Pierre Boule was working on a rubber plantation in Malaysia when the Japanese invaded and carted him off to a POW camp. He escaped, and spent the rest of the war as an intelligence agent for the British and French. Back in Paris in the late Forties, he took to writing, dividing his fiction between baldly journalistic and indeed highly technical novels (he was an engineer by profession) and more whimsical concoctions, such as his tale of the Virgin Mary returning to earth and becoming Prime Minister of France. Both sides of his writing combined in 1963 with The Planet of the Apes. It opens with Jinn and Phyllis piloting their solar-powered space yacht on a cruise around the galaxies. The technical conceit is fully conceived - and so is the neo-Swiftian satire: only at the end (warning: mild plot spoiler) do we discover that the moneyed space tourists are chimpanzees.
Franklin J Schaffner's 1968 film discarded pretty much everything but the basic notion - on the evolutionary ladder, apes are up, man is down - and then plugged it into the moment, tying together all the threads of the era - civil rights, the space age, societal self-doubt, and, most memorably, nuclear angst - into one of the few truly great sci-fi pictures. Then again, when the producers Arthur Jacobs and Mort Abrahams bumped into Sammy Davis Jr, he told them it was the greatest movie ever made about black/white relations in America. They had no idea what he was on about, but Jacobs gave him the eight-foot statue of the apes' founding father, "the Lawgiver", and Sam proudly displayed it in his living room for the rest of his life.
Tim Burton's 2001 remake was supposed to be a "re-imagining" of the franchise but was crippled by a near total failure of re-imagination. Consider the famous Charlton Heston line and its reprise a third of a century later: "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" snarls Heston's astronaut in the original Planet. In Burton's version, the line goes to one of the apes: "Take your stinkin' hands off me, you damn dirty human!" In 1968, the "damn dirty" business was primal, the moment when Heston's character announces to the audience he's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more. The simian echo 33 years later is an amusing jest in a film that's too knowing ever really to mean what it's doing. Instead of Heston, the shipwrecked astronaut is Mark Wahlberg, who wanders through the movie with Candide-like passivity. Make all the snooty critic's jokes you want about Chuck's two facial expressions - clenched and unclenched - but he enlarged the role. In that terrific final image, when he drops to the sand before the shattered Statue of Liberty and wails in realization of what's happened and where he is, you appreciate his iconic indispensability. He was, as otherwise unsympathetic reviewers would concede, a long, lean, slim-hipped action hero with beautiful aquiline cheekbones, the American eagle in the gallery of national archetypes. But in Planet of the Apes, running around in his loincloth, he conjured Commander Taylor as Adam - the last man on earth played as the first man on earth. And that ending is a marvel of boldness, crudeness and profound bleakness. If you're looking for lessons in the art of adaptation, Schaffner's film is an excellent example of how to liberate yourself from the source material. It led to four sequels and two TV shows.
Whereas Tim Burton's re-boot was stillborn: the entire franchise reared up and roared, "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn arty director!"
A decade later, they tried again. As I wrote:
When I was a kid and watched sci-fi movies set in a futuristic dystopia where individuals are mere chattels of an unseen all-powerful government and enduring human relationships are banned and the progeny of transient sexual encounters are the property of the state, I always found the caper less interesting than the unseen backstory: How did they get there from here? From free western societies to a bunch of glassy-eyed drones wandering around in identikit variety-show catsuits in a land where technology has advanced but liberty has retreated: how'd that happen?
Well, the current Planet of the Apes prequels have also figured out that's the most interesting part of the story.
How do you get from us to Charlton Heston? In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, writer-producers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver came up with an ingeniously simple scenario that's far more plausible than that 1968 nukes-away finale: Experimental research on an Alzheimer's cure with preliminary testing on animals. The drug makes the monkeys smart, but does nothing for the humans except infect them with a deadly virus. In the wrong hands, the premise could have come out like a thesis, but Rupert Wyatt directed with a very deft touch and many memorable moments: the chimp Caesar's first word - "No!" - is as primal as Heston's great line; the helicopter battle over the Golden Gate Bridge is a terrific set-piece; and the final shot of the escaped apes in the forest looking down over the city is profound and unsettling. Then there's the credits sequence of the infected airline pilot arriving for a long-haul flight that will spread the fatal virus around the world.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) picks up the story ten years later, but, with Wyatt replaced by Matt Reeves, it's a far more pedestrian affair - just the usual dystopolis with what's left of an ever more bestial humanity warring in the ruins. On the other hand, Andy Serkis - the world's leading "motion capture" specialist - turned Caesar into the Alec Guinness Obi Wan Kenobi of his portfolio.
Serkis and Reeves are now back for the third entry in the re-boot, War for the Planet of the Apes. Another five years have passed, the apes are a half-decade brainier, and mankind has been severely reduced in numbers by the Simian Virus. An elite Special Forces unit is hunting for Caesar in the woods. They have team-spirit slogans chalked on the backs of their helmets: "Kill Kong", "Bedtime for Bonzo", and (my favorite) "Ape-pocalypse Now". One has high hopes these jests portend a detailed vision if not on the thoroughly conceived scale of Pierre Boule, then at least matching that of Rise... But if anything the horizons have shrunk even further. Caesar is the undisputed king of the swingers, the jungle VIP, but, granted that he's the good guy and by now we're meant to be root-root-rooting for the non-home team, he nevertheless seems oddly passive and reactive for a great leader.
His nemesis is the unit's ruthless commander, played by Woody Harrelson as just the usual deranged shaven-headed cigar-chomping psycho-colonel. It all seems very painting-by-numbers, and quickly settles down into a prison movie, with lots of tunneling - The Great Ape-scape. The action takes place somewhere up by "the border" - presumably, judging by the snow, the US-Canadian one, although it's unclear whether either polity's writ still runs. Maurice the orangutan is still around, of course, but there is a new semi-depilated and very loquacious chimp who calls himself "Bad Ape" and sports a trademark blue quilted puffer. I found him irritating enough to be verging on Jar-Jar Binks, but my son generously put him more in the Dobby the House Elf category.
The plot device closest to the spirit of Rise is introduced early on, when they find a mute girl (appealingly played by Amiah Miller) and the orangutan adopts her. The virus, now present in every human being on earth, is evolving: It has killed most of humanity, and those left are being stricken in new ways, waking up of a morning and discovering they've lost the power of speech. You might object that this process is already under way and that we now communicate only in a few crude but universally understood phrases - LOL, OMG, ROTFLMAO, etc. But, as the psycho-colonel understands, this affliction will prove the death of man: We are being reduced to animals, silent and stupid, in preparation for our new role as beasts in the field for our ape overlords.
As I said, the most interesting part of any futuristic story is how you get there from here. I would have appreciated an equivalent moment to that virus-spreading map graphic in the first film - perhaps a G7 meeting where the Italian Prime Minister falls mute during the climate-change session, and then at the start of the transgender bathroom discussion the German Chancellor's tongue lolls likewise useless. Alternatively, were these brainy apes to breed at more traditionally simian levels rather than the near-German fertility rate practiced by Caesar and his missus, then maybe they'd be chairing the G7 summit by now. Alas, from Rise to Dawn to War this Planet's horizons have shrunk, and what's left is a very non-primal battle of the primates that's mostly a shoot-'em-up. Even its tragic elements - at the film's opening and close - are dispatched very perfunctorily by Reeves.
But what do I know? The critics loved it - because who doesn't want to cheer the other guys in a clash of civilizations? The New York Times' A O Scott did, however, enter one caveat:
The default setting for primate social organization in these movies, human and otherwise, is patriarchal, and while a few female apes and a young human girl appear on screen, the filmmakers' inability to flesh out the familial and affective dimensions of an otherwise richly rendered reality is frustrating.
Yes. Why can't all these butch chimps and orangutans be more like man-bunned wispy-bearded metrosexuals getting in touch with their Bernie-bro side as they take over the planet?
Mr Scott, though, does have a point about the absence of female apes. Why is that? Does Matt Reeves intend the 85 per cent maleness of his simian horde to be a metaphor for "Syrian" "refugees" in Europe? And is the eleven-year-old girl meant to represent all those young Continental ladies who've been on the receiving end of all that vibrant multicultural outreach? And does the loss of speech symbolize Europe's craven silence in the face of these provocations? Or am I getting way too Sammy Davis for you now?
Ah, well. Come the next re-boot, there's always Pierre Boule's novel...
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Don't know how I missed this from a year ago. But Mark, that last paragraph (Not the last line), pulverizing Scott for his oh-so-high&mighty rightousness-broadcasting conformity PC crap while "Partying At The End Of The World", as Murray and you have put it, and then segueing back to Sammy D. Junior's self-indulgent interpretation, why these are the nuggets of the finest writing available today. I read that and went "Oh my, you rascal, you did it again! This is why I have all your books and read everything I can find that you have written. Thank you for sharing your talent with us.
It's hard for me to go ape about any remake of even a late 1960s classic like this one, even less for one with Woody Harrelson, so I'll just comment that you are to be more than commended for the fine literary/film analysis of not just this re-boot without any leather or heel, but also of the problem with the modern state of film-muzak masquerading as movies. Maybe the animal rights bozos can lodge a complaint with Ape Command over this one but I highly doubt it: they really enjoy the de-construction of classics into pap that pleases their pals in the "media". If you've not read the original Heston bio - the Actor's Journal, not In The Arena (which tames down the guy's thoughts), you might enjoy the first 1/2 of it, right until after he does POTA. It's a fantastic history of film in the USA. Some good insights into the man who was Chuck as well, although I don't think that benefit was his intent!
Mark, I love almost everything you write, but you really must stop giving your kids input on movie reviews. We all remember how you dished the faint praise for La La Land, a terrific movie, in part because your kids just didn't get the throwback style, tone, and references. Now you give feint criticism to one of the all-time stinkeroo movies, War for the Planet of the Apes. How did I hate this movie, let me count the ways. It's dark. It is humorless excep when it is inane. The makers couldn't be bothered with any romantic interest. They also couldn't be bothered with continuity, as we jump from lush forest to snowfall in the space of a few seconds horse ride. But worse, we all expect a soft liberalism to make a muck of any major movie these days, even remakes of almost flawless tales (Beauty and the Beast). Here, the dumb politics was crude as can be -- the Star Spangled Banner used as a hate tune, the marine hoo-ah turned into hate speech, the apes being forced to 'build the wall'. You have it all wrong with your The Ape-Escape reference, which suggests a bit of the old light touch. No, this is Ape Lives Matter, but dumbed down from its real-life counterpart, with special invective for 'Uncle Tom' apes who serve the redneck cracker humans. Your great writing and humor usually penetrate. This time, they distract and (as other commenters note) you never quite get to the point of the movie you are ostensibly reviewing. Even more, you miss the importance of a point you do raise. I went to this monkey-travesty because I enjoyed the series going back to the 70s, and because the reviews were so good for this one. Deep state? How about the deep culture, where critics applaud this tripe? Your review would have been okay in lesser hands, but you had a softball here for your usual excellence and it didn't come off. Gosh, this comment section stuff is fun. Keep up the good fight.
As a point of literary trivia, Boulle was following in the footsteps of the 1906 story "The Gorrilloid" by Edmond Haraucourt. In that story, a civilization of intelligent gorillas drags up the last, pathetic human for an academic lecture on how each species has a natural "limit of development" and all intelligent species live to excess and die. Talking gorillas included. It's not Mann-compliant science fiction though. Ice sheets go down to Africa in this future.
Excellent close on this piece Mr Steyn. Isn't it interesting how art imitates life?
It took me several paragraphs to appreciate that this piece was a review of a current movie. It has been many years since I went to the cinema, and I cannot imagine why I should. That's why several review websites have reduced the process to 4 or 5 stars, rotten tomatoes, or thumbs directed in longitudinal ways. Please help someone like me by stating at the onset whether I should get out of my easy chair and venture out. Otherwise, I'll just stay put and read your epistles.
I agree. Please review the current movie on its own terms firstly, then review it in reference to previous versions in the genre. Good movies should be able to "stand on their own". I saw the 1968 version many times, and maybe one or two of the others, but I was lost here. Most moviegoers are too young to have experienced the full history of the genre, and older viewers don't care or have forgotten most of what they knew.
It will be a good day for America when President Trump gets rid of all of the tax breaks subsidizing Hollywood.
Perceptive point. How bizarre that people think government money and subsidies can 'promote' the arts, when instead it far more often corrupts creativity or turns imagination into the banal.
The side-story here is NOT the plot of the film, nor the Details of the film, but the PHRASES. Reason: The focus is SELLING TICKETS to Teens-Twenties, who still go to movies. [Tell me the truth, who over about age 40 goes to a movie theater, except to take grandkids to see "Mookie The (animated) Train", or "Zookie, The (animated) Lonely Giraffe", or "Pookie, the (animated) Sad Puppy"? The whole movie theater experience is Hell On Earth to Actual Human Beings, with adolescents endlessly updating their cellphone commentary to describe the "action" in the movie to their friends, who may actually be SEATED IN THE SAME THEATER watching the SAME movie (or in a different theater in the same complex, watching a different movie, but who are eager to read their friend's endless analysis...)] Back to the point: Gen-Xers and especially Millennials simply DELIGHT in recognizing phrases quoted from previous movies, TV, etc. In fact, that is a major source of humor for them: "Ha HAH - That was on The Simpsons!..." "Yeh - and on Beavis & Butthead, dude..." The context of the phrase does not matter: It was funny THEN, so it MUST be HILARIOUS NOW! Doesn't matter whether it is contextually appropriate or not: They've heard it "somewhere" before! So it's gottabe funny - really funny - you know really, really funny! Maybe because Homer Simpson also said it (quoting some ancient movie that they have never watched), but **Homer Said It** = REALLY FUNNY! [Mea Culpa: I have an MA in Radio-TV-Film from a major University, and I have not attended a film showing in a theater since "Schindler's List" was in the local theaters. And have no desire to do so...]
This is why I don't subscribe to The New York Times: "the filmmakers' inability to flesh out the familial and affective dimensions of an otherwise richly rendered reality is frustrating." This is why I am a member of The Mark Steyn Club: "Yes. Why can't all these butch chimps and orangutans be more like man-bunned wispy-bearded metrosexuals getting in touch with their Bernie-bro side as they take over the planet?"
You are SO RIGHT BallBounces, I read the "Yes. Why can't we all" comment from Mark, laughed, and smiled the entire time I sent it on to like minded non-ape, non-oragatans I call the Deplorable Choir because I've been asked to only preach the Choir.