The movie finds Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter) and Dr. In 1971, director Don Taylor brought us Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, and while it entirely flips the "fish out of water" concept that was introduced with the first movie, it still hits on many of the same crucial themes and does what true great sci-fi does best: holds a mirror up to society. Going back to what I was saying about the end of Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, there wasn't a tremendous amount of expectation for a follow-up to a movie where the Earth exploded, but still the franchise found a way to continue. And yet it's still only the sixth best in the franchise! While you went in thinking James Franco would be the real star, it truly proved itself to be Caesar's story - and though it has a few issues (the "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape" line was a bad judgement call), it really is a special film. ![]() Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a true marvel just in the way it managed to transform Andy Serkis for the first time into Caesar, but the movie also just gets a tremendous amount of credit for the bait and switch narrative it managed to pull off. Taking full advantage of growing performance capture technology and truly pushing the envelope, the movie wound up being one of the biggest surprises of 2011, and kick-started one of the best trilogies ever. It should also be recognized that Beneath has one of the most shocking, surprising, and underrated endings of any blockbuster, as there are truly few features that can get away with A) blowing up the planet, and B) a narrated line bluntly explaining that said explosion doesn't really matter.įollowing the Tim Burton film, the 21st century wasn't exactly raving about the idea bringing back the Planet of the Apes franchise, but really that just let director Rupert Wyatt, Andy Serkis, and the rest of the team behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes shock the hell out of everyone. Normal and safe as most of the film is, it cranks the weirdness factor to 11 when it reveals mutants have been living underground worshiping an atomic rocket. It's really this rehash quality of Beneath The Planet Of The Apes that ultimately ranks it so low within the franchise, and it's too bad, because the back end of the movie really does its part to try and redeem the rest. There is a significant percentage of the film that is dedicated to being essentially a remake, as the story follows yet another astronaut (who actually looks exactly like Charlton Heston) as he crash lands on the Planet of the Apes and is shocked to learn about the primate-dominated culture. ![]() Sadly, director Ted Post's Beneath The Planet Of The Apes is a movie excessively guilty of this sin. One of the worst things that a sequel can do is not try anything original, but instead just cash in on exactly what made its predecessor successful.
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