Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Planet of the Apes

I was finally able to see a good movie after a few disappointing ones (Godzilla, Fury) but this one is a movie from 46 years ago which I bought from HMV: Planet of the Apes. It is such a brilliant movie that makes it hard to believe that it has been made over 4 decades ago!
Most of the elements in the movie are awesome. A great location is chosen, although even for me who has never been to Grand Canyon, it didn't take long to realize they are there. The story is good and the acting is acceptable for the time. The dialogues of the movie, especially for someone who his first language is not English is a bit hard to understand because they use the words and terms which are barely used in today's conversations. 
A question might be what is the sequence of 1) Planet of the Apes, 2) Rise of the Planet of the Apes and 3) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, while they are other movies in the franchise as well? There is no doubt that movies number 2 and 3 above come after another with the same sequence and there might be a few others that I haven't seen yet and the last one should be this recent movie, Planet of the Apes because according to the movie decades has passed and it is the era of the apes and humans are considered animals and they are all mute! It's a very interesting ending to a civilization! 
The star of the movie is Charlton Heston who was  a big actor at his time and I have seen Soylent Green of him which I like a lot but he owes his fame to playing bigger roles in movies such as The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur which I have not seen any and not interested in watching either. Now that I have seen this one, I'm interested to see the rest and I'm hoping a sequel to Dawn of the Planet of Apes is made.
In Rise of the Planet of Apes, the animals, the apes evolve based on a gen therapy and become able to performs activities which require wisdom. Bright Eyes is the first specimen of this kind. In Planet of the Apes, the apes thinks the one guy that they call him Bright Eyes has evolved and become able to talk! The sentence Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape! is used in both films and both times by humans but in Rise of the Planet of the Apes it is the animal control shelter guy who uses it against Ceasar while in Plant of the Apes, Heston's character uses it against his ape captors. It is obvious that these coincidences are intentional to make people connect between the movies. I would highly recommend this to anyone who like science-fiction and give it 4 out of 5 stars.  
(Photo: The scene in the movie when the spacecraft crashes into water was filmed in Lake Powell in Colorado. Here you see the film crew and actors. Heston is easily recognizable in his white spacesuit on the left)

No comments: