received as the studios would have liked, but those films always mustered enough charm to still appeal to audiences, and at least make some money. However, 2001’s PotA is a completely different story altogether.
Hold onto reality tight as we take a Willy Wonka-esque boat trip down memory lane, and try to make sense of this movie. It all starts with Marky Mark, minus the Funky Bunch, working as an astronaut on a space station. A group of scientists are trying to train chimpanzees to fly probe ships so that the precious humans don’t have to risk life and limb in order to better understand the cosmos. Everything appears to be going normally until an unidentified blob of space weather begins to rain down on the space station.
One of the chimps is sent to take readings, which indicate that there may be temporal anomalies associated with this event, and the pod is lost. Marky Mark decides to go after his good buddy, and in the process, gets affected by whatever made the chimp disappear. When he finally lands, he’s under water, but when he finally gets above water, he’s in a tropical jungle area.
It’s around this time that he finds himself being hunted by an unknown assailant. He’s eventually caught, where he gets to share a cage with Kris Kristofferson, which is one of the coolest stage names ever, and he quickly realizes that he was caught by talking apes. Paul Giamatti plays a peddler ape who specializes in the purveyance of exotic pets/slaves, or humans. We see him grading each specimen, and earmarking how they should be marketed based on appearance and temperament. I think this is supposed to be social commentary on social stratification, and bigotry, but it’s all too off putting to really get its message across. At this point, Burton made the decision to spend a ton of time examining ape culture. I’m not saying that it isn’t interesting, but it isn’t exceptionally entertaining. It’s slow, it’s muddled, and it’s just plain weird. We see how the apes subvert the humans to perform menial labor, but that there’s a movement led by one of the apes to make humans more equal in society. We see the ape mating ritual, which includes awkward, nightmare inducing dancing. And we see ape hoodlums acting like ape hoodlums, and getting into all kinds of ape shenanigans. Honestly, most of it’s pointless. The most important takeaway is that an ape named Thade, who is the son of the ape patriarch wants to get him some sweet ape tail from Ari, the ape who’s leading the human equality movement. And also that Thade treats humans like disposable commodities because he super hates humans, read he’s threatened by their ability to grow and adapt, I think.
Anyway, we slog through the boring until Ari helps a group of apes to escape. Through some plot happenstance, Paul Giamatti’s character Limbo, and a few other apes end up as part of the caper. They all flee into the woods in order to get a head start on their pursuers. It’s actually pretty exciting, but not enough to keep me awake during most viewings. They all end up at Lake Powell, where much of the first film was made, and eventually stumble upon the wreckage of Marky Mark’s space station. Bet you’d forgotten he was in this film, huh? It’s okay, most people do. Ari and Marky Mark do some snooping around to see what’s up with this situation, and in the meantime, the ape army, which is about 5,000 strong at this point, get the drop on the group. I’m not sure why Thade thinks that he needs such a huge army to capture a group of less than a dozen people, but okay. During the poking around, there’s some babble about the space station being the genesis for ape life on the planet. Marky Mark recognizes names of apes that participated in his program, and Ari ties those names to renowned names in ape mythology. They realize that they can use the booster rockets on the station to wipe out the army and set the plan in motion, but Thade comes in to wreck the party. He eventually gets stuck in a room with bullet resistant glass and kills himself by shooting a gun, which he got from his father, Zaius, who ironically enough was played by NRA guru Charlton Heston.
There’s some action, maybe an explosion or two, and then out of nowhere, the chimp that kicked off this whole adventure performs a picture perfect landing of his space pod right in the middle of the crowd. There’s a somewhat heartwarming reunion, and then Marky Mark decides that he needs to fly off into the sunset. So he does. After he kisses Ari because we need to recreate as many iconic moments from the first film as possible. Marky Mark sets trajectory, and does his thing only to land on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Specifically, he lands outside the Lincoln Memorial. He seems relieved to be back in his own universe, and then he walks up the steps and into the monument only realize that ol’ Honest Abe has been replaced by Honest Ape. That’s about the point when a half dozen police cruisers show up, and a bunch of uniformed apes pile out with guns at the ready. And then the movie ends.
This film has already taken a bunch of flak over the years, and deservedly so. I’ll try not to overlap too much with what’s already been said, but don’t expect a miracle. A lot has been said. So, the main area where this movie suffers is in its focus. It flat out just doesn’t have any. It’s trying to be witty, and smart, and sexy, and slick all at the same time, but it doesn’t know how to juggle all of these attributes effectively. Burton took a huge risk opting to do this film, and it really didn’t pay off for him because although he can make great films, you really need to know your stuff when doing a time travel story. You can’t just slap a story together half way and expect good results when time travel is involved. You have to have a really tight story, and you have to pay attention to every facet of your time periods, and how each would affect all of the others. Burton just didn’t have everything nailed down that well. Ironically, the film actually doesn’t suffer from a lack of identity. It’s a Burton film, and Burton films seethe with identity just due to Burton’s style. I think he really knew what he wanted to achieve, he just didn’t know how to achieve it.
This movie has some awesome special effects. The prosthetics, the props, and the CG effects are all really cool. And for the most part, these things are all utilized well. As I said, the exploration of ape culture is a thing. It can be kind of cool at times, when it’s not being completely off putting. There are some really awesome action sequences in this film as well, and the actors portraying the apes really come through the makeup, which adds to these sequences. There are individual parts of this film that actually work pretty well, they just don’t add up very well overall. I think Burton tried to too hard to throw back to the original material, and in so doing, lost sight of making a great film that could stand on its own. This is most evident with the metaplot, or lack thereof. Yes the time travel element could be considered an integral element of the PtoA franchise, but if that were really the case, then Rise of the Planet of the Apes should never have worked. Burton did exactly what most bad reboots do. They fall in the trap of trying to recreate the success of the original material by simply rehashing through the original material. What usually makes for a good reboot is coming up with new original material. Making a film that stands on its own within a franchise is hard, but the payout is definitely worth it. All of the best reboots choose to focus on building new mythology for themselves, don’t rely too heavily on what’s come before to prop themselves up. Honestly, name recognition should be enough for any filmmaker. Take what life has given you up to that point, and make a great film that hits the hallmarks of your franchise, but that builds it out in new and unexplored ways. Burton’s film did none of that, and it shows in the fact that after more viewing than I’m willing to admit to, I still don’t understand how we get from point A, the beginning at the space station, to point B, the Lincoln Memorial on the Earth run by apes. I wasn’t even aware that the space station had been orbiting Earth. I thought it was out in open space somewhere. Building on that, I didn’t realize that temporal anomalies had the power to change one’s spacial position as well. See, there are a lot of lazy holes in the story that could have been fixed with some relatively minor changes. If this movie fails anywhere at all, it’s here. It’s in the fact that it was kind of lazy, and as a result, missed a lot of great opportunities. Thankfully, we got another reboot that actually delivered some good movies.
All in all, this film really isn’t worth the watch. It’s eye catching, and imaginative in some regards, but it misses the spiritual point of its predecessors in a bad way, and that just makes the entire ordeal directionless, and not very entertaining. And yet, still fun somehow. That’s all for this week! Stay tuned for next week to see which reboot we roast next!
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