(Although I will try my best to avoid them, as always, spoiler alert just in case)
Tomorrow (July 11th 2014) sees the release of Dawn of The Planet of The Apes, a mouthful of a title that, if early reviews are to be believed, will be a hell of a great movie. As you may or may not know, this is part of the long running Planet of The Apes franchise, but just how far back does it go and how many movies are there? Having all but one of them (I'll tell you which one later on) I thought it would be fun to start from the beginning, and offer you links to watch them should you want to. Lets get started with...
Planet of The Apes (1968 Version)
Charlton Heston stars as Taylor, a member of an astronaut crew that crash land on a strange planet in the distant future. Originally thought to be a desolate planet, the crew finds out that apes are actually the dominant species and humans have become mute savages who wear animal furs. Considered a classic of science fiction it was also selected for preservation in The National Film Registry in The Library of Congress in the united states. You can watch the film here.
Beneath The Planet of The Apes (1970)
The sequel to the 1968 version finds another spacecraft landing on the titular planet, this time carrying the astronaut only known as Brent who is on a mission to find Taylor. Along the way, he also encounters the simian civilization, as well as a strange underground city occupied by mutant humans with telekinetic powers. It was considered to be a lesser sequel, but if you want to judge it for yourself you can watch it here.
Escape from The Planet of The Apes (1971)
The third film finds three apes, Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Cornelius escaping from the titular planet after finding and repairing Taylor's spaceship and flying it through a time warp, arriving on earth in the year 1973. They are brought to a zoo, which after originally deciding to not talk, end up not only talking to the humans studying them, but they also become celebrities because of it. During this time, Zira discovers she is pregnant, which leads to complications. I won't go further with the description, but suffice to say, there is a reason this is considered the best of the sequels. You can find out for yourself here.
Before I continue, I really want to re emphasize the spoiler warning. The next film I can't really talk about without potentially spoiling the end of the one above, and the same goes for the one after that. If you do really want to watch these movies, I suggest you do it now. This is your warning.
Did you watch them? if you have (or if you want to keep reading anyways regardless) let us continue.
Conquest of The Planet of The Apes (1972)
The story begins by explaining that in 1983 (ten years after the events of the previous film) a disease killed off all of the dogs and cats on earth, leaving humans with no pets. To replace them, humans began keeping apes as household pets. Realizing
the apes' capacity to learn and adapt, humans train them to perform
household tasks. By 1991, American culture is based on ape slave labour, and America itself has also become somewhat of a police state. Caesar, the son of Cornelius and Zira, is in hiding as a performer in a circus, until an outburst forces him to flee into the wild, where he is captured and forced to go into slave labour. You can watch this film here.
Battle for The Planet of The Apes (1973)
Told as a flashback by the orangutan known as Lawgiver in the year 2670, the story itself begins roughly twelve years after the events of the previous film. Caesar wants peace between the remaining humans and apes, while a gorilla general named Aldo does not. The last of the films in the original series, it was received fairly poorly. But if you would like to know how the story ends, you can watch it here.
After that, there were two TV series based off of the franchise. There was the shockingly named Planet of The Apes (1974 TV series) and Return to The Planet of The Apes, the latter of which was an animated series. The both only lasted one season, consisting of 27 episodes combined. They are not considered cannon (as far as I know) but you can watch them here (some episodes missing) and here.
Planet of the Apes (2001 version)
A loose remake of the 1968 original, production started all the way back in 1988, it went through several versions as well as cast and crew, before finally landing director Tim Burton and star Mark Wahlberg. The story begins in 2029 with astronaut Leo Davidson working on the space station Oberon with primates who are trained for space missions. When an electrical storm is reaching the station, they send out Leo's favorite simian named Pericles to investigate the storm. Acting against orders, Leo goes after Pericles and ends up going through a time warp and crashes on the planet Ashlar in the year 5021. He then encounters the Ape civilization and then the story goes way off from the original (which you can watch happen here)
Yeah I'm not going to lie, this is the one I haven't watched (entirely.) I didn't particularly like the scenes I did watch and it sort of just doesn't fit well into the apes franchise (at least to me). I'm all for creative licensing but this one just didn't do it for me. It's considered more of a B-Movie by today's standards, and it was financially successful, but Fox decided not to go with a sequel, instead eventually deciding on a reboot.
Slight Spoiler warning for the beginning of the next film, which I will post here if you want to watch before reading about it.
Rise of The Planet of The Apes (2011)
James Franco stars as Will Rodman, a scientist at a biotechnology company, trying to find a cure to Alzheimer's by testing them on chimpanzees. When the drug increases the intelligence of a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes, Will decides to use her as proof that the drug works. However, when forced from her cage, she goes on a rampage and is killed. Will is forced to terminate the project, but finds out that Bright Eyes had given birth to a son, who he adopts and names Caesar. A commercial and critical success, it was even nominated for best visual effects at the Oscars. If you didn't watch the film at the link above, you can also watch it here.
Dawn of The Planet of The Apes (2014)
The film that inspired this article, it follows the events of Rise, and you can watch it tomorrow when it comes out in theatres. I'm really looking forward to it, and I'll even do a review of it after I do.
So there you go, every Planet of The Apes Film. I highly recommend these films (maybe not the 2001 one so much but I leave that up to you) and with a sequel to Dawn already announced, I can't wait to see what this franchise has in store.
Until then, I'll see you guys next time.
