It looks like in the preview to the new Planet of the Apes that the Apes overrun Andrew Stanton’s and Ben Burtt’s and Lassiter’s hometowns and march directly for me and Netbug009! This movie comes out in just one week. It’s a restart of the famous series from the late 60’s and early 70’s. There are many comparisons between this movie and our little friend’s worthy of discussion. I got the idea for this thread from the Hello Dolly! discussion thread, because both are Fox studio productions from the late 60’s and their fates were intertwined.
So let’s talk about the comparisons:
1)both are very popular sci-fi movies.
2)both have a heavy viewer base with children
3)both have an apocalyptic vision, ruined landscapes
4)both involve leaving earth on a spaceship and returning thru a time warp
5)both had heavy merchandising campaigns
6)both involved police states
7)both have a replacement on earth for the vanishing humans
but there are many key differences as well:
happy vs. sad endings - Caesar’s stone statue ‘cries’ tears.
9)budgets ranging from under $2M to $180M.
10)in-house story vs. outside book
11)hypocrisy (dogma?) vs. life’s programming
Here are some things I mentioned in the ‘Hello Dolly’ thread that are worth repeating:
“I’ve been watching all 5 of the Plant of the Apes movies. Now before you get all ‘hairy’ and ask what this has to do with this thread, remember that it was a 20th Century Fox movie also during that time, the late 60’s. Also, remember that it is almost unexcelled in popular culture as an apocalpytic vision. Tremendously influential. There was a remake in 2001, and now a restart here in 2011, in fact it premieres next week!!! There is actually a sixth ‘movie’ in the series, a documentary on how the series was made including interviews and lots of background. Just like I mentioned above, the narrator, Roddy McDowell, who plays one of the lead apes in the films, tells about how Fox had released three musicals just prior to ‘Apes’ and our musical of main interest had bled the studio to the point of near bankruptcy. This caused two things: first, a need to have more sequels to help the studio out, and second, progressively lower budgets because the studio (was cash poor). So one of the biggest sci-fi movie series of all time was severely handicapped by the beloved movie of our little Tonka-like friend. Just for the sake of completeness, Fox re-released all the movies to the theaters in the mid 70’s, shortly after an enormously well-viewed television broadcast of them. This went hand-in-hand with a huge merchandising blitz, unlike ever seen before; but frequently seen since!! …Remember that the very last scene in the last movie showed human and ape children talking to the Lawgiver.”
But the most formidable comparison (#7) involves who will replace humans once they have decimated the earth: will it be Apes or Robots…?