Subject: Review: Planet of the Apes (2001)

From: Ram Samudrala <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 20:41:53 -0000

Planet of the Apes
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/planet_of_the_apes.html

/Planet of the Apes/ is a cult film. The numerous references to it in
/The Simpsons/ (which is a cult TV show) alone qualify it as such, but
the original film, based on the novel /Monkey Planet/ by Pierre Boulle
and released in 1968, has also spawned four sequels and two television
series. Tim Burton's revamping of the classic is a typically
interesting and dark look at the complex consequences of small
actions.

Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is an astronaut on a space station
itching to explore a newly discovered wormhole, but manned flights are
not permitted by his commanding officer.  Instead, Pericles, a
genetically-enhanced chimpanzee, is sent to explore the anomaly. When
Pericles disappears, Davidson defies orders and goes after it and
crash lands on a planet where apes are at the top of the food chain
and humans function as their slaves.

Davidson eventually discovers that he is responsible for such a
situation, since the spaceship carrying a bunch of genetically and
otherwise enhanced primates also crash landed on the same planet while
searching for him, except that it was an event that occurred in the
past.  This secret has been guarded by General Thade (Tim Roth), who
desires to exterminate all humans and rule the planet with an iron
hand.  The primates progress to create primitive societies while the
humans are held in check. However, considering that humanity itself is
little better than the other animal species, the primates aren't
exemplary in their behaviour and are unable to shed their primitive
trappings.

There are three distinct spatio-temporal locations in the film: Earth
in the year 2029 where Davidson begins his journey; the planet
Davidson crash lands on in the future; and an Earth to which Davidson
returns.  The movie portrays them as distinct from each other, though
it could be readily interpreted as being the same: i.e., when
Davidson's mother ship first goes into the wormhole, it ends up in a
past earth leading to a completely different kind of evolution (and
thereby wiping out the existence of the current Earth---paradox
accepted) ultimately leading to the planet of the apes, and Davidson
simply "returns" to a future earth where he discovers his fight has
been vain (this would be colinear with the vision of the original
film).

There's no denying that whatever Tim Burton does, it has his clear
trademark look and feel about it, and it is invariably
interesting. The movie here is less intellectual than the original
film (a general trend observed as cleverness in effects substitute for
originality in ideas---the one exception I can think of to this is
/The Outer Limits/ series).

The acting is quite good: Mark Wahlberg does a decent job though it is
the monkeys that carry the film. Rick Baker deserves kudos for the
makeup. The sound track by Danny Elfman is excellent as usual.

The movie ends in the style of /The Twilight Zone/ or /The Outer
Limits/ and is different from the ending observed in the original
(which I thought made more sense since that implies the two Earths are
one and the same).  Catch this one on the big screen.

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