Apes-ma

I’ll admit that I got Planet of the Apes much more than I got 2001: A Space Odyssey in the year I first saw both films, which was in fact the year of their releases, that is, 1968. I have no prob­lem admit­ting this because I was eight years old going on nine at the time, and of course it totally fol­lows that what Planet of the Apes was selling was a lot easi­er to “get” for an eight-year-old. That said, I will tell you that I can still remem­ber, without googling, the name of the then-15-year-old prodigy who wrote an exeges­is on the Kubrick film that inspired Stanley him­self to rave: “What a first-rate intel­li­gence,” that name being Margaret Stackhouse. I read about her, and her writ­ings on the film, in that sui gen­er­is mass-market paper­back The Making of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and have been nurs­ing a major inferi­or­ity com­plex ever since.

Anyway, back to Apes. Yeah (SPOILER ALERT), the Statue of Liberty. That really messed our minds up but good. But even more night­mare fuel came with Beneath The Planet of the Apes,the bleak­est, creepi­est, most out­right sad and nihil­ist­ic of the series. I’ll nev­er shake the men­tal pic­ture that forms my recol­lec­tion of Chuck Heston press­ing down on the but­ton that will bring nuc­le­ar ruin to our plan­et YET AGAIN, his actul heart seem­ing to beat its last as he holds it in his actu­al hand (the one that’s not press­ing on the big but­ton) even as he does so. Fucked up, man. Weirder still is that this truly inspired and Dante-esque vis­ion occurs in what is for all intents and pur­poses a com­pletely tossed-off sequel dir­ec­ted by Ted Post, a guy I iden­ti­fied as a hack of hacks when try­ing to dis­cern just what it was that dis­tin­guished Magnum Force from Dirty Harry. Just goes to prove what the sur­real­ists said about how you nev­er really can tell about these things. 

So of course I was hooked on the Apes saga, such as it was, but it isn’t as if I did­n’t notice when the series shif­ted from a Heston/James Franciscus focus to a Roddy McDowell one. Nothing against Roddy, of course. But still. It was inter­est­ing to see how the sub­sequent films found them­selves inad­vert­ently bal­an­cing overt cheese with very con­fused rumin­a­tions on present-day “Black Power” activ­ity. We con­tin­ued to want to believe, but I dunno, Ricardo Montalban as a kindly cir­cus chimp hand­ler was­n’t really mak­ing it for me. By the time Battle came out, this then-13-year-old just could­n’t take it ser­i­ously. Wouldn’t it be amus­ing, I thought, if the Apes films were made into an opera cycle, like that Ring thing? “This is the battle for the battle for the battle for the battle for the plan­et of the apes!” I sang, to the tune of the over­ture of Bizet’s Carmen. “With Caesar as our leader/we know we can­not fail/For with Caesar as our leader/we found the Holy Grail!” I fur­ther extem­por­ized. Why not? Since this was to be an oper­at­ic work in the Wagnerian tra­di­tion, it made sense to link it back to cer­tain themes in that com­poser’s work. As you can ima­gine, I raised a bit of an eye­brow when I saw that Simpsons epis­ode with the Planet of the Apes music­al in it. I am reas­on­ably sure that nobody I went to Dumont High School with went on to write for The Simpsons.

Anyway…I’m not a reli­gious man, but I always thought that a remake of the first Planet of the Apes film was kind of a lousy idea for the simple reas­on that it rep­res­en­ted an irre­pro­du­cible res­ult. It’s like at the end of the 1957 Looney Tune Show Biz Bugs where Daffy finally eli­cits applause from the vaudeville house audi­ence by, as the say­ing goes, sui­cid­ing right on the stage; as his soul ascends to heav­en (surely that can­’t be cor­rect?) he laments to Bugs that the prob­lem with this trick is that you can only do it once. Hence the essen­tial use­less­ness of the Burton ver­sion, even though every­one is clearly put­ting some­thing resem­bling their best foot for­ward. As for Beneath, I don’t know that Hollywood would have the balls to even try, recol­lect­ing that the motiv­at­ing factor behind the ori­gin­al was less balls than profit tak­ing. But the sub­sequent Apes films strike me on prin­ciple as recom­bin­ant fair game. Still, I was­n’t expect­ing much of any­thing from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is one reas­on it’s one of the most pleas­ant sur­prises of the sum­mer. Another reas­on is because it’s kind of awe­some. I was­n’t able to dis­cuss it in these terms in my review of the film for MSN Movies, but as you are know doubt aware, I’ve seen a fair amount of films, and one side effect of that is I don’t get a whole lot of “holy shit!” moments in a theat­er any­more. And by “ ‘holy shit!’ moments” I mean parts where I’m watch­ing the film and some­thing hap­pens and I go back in my seat and I say, “Holy shit!” Hopefully not too loud because I don’t like to dis­turb my fel­low movie­go­ers. Anyway, I recall count­ing at least four “Holy shit!” moments watch­ing this. That’s one for every $2.50 or so of your moviego­ing dol­lars. Not bad.