In the beginning, we’re history. The astronaut, Taylor, left Cape Kennedy in January, 1972. Six months moving near light speed has been seven hundred years on Earth. Now he transmits one last report nobody hears. “Does man,” he asks, “That marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving?” Everyone he ever knew dead, centuries vanished, pointless never-ending brutality: Charlton Heston makes this opening monologue sound amused. 1968’s Planet of the Apes caught the zag in his acting career from religion to science-fiction. A few years after he baptized Christ in the Colorado River, Apes filmed Taylor’s spacecraft sinking upstream in Lake Powell. From Promised Land to Forbidden Zone: That was the Sixties.
The rough water landing leaves Taylor and two crewmates stranded. Landon (Robert Gunner) builds a rock memorial to their female colleague, Stewart, who died in suspended animation. Taylor sees the grave marker, a souvenir flag on top, and laughs. In Pierre Boulle’s original 1963 novel La Planèt des Singes, the main character is a journalist who admires his scientist leader; the French intellectuals land in a lush forest. This adaptation crashlands a couple American bastards into desolation. Lost, they think, “in the constellation of Orion,” they wander a desert. Landon’s the boy scout, a space-program true believer with delusions of glory. Taylor’s hobby, here at the end of all things, is fucking with Landon. “There’s a life-size bronze statue of you standing out there somewhere,” he teases, “It’s probably turned green by now, and nobody can read the nameplate.”
Nine years later, the most famous science-fiction movie ever maroons its own star-tossed characters in another desert. It’s four minutes, maybe, before the Jawas snatch up R2-D2. The Apes crew searches fifteen minutes before any apes arrive. And the slowness is astonishing, measly men against behemoth landscape, Jerry Goldsmith’s minimalist score tickling the silence. The third man, Dodge (Jeff Burton), is the one nice guy. He is Black, so appreciate the progressive astro-diversity and condemn what few lines he gets before dying first. He’s distant, scanning the landscape tricorder-ishly, when Landon throws back Taylor’s snark. “You thought life on Earth was meaningless,” he tells Taylor. “You despised people. So what did you do? You ran out.”
“No,” Taylor says, “I’m a seeker, too. But my dreams aren’t like yours. I can’t help thinking somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be.” The cynic is a dreamer. Taylor is one of my favorite heroes because of how completely his dreams don’t come true, and how little he accomplishes. He goes somewhere new to find something he never finds, and also discovers he never went anywhere.
I will write about a Planet of the Apes movie weekly until May, when Kingdom comes. I am doing this because, based on metrics I have invented, it is the greatest film series. There are shorter sagas with higher highs, bigger franchises stamped by better filmmakers. Apes’ hit ratio is extraordinary, though, graphed across time and output. James Bond and Star Trek are older, probably more popular, but they have whole dull epochs. In nine movies over fifty-six years, Apes destroys the world three times, maybe four. In the most triumphant ending, the hero dies after losing his wife and son.
A cathartic counterbite, then, to current blockbusters’ hopeful glaze. Apes can be openly anti-human. Taylor, a person who hates people, becomes some kind of monster. After him, the default protagonist is a chimp tormented by homo sapiens. This isn’t Avatar, where a dreamboat alternate race represents enlightenment. Apes have problems. Their societies reach dead ends. Is every civilization just savages with guns? All that has to happen in an Apes movie is that apes talk, via prosthetic or performance-capture. Within that framework, the franchise pursues two science-fiction variations. There’s the adventure category, all cosmic romps and wasteland westerns. Other times, the Planet’s outside your window, exploring hot topics in a moral fable.
The original picks both lanes. The first act collides pulp flavors, bombing high-tech future men back to a Stone Age. Apes hit theaters alongside 2001: A Space Odyssey. That masterwork’s similarly barren opening act found proto-people evoking the singularity when simian instinct became human cognition. Here, caveman natives are crazy youth in loincloths. Very Raquel Welch — and then armed gorillas on horseback kill or capture everyone. From that shock of creature-feature horror, Planet of the Apes becomes something no Planet of the Apes ever will be again: A talkfest. Taylor’s a zoo animal, a lab rat. The satire kicks in. This is the part with Heston’s ripest line readings: “You cut. Out, his brain. You bluh, dee, BaBOON!!” But the conflict is philosophical. A tribunal climax clashes research against religion, a bit of Galileo with your Inherit the Wind. An officious orangutan warns: “Do not turn this hearing into a farce.”
My first embarrassing Apes opinion is I prefer the visceral opening act. Director Franklin J. Schaffner made 1964’s The Best Man, a great political potboiler, but Ape City feels more like his first Heston collaboration, 1965’s The War Lord, a stagey epic rife with proud pontification. A belief I can no longer suspend: Taylor thinks he’s on an alien planet yet doesn’t wonder why the apes speak English.
Then again, how American to just assume foreigners speak your language. Apes doesn’t miss a chance to undercut Taylor. He is shot, caged, firehosed. Fruit is hurled upon him. The emasculation becomes near-literal when he’s threatened with castration. In his memoir, Heston recalls stuntman Joe Canutt playing Taylor hoisted upside-down in a net. Canutt was the double who made Heston look legendarily good horse-jumping Ben-Hur’s chariot. “Y’know, Chuck,” Canutt deadpanned now, “I remember when we used to win all these fights.”
The swaggering hero played by cinema’s favorite messenger from God gets saved by the scientist couple out to prove evolution. One chimpanzee ally, Cornelius, is played by Roddy McDowall, later the franchise’s defining screen personality. The critical figure here, though, is Zira (Kim Hunter). She’s the glue holding the movie together, witty and forthright. She’s a crucial scene partner for multiple male egos: Taylor’s brash disgust, Cornelius’ cowardice, the wily authority of Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Boulle’s book imagines an affair of the heart between its protagonist and Zira. Hunter comes off more like Heston’s amused big sister, which supports and demotes his alpha stature. When Taylor wants to kiss her goodbye, treasure the triple spin Hunter gives Zira’s big line, apologetic and disgusted and down for whatever. “All right, but,” she hesitates, “You’re so damned ugly.”
Don’t forget Nova (Linda Harrison), the mute wildwoman Taylor either romances or adopts. In the book, she’s naked always, eventually pregnant. The adaptation improves her to irrelevance in a prehistoric miniskirt. Her obsession with Taylor suggests a midlife fantasy: The gorgeous woman half your age who never talks. To be honest, I enjoy the Beach Blanket bodies in this first Apes, a clothing-optional Malibu mentality that also showcases Heston’s upper thighs. After all the digital battlefields, I guess I do support ambient nonsense sexiness more than ambient nonsense violence. To be clear, a couple lines stick out way wrong. “Did I tell you about Stewart?” Taylor monologues to Nova. “Now there was a lovely girl. The most precious cargo we’d brought along. She was to be the new Eve. With our hot and eager help, of course. Probably just as well she didn’t make it this far.” If you think this guy’s a jerk, remember, he is a sequel away from doing the single craziest thing I’ve ever seen a movie hero do.
Antagonism builds between Taylor and Dr. Zaius. The orangutan is an impotent bureaucrat in the novel. The splendid script by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling digs deeper. Zaius maintains false knowledge in his capacities as a religious, scientific, and political leader. He also holds true wisdom. “Beware the beast, Man,” reads the Sacred Scroll Zaius keeps in his pocket. “Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land.” Practically paraphrasing Taylor in the first scene: His brother’s land, his neighbor’s children. Zaius is right. Taylor takes Nova into the Forbidden Zone, leaving his ape friends to an uncertain future. Down the beach, he is surprised by the one fact everyone knows about Planet of the Apes.
Stanley Kubrick is not remembered today for his warm, hopeful perspective on the human condition. But 2001’s anthemic ending sees another long-suffering astronaut transformed into something better than man. By comparison, Apes is an ankle-slicer. No music, only waves, when Taylor learns the truth. “You blew it up!” he yells. Fists thrust to the ground, knees sunk in wet sand, head forward: He could be bowing, praying. Lady Liberty’s ruined gaze stares up and away. She does not see him, the damned dirty ape.
(Next week: Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Thanks for reading. Future Apes essays will be for paid subscribers, so if you enjoyed this, consider putting some coins in the slot.)