Planet of the Apes (2001)

This movie was proof that Tim Burton seeks revenge on humanity.

I love it. I think it is in many ways a typical Burton flick, contrary to what a lot of people think.

I STILL don't understand the ending. Is it even possible to understand it?

Wahlberg was miscast. It would have been nice if the lead character had some personality.

If it had been an original it would have been lauded, but as a remake it left one wondering "why?", as it added little to nothing to- IMO actually removed some of - the subtext of the original film;

it was OK, but really ended up equalling less than the huge budget, talented cast, and (formerly?) brilliant director who toiled on it.

I've told people how much I like this movie since it came out. It still holfd together for me. The ending is classic, to me. Haunting to see the face of your enemy gracing the figure of the Great Emancipator. Good stuff.

I said it before and I'll say it again. It was one of the most fun times I've had at the movies. As NYC is covered in scaffolding, I spent the whole evening swinging through the streets.

Yes.

The ending is in a similar vein of the Pierre Boulle novel.

To understand the ending it helps to pay attention during the film. Especially the beginning.

And without Wahlberg the greatest action star ever manufactured wouldn't exist...

A remake that never should have happened; completely empty of COOL. In everything but R. Baker, the original is far, FAR superior.

It wasn't supposed to be cool, it was supposed to be cautionary. I thought that the final battle rocked, especially when MCD comes out of the hull and says "We will leave them [the graves] unmarked so that those who come here will not be able to tell man from ape. They will mourn together." Or something like that. I love that line.

I loved the line...

"Yo, damn! Look...there be apes up there! Look! Apes, man! Damn!"

Besides how can you not love all the jealous looks between Helena Bonham Carter and Estella Warren...

Someone mentioned that this was Tim Burton's ramke of the original ending of Army of Darkness. That soundsa about right. I mean isn't Wahlberg's character a complete knucklehead?

Right. I think the source material is cautionary, but just because Burton followed it's crux doesn't mean it needed to be made, and it has NOTHING on the original but the make-up - which is probably the only reason it got made in the first place.

It's no biggie - it's good you liked it, but for me the original was fucking great while I thought Wahlberg AND Burton sucked all over the screen.

I guess I'm one of the few who can actually separate a remake and the original and not compare them.

Explains why I enjoy POTA 2K1, Rollerball 2K1, and The Time Machine 2K2...

Sorry, I really didn’t like it and not just because of the ending. First of all, Mark Wallnuts and his character are horrible. He has no depth to him at all, and while cardboard-cut-out-characters sometimes work in action movies, it hurt this one. The whole movie lacks any kind of pulse or heart. It just... is. There's no life to it. The only good thing about this movie was the make-up, and it's not everyday that happens. Oh, and I actually kind of liked the ending. I grew up on the Twilight Zone, and the ending very much reminded me of a Zone episode, but the rest of the movie was flat-out worthless. It didn't do anything... it didn't even try. Burton was off the ball on this one and it really doesn’t feel like him (I think Fox limited his control, thus, the crap). The movie doesn’t reek, and it could have been a LOT worse, but it’s far from good. It’s about as forgettable and lifeless as movies get. I hope it sinks into the very back of Blockbuster, never to be watched or thought of again.

I'm still trying to get over my infatuation with Ari eek!

Bump! Watched this again over the weekend.

This film (seems) to get rather negative geek/nerd press. Why? *looks for Phil*

Because it's terrible. It has none of the satirical wit of the original, it trades the Western-iconography-turned-on-its-ear visuals of the first film for a soundstage shot mostly at night, it has nothing to say, it goes for dumb jokes, it's the least visually interesting film Tim Burton ever made, the ending makes absolutely no sense, etc., etc.

The first film gets dismissed easily, but people are looking at it through the cloud of sequels and tv shows and increasingly cheap budgets. The first film is a visually striking, smart, funny, really entertaining film. People like to feel superior by laughing at it, without realizing just how many of those laughs are by design. Watch that one again.

Tim Roth was the best element of this otherwise forgettable film.

I will agree with that. Tim Roth and Rick Baker especially deserved a better movie.

Its been years on this for me. A dull dud. How do you mess up the Charlton Heston cameo? Should've been a grand slam moment.

It was supposed to retain the same wit? I'm not sure I would call this film a remake more of a reimaging.

I wouldn't go far as to say that the film is visually stunning, but I wouldn't say it was devoid of style (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth). Further, I would say since this film eskews Burton's usual visual style it becomes even more interesting (to me).

Doesn't get dismissed by me (the original films). In fact, I tend to revisit those films way more often than this film; however, I find that I'm just not bothered by this reimaging. I get the sense that some of the religious allegory got snipped (in either editing or re-writes) which may (or may not) have made a more interesting film but in the whole the film feels apt. Not superior or inferior but able.

Burton apologists will tell you that he came in late to the game, that it wasn't his "vision", etc. etc. But he he helped design/signed off on every costume choice, he cast the film, he sure sounded psyched to do it.

It's the "fan as filmmaker" syndrome: they obsess over the things that made the original resonate for them, without any kind of empirical grasp of the property itself.

Apes was a ghettoized little property that took its producer forever to get off the ground until Heston hitched his fading star onto it. 30 years later it's viewed as some kind of classic or benchmark, which happens with time and only time. You can't recreate that. I'm not saying that's what Burton tried to do, but it's suddenly a prestigious tentpole summer picture, and it should have never been that. The way to remake it is to capture the scrappy, subversive nature of the piece. The original's classic status is no doubt bolstered by the fact that, as kids, it's probably one of the first "message" movies we'd ever seen. The remake has NOTHING to say. It has better makeup. The end.

The problem in both cases is that it removed those elements (satire, Burton's style) and didn't really replace them with anything. You're left wanting.

Fun fact: "Re-imagining" is a word that was invented by the marketing team of this movie.

Saw it in the theater, and never had any problem with it. I liked it, but then again, I'm not a die hard fan of the series.

I don't think fans of the original are what caused the film to be viewed as a failure (see: 8 ensuing years of no Planet of the Apes sequels). "Never had a problem with it" isn't much of an endorsement. Ever watch it again? Ever had an urge to?

Other nitpicks - the original felt like it showed a legitimately alien culture in many ways. Conversely, when Wahlberg is riding into the ape village soundstage at night, two of the first things he sees are chimps in leather jackets breakdancing (there might have been a boombox), and others playing basketball. Marvelous.

Didn't the original novel actually have them driving cars and shit and pretty much living on an exact replica of Earth? This is hearsay, I haven't read it, so I could be wrong.

Tim Roth is great! He's so menacing, even when he's not doing anything. I loved how he kept sizing up people by invading their personal space and just sniffing and glaring constantly.

Yes, the original novel is set on Betelguese. The twist in the novel is he leaves that planet, goes back to earth, and in the thousands of years he's been gone, Earth has also gone to the Apes. Wahlberg returns to his own time to find it overrun by Apes.

Tim Roth travels back in time at the very beginning of the movie. You see his ship come out of the black hole or whatever before Wahlberg goes in.

I'll take your word for it, but in what? I could never figure out what he'd be able to get working in that dilapidated, centuries-old husk of spaceship.

It's just a riff on the opening of ESCAPE anyway.

But that would mean Roth arrives in our "present". When Mankind had spacestations and stuff.
Not in the past to justify the changed Lincoln Memorial or the apes in general on present earth.

Maybe he bands together with Rick Baker, enslaving mankind and forcing them to wear award-winning makeup?

Well, it doesn't make sense. If Rothman had traveled into Wahlberg's past and successfully changed history so that the Lincoln Memorial was a Lincoln Ape (which is silly in and of itself), it stands to reason that the whole of human history would have been altered. Thus, chances are that the humans--beaten down by their simian overthrowers--would never have developed the ability to travel into space and Wahlberg would never have flown through the portal to arrive on the Planet of the Apes. And, if that never happened, then Rothman would never have acquired the ship to back through the portal and travel into Wahlberg's past... and so on and so forth. Ugh.

Roth travels back in time from the future that Wahlberg found him in. He goes into the past and becomes Abe Lincoln or some shit. It's another sloppy riff on the original series, which sets up a scenario that might indicate that had Heston never gone forward, the Apes wouldn't have his ship to go back in time and create the world Heston found in 3978. PARADOX! It's a tight little time travel twist; Burton's time travel twists are more on the random and meaningless side.

I know what it was supposed to do. I'm saying that if we see Roth's ship come out of the black hole Walbergh goes in at the beginning of the film, it doesn't make sense because of the timelines.

I don't remember seeing it, but maybe it didn't come out so much as they passed each other inside it?

Follow-up question: why are we giving a fuck?

Can't speak for anyone else, but mostly because I'm bored.

The greatest crime this movie commits is that it's just boring and forgettable. Not even worth arguing over.

Of this movie or of Burton's Batman? Doesn't matter really. Bottom line, I'm not so married to the first movies that this movie seems like a blight on moviedom. To be honest, I'm still not 100% convinced that you aren't looking at this film through rose-colored glasses. There's still social commentary to be found in Burton's film (yet, your comments seem to imply otherwise).

Not trying to be this film's champion or anything (definitely not worth that tact) and there is no way I'd even try to defend the movie's ending (notice I've completed avoided those comments). Just trying to get the hate (that's all). - specifically as to why I'm giving a fuck.

It's just a bad movie. Divorced from any other criteria, it's a wildly uninteresting, poorly written, fairly boring movie.

That. And given that it's such an inherently fun property, that makes it a real shame.

I'm surprised there's a thread anywhere on the internet in which people are currently discussing it. It disappeared from my brain the moment it unspooled.

Except for Ape Lincoln, that shit was gold.

Bingo.

A dull movie and one that wasted the large amount of talent involved by not bothering to be about anything or having anything interesting going on for 80% of its running time.

It's a strike movie. That should really tell you everything you need to know.

Of this movie. The word was first dusted off for this specific film (though it existed elsewhere earlier, but was not used to describe a film until Planet of the Apes).

I have the film playing in the background.  Wanted to check out the make-up work again after seeing the footage from Rise.  Still amazing.  I probably appreciate it (the make-up) more now.  Baker's work (and the cinematography) really allow the eyes to do so much of the work.  Tim Roth is having too much fun.  It's great. 

 

The movie itself?  Eh, I'm not really paying attention.