Growing up Planet of the Apes was one of my favorite movies and I still enjoy the original now. It had so many layers to the story that intrigued me even at a young age.
The first one was about taking care of our pets and making sure they stay healthy and safe, otherwise a plague may take them all away. So I was very concerned about the pets I had and wanted to keep them safe. But once all the "regular" types of pets died humans still felt the need to own an animal and have a pet. I thought this was kind of strange to be honest. Why was man so obsessed with owning another living creature?
So man decided to take primates as pets. But they could be more then pets. Because primates were closely related to humans and exhibited similar skill abilities it was decided that a good idea would be to teach the primates to do daily tasks so they can be more useful and more then just a pet. So the primates were clothed to appear more like humans as well, and were taught to go to the store and buy groceries, housecleaning, how to make a cocktail, how to cook. Later they were used as manual labor in the workforce. Given a variety of jobs. But all these tasks and all the training was slowly making them evolve into being more human.
That was what I felt was the main point of the Planet of the Apes movies, and if you watch all the originals in order it actually makes a full cycle of their evolution. The problem with evolution though is that sometimes there are unexpected outcomes. After so many years of being oppressed and used like slaves the primates become self-aware of their abilities and the fact that they could be used against their human owners. That is one inevitable outcome of evolution, revolution. The primates revolted and took the rights and freedoms they realized the humans had. They fought back and because this was unexpected they defeated the humans and therefore created the planet of the apes.
But this evolution was key to the story. Even the remake kept the idea of evolution. It gave the primates a bit more attitude though. It also created a more action-packed, aggressive militant-state movie which was contrary to the civil, mild-mannered, science and politically led society of the original movie. This could however be one direction the revolt of the original movie could have taken, but it really doesn't lend well to a storyline. The original movie really captured the idea of the human thirst for knowledge and the constant need to question the world around them. All animals have aggression and an ability to attack another species, or their own. But it seems that to be human is to question. And the original movies emphasized the evolution towards human by making science the leading force of society.
i am clearly against remakes. Most of my blogs will probably repeat this statement. But one thing that is even more annoying then simply remaking a movie is to pretend that you're not. The 2011 version tries to get away with this. And I do understand that because technically it has a different title it therefore doesn’t have to be the same movie. But I doubt anyone believes it isn't a remake.
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
Rise of the Planet of the Apes completely throws the concept of evolution out the window and replaces it with a science experiment that backfires. Instead of the slow process of the primates learning to be more human and adapting to their surrounding slowly and through changing, they are simply made smart. And this sudden intelligence means they have all the skills and abilities of a human. They don't have the time to learn to appreciate this change and what it means for their species. This story is all about aggression and fighting oppression. This one is more like the 2001 version. The primates create a militant state because all they do is smash and break and harm and run away. There is no evolution to understand their place in the world. They just want to take it over.
The premise if this movie falls into a category that is basically an entire genre of movies from the 80's and early 90's of animals who are smarter then they should be and what they do with that. There are many movies about primates who are smart and do what humans do: primates playing baseball, primates going into space, etc. There is even a whole collection of other smart animal movies. This is not new. So in addition to completely changing the premise of a movie it is clearly remaking it is also copying ideas that have already been repeatedly done. Where is the vision?
Probably the biggest part of the original 1968, and even the 2001 version of the movie is that you don't really see the big picture until the big reveal at the end. And you don't even have much time to adjust before the credits begin to roll. You're suppose to be following along and accepting this reality and what's going on and then suddenly the reveal makes you think about what you just saw. You are forced to suddenly question everything that just happened and how you felt about it and what it could possibly really mean. There is no question or reveal in the 2011 version. All that is revealed is new special effects to make you believe something is actually happening. I really can't think of anything else to say about it.
The first one was about taking care of our pets and making sure they stay healthy and safe, otherwise a plague may take them all away. So I was very concerned about the pets I had and wanted to keep them safe. But once all the "regular" types of pets died humans still felt the need to own an animal and have a pet. I thought this was kind of strange to be honest. Why was man so obsessed with owning another living creature?
So man decided to take primates as pets. But they could be more then pets. Because primates were closely related to humans and exhibited similar skill abilities it was decided that a good idea would be to teach the primates to do daily tasks so they can be more useful and more then just a pet. So the primates were clothed to appear more like humans as well, and were taught to go to the store and buy groceries, housecleaning, how to make a cocktail, how to cook. Later they were used as manual labor in the workforce. Given a variety of jobs. But all these tasks and all the training was slowly making them evolve into being more human.
That was what I felt was the main point of the Planet of the Apes movies, and if you watch all the originals in order it actually makes a full cycle of their evolution. The problem with evolution though is that sometimes there are unexpected outcomes. After so many years of being oppressed and used like slaves the primates become self-aware of their abilities and the fact that they could be used against their human owners. That is one inevitable outcome of evolution, revolution. The primates revolted and took the rights and freedoms they realized the humans had. They fought back and because this was unexpected they defeated the humans and therefore created the planet of the apes.
But this evolution was key to the story. Even the remake kept the idea of evolution. It gave the primates a bit more attitude though. It also created a more action-packed, aggressive militant-state movie which was contrary to the civil, mild-mannered, science and politically led society of the original movie. This could however be one direction the revolt of the original movie could have taken, but it really doesn't lend well to a storyline. The original movie really captured the idea of the human thirst for knowledge and the constant need to question the world around them. All animals have aggression and an ability to attack another species, or their own. But it seems that to be human is to question. And the original movies emphasized the evolution towards human by making science the leading force of society.
i am clearly against remakes. Most of my blogs will probably repeat this statement. But one thing that is even more annoying then simply remaking a movie is to pretend that you're not. The 2011 version tries to get away with this. And I do understand that because technically it has a different title it therefore doesn’t have to be the same movie. But I doubt anyone believes it isn't a remake.
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
Rise of the Planet of the Apes completely throws the concept of evolution out the window and replaces it with a science experiment that backfires. Instead of the slow process of the primates learning to be more human and adapting to their surrounding slowly and through changing, they are simply made smart. And this sudden intelligence means they have all the skills and abilities of a human. They don't have the time to learn to appreciate this change and what it means for their species. This story is all about aggression and fighting oppression. This one is more like the 2001 version. The primates create a militant state because all they do is smash and break and harm and run away. There is no evolution to understand their place in the world. They just want to take it over.
The premise if this movie falls into a category that is basically an entire genre of movies from the 80's and early 90's of animals who are smarter then they should be and what they do with that. There are many movies about primates who are smart and do what humans do: primates playing baseball, primates going into space, etc. There is even a whole collection of other smart animal movies. This is not new. So in addition to completely changing the premise of a movie it is clearly remaking it is also copying ideas that have already been repeatedly done. Where is the vision?
Probably the biggest part of the original 1968, and even the 2001 version of the movie is that you don't really see the big picture until the big reveal at the end. And you don't even have much time to adjust before the credits begin to roll. You're suppose to be following along and accepting this reality and what's going on and then suddenly the reveal makes you think about what you just saw. You are forced to suddenly question everything that just happened and how you felt about it and what it could possibly really mean. There is no question or reveal in the 2011 version. All that is revealed is new special effects to make you believe something is actually happening. I really can't think of anything else to say about it.
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