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This remains one of my all time favorite pop culture analysis books.
It really is fantastic.
http://amzn.to/1cNLQf1
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Posted: |
Aug 3, 2014 - 1:38 PM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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I was not so disappointed with DAWN (as current summer tent pole movies go, it was above average) as I was dissatisfied with it. My reaction at the conclusion was a simple, "That's it?" The story kind of lacked the proper scope (ironic in that this is the first APES film not shot in 'scope' Panavision) and did little to moving the concept toward the world of the '68 movie that the makers say they're aiming for. Basically what we're in the middle of is a story arc revolving around the first sentient ape, Caesar, and both dramatically and thematically it's little more than a simian soap opera that with DAWN still awaits yet a further installment before it reaches a supposed conclusion.
This is not what the concept started out as fifty years ago. Outside of the Boulle novel and the '68 film that further refined the novel's story, properly I contend, as a misanthrope's worst nightmare, all we've basically gotten since, as Charlton Heston stated in explaining his resistance to doing a sequel, is just "further adventures among the monkeys." Planet of the Apes is supposed to be a platform for social comment and political satire, but doing that well is hard. Easier is to just concentrate on clichéd adventure stories and trite character conflicts, but strip too much of the Planet of the Apes concept of allegorical heft and what you get is the 2001 Tim Burton directed "re-imaging," an artistically disastrous dive into silly camp.
At least the makers of these reboot/prequels have enough sense to play things straight, but given the talent pool behind them, I'm pretty certain that future installments won't come anywhere near to rivaling the original film's classic status and significance. Mark Bomback is no Michael Wilson, and Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver aren't Rod Serling much less Pierre Boulle, but good luck to them because the franchise can't afford too many lousy entries.
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Posted: |
Aug 3, 2014 - 5:52 PM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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Well, if you want to talk about where the next films could go, I too have ideas, the first of which is very much like yours, only I hold off the nuke stuff. The makers of the new films say these reboots are also prequels that lead to the world of the '68 original. So.....
I've limited the modern franchise to the same five-film number of the old franchise (though maybe only four would be better) and I've incorporated elements of the '70s sequels to embrace the entirety of the old series (though I personally may not be too crazy about it):
First movie -- RISE.
Second movie -- DAWN.
Third movie (I'm not going to propose titles), takes up directly where DAWN ends, the apes will battle what survives of the US military (a scientific advisor of which could be an alternate timeline, older Dr. Hasslein [from ESCAPE]). By the end of the film the apes lose the battle and Caesar, mortally wounded and fearing that his people will be exterminated, orders all apes to surrender. They do so after Caesar dies and are then enslaved by the humans who will use the apes for the hard labor that will be needed to rebuild civilization. (Yeah, this one's a big downer.)
Fourth movie -- we jump ahead three hundred years, mankind has only partially restored its former technological civilization. The long term affects of global warming, the wheels of which were set in motion long ago, have ravished the environment. What's left of humanity, as far as anyone knows, lives in a kind of semi-technological, Fascistic society in what was the United States, mostly in the east. Meanwhile the long term affects of the plague are still at work in the DNA of both man and apes. The apes are evolving at a rapid rate and are starting to reach the more humanoid creatures they were in the original '68 film. Humans on the other hand are devolving, becoming more mentally lazy while their slave apes do all the work, are brutally lorded over, but continue to breed and now equal or surpass the human population. Revolution is in the air and a descendant of Caesar, a chimpanzee named Aldo (again played by Andy Serkis) leads the apes in a revolt against their human masters. But the human leaders, paranoid as ever about what else might exist outside their confines, have secretly maintained ancient nuclear missiles and faced with the apes finally conquering and dominate them, detonate their bombs in an act of suicidal desperation. (This is more the remake of CONQUEST that RISE was supposed to be.)
Fifth and final film of the modern APES franchise -- we are a couple centuries past the nuclear holocaust the nearly killed all life. A small society of apes and humans survive in what was the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, the only inhabitable area left. Outside of this region most of the land is wasteland, and the area to the northeast still highly radioactive as most of the nukes were detonated there. The apes now appear very much like they did in the '68 original and have founded a society very much like ancient Rome (buildings made of stone, clothing like togas). A power struggle ensues among the apes over which species will rule the society. Humans, now mute and dumb animals and are kept by chimpanzees as pets. But one orangutan leader, Haristas (A name from the original Boulle novel. [see chapter 22]), is appalled by this and has kept secret a recorded oral history of the apes on a series of scrolls and has founded a simian religion based on suppression of that history and a fierce hated of mankind. In an alliance with a bigoted-against-all-chimps gorilla leader, Haristas and other orangutans and their now subordinate gorilla enforcers politically defeat the chimpanzee establishment that has ruled whatever society the apes have had since the time of Caesar. Now calling himself the Lawgiver, Haristas drives out into the wilderness what humans remain and declares Man an evil pestilence that must forever be shunned, and the desert area to the northeast the "Forbidden Zone." The ape civilization first seen in the 1968 original is thus founded. The film ends with the primitive humans making their way to the Atlantic coast. Seeing there the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, they flee in fear.
THE END..... until 20th Century Fox decides to reboot it all over again.
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I just watched all the original Apes movies streaming for free on Amazon Prime Instant Video. And I was curious about Beneath the Planet of the Apes. What was the story behind the many of the action scenes, finale and end credits not being scored? It was really bizzarre, like watching behind the scenes rehearsals. I think Rosenman was scoring it.
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Posted: |
Aug 4, 2014 - 11:54 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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I just watched all the original Apes movies streaming for free on Amazon Prime Instant Video. And I was curious about Beneath the Planet of the Apes. What was the story behind the many of the action scenes, finale and end credits not being scored? It was really bizzarre, like watching behind the scenes rehearsals. I think Rosenman was scoring it.
BENEATH was a troubled production. It seems, from what I've read, that no one involved with the original really wanted to do it, and from the results it seems no one ever really got a handle on it. Ted Post, brought in after the first director attached left in disgust, couldn't exercise the kind of control he wanted and apparently didn't get along with line-producer Mort Abrahams. The script development alone shows that there was no overriding artistic vision that could be agreed upon (even efforts by Rod Serling and Pierre Boulle himself were rejected) and that the final film is a true "movie by committee." I suspect there was much post-production editing, and, after the score recorded, re-editing to try and save the picture. If you have the FSM CD of Rosenman's score you'll know that several cues were either dropped or re-edited.
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Posted: |
Dec 18, 2014 - 3:04 PM
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By: |
KTK
(Member)
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Burton's bad-tasting curio aside, the newer ‘Apes’ films are high-budget, nicely paced, perfectly competent, and completely forgettable movies. They simply lack the character of the originals. Are the CGI apes more realistic than the appliance-makeup in the originals? Sure! Are they better? Not on your life. Even in 1968, the apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey” were more realistic than those of ‘Planet,’ but which do we all remember? Which did Mego make action figures for? Plastic model kits?
The amazing architecture of Ape City, those brilliant colorful costumes that illustrated the stratified Ape society, the incredible music that shaped those early films… all of that is lost. Even if a filmmaker tried to ‘reboot’ the franchise faithfully, s/he would come under attack for being too retro from all but ardent fans. It’s a no-win situation.
What I perhaps might like to see is not a CGI remake of the film cycle, but perhaps a careful attempt to repair some of the jagged edges in the early films caused by budget and time restrictions. When I see the new special effects put to the old “Star Trek” and some of the incredible set and costume recreations in “Star Trek” fan films these days, it makes me wonder if perhaps some of the scenes in ‘Beneath’ couldn’t be fixed or extended with careful staging and good overdubbing. Just recraft the dialogue a little bit in places where it’s jarringly odd or corny… find a clip of Heston saying “Zaius” from somewhere in the first two films and fix that lousy overdub in his last lines obviously voiced by the person who provided the “is now dead” narration at the end. Give the films that suffered from low budgets more life in their otherwise classic forms. If CGI is used, just fix the cheap faces of some of the background cast, but keep the original *intent* intact.
A pipe dream, but when I think of revisiting POTA, I don’t want to see angry CGI apes in what feels like an extended episode of the “Outer Limits” series remake. I want to go back to THAT Ape City, see THOSE costumes, be confronted with a wildly imaginative and satirical script that takes crazy turns and makes me hang on tight! And hear a challenging score that will make me sit up and take notice. Is it possible to have that?
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Posted: |
Dec 18, 2014 - 3:54 PM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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I've just seen the new DOTPOTA. The CGI for the apes is pretty amazing. There is notable performance art in there, although, I'm not convinced "best actor" should go to pixelated personifications at this early stage. They're all instantly recognizable characters, sure. Given the apes don't say very much, their lines are pretty well scripted, too. Koba is back in truly badass order and his underlying objectivity could have been given more depth, which, in the end was a throwaway commodity to advance the plot smartly if not predictably. The music Giacchino wrote to trail Koba and his scouts is written all over the film and I liked it's embedded usage and development. My favorite part of the film concerns the brief lead in before homo sapiens spoils the view.
All in all, though, it's much of a muchness. It must be so hard to eke out those rare crumbs of originality.
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I'd just like a one-volume reference of all the Apes stuff from the five films and TV show. Thanks for the tip! 
I did have the aforementioned Power book and record sets, though. If the book contains the bulk of that post-Apes merchandising, then that's the book for me. 
