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Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Planet of the Apes as it should have been done in 67.
Review: When I saw Planet of the Apes with Charleston Heston, not just in 67 but years afterwards as a television movie, and finally a vidoe I owned. I was struck by the hopelessness of Life in Ape city and Taylors predicament. The whole cycle of sequels ends with the destruction of the earth at the dying hands of Taylor.

Tim Burton's remake offers a more positive possible ending, Even if the Hero doesn't survive. Humanity is still intelligent and fed up to the back teeth with being enslaved. So the hero in this case will not go through the gauntlet alone. The slaves are ready to revolt, and like a house soaked with gasoline, all they need is a spark and the fires will be seen for miles.

I actually think the makeup artists come closer to portraying real apes. The male orangutans depicted in the film look like real males specimens we would find in a zoo. The realism is more then makeup deep. Not all chimpanzees are nice friendly animals, some are cannibalistic, and they do hunt old world monkeys for their meat.

I wish I could see the movie on it's release date, but see it I will.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: (...)
Review: am a big Tim Burton fan, I've practically seen
all his movies: "Batman" , "Sleepy Hollow", "Edward Scissorhands", "The Nightmare before Christmas" are the Directors best works to name a few.

But when I first heard, that Director Tim Burton
was going to make a remake of the original classic sci fi movie "Planet Of The Apes" with Charlton Heston, I was skeptical. Everyone knows that remakes of classic movies 90% of the time, plain suck. The movie remake of "Psycho" is a good example. I was further skeptical that Tim Burton's remake would equal the success of the original because all the ideas thought possible were used for the "Planet Of The Apes" series and movies.

Apes going into space, an Ape's son taking over the world, and even mutant beings are just a couple of the ideas that were used for the four sequels and 2 television series that wanted to profit of the 1968 film. Now after watching the film , my gut instinct told me I was right. The New version of Planet of The Apes is highlly predictable, copying a large bulk of material from the original, with brief differences.

Probably the biggest problem is that this movie itself has is the lame, and dumbest ending I've seen. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. It makes me laugh more because this was a Tim Burton film. In fact, the ending looks like it was written by a 13 yr old, who has too many cheap sci fi films with bad endings. The end of the film, lets you down with an incredibly stupid ending that makes you feel like you wasted time watching it.

Even Tim Burton commented after the film, that he would not make another sequel. Apparently, even he knew that his movie failed. Now my review of the film:
Planet of The Apes starts with great visual effects,
as we learn that an Air Force Space Station has occupied the universe. Mark Walhberg plays Captain Leo Davidson,
who is teaching scientific chimps how to pilot space vessels for research. Basically, the chimps are sent as probes , if you will, to uncharted planets. However, something goes wrong, and the head chimp, gets lost on a voyage to a planet. Davidson, caring for the chimp, disobeys orders and goes after him.
Now then comes the copying of the original film into the remake,but Burton tries his best or worst to not make it look like a copycat film.

Davidson is eventually captured by the Apes of the Planet. Just like the original film, the Apes personality traits are split by class. The warriors are made mostly of Apes and Gorillas. The lying and cunniving politicians are made up of Urangantans. While the more sympathetic apes relate more to the chimp class.

In the original fim, Charlton Heston has the famous line that all fans know when he is captured by the Apes:
"Let go of me you damn dirty ape".

However, Burton changes the script to not copy the original. In the remake, it is the ape who use a line similiar to this:

"Let go of me you damn dirty human"

Lol. I laughed for a while when I saw this.
It's just a very dumb scene. Because even Burton changed the lines, it's still trying to copy that classic scene from the original. Anyways Davidson is captured and eventually meets the head Ape of the planet. Davidson is eventually put into the lines of human slaves that the apes have. Here also Burton tries to add differences between this film and the original. If you recall in the original, Charlton Heston was the only human who could think and talk, while all the over humans either had labotomies or had their throats cut out.

This made Heston's character, Taylor, much more unique and dangerous to the apes. In the remake though, Burton makes it so all humans can talk. This made Walhberg's character not as unique and dangerous, as the original Heston characterm, hell it made him average, not standing out from the crowd.

Tim Roth, plays the evil General Thade who is the military dictator in control of the planet. For the most part, Roth's part is admirable, he does display that aura of intimidation and fear, that all villians in the movie have, but all of this is ripped to shreds by the horrible ending of the film.
Eventually Davidson and the rest of his human and ape friends stage a revolt against General Thade to see who will rule the planet.

This is actually one of the few good points of the film,Burton gives you the hope that things will turn out the best in the end, but not necessarily... Without giving away the ending of the film, all I can say is that it is one of the cheesiest, dumbest endings I've seen!!! In fact, my first reaction to the ending was disbelief, followed by sheer laughter. I couldn't believe that Burton had done that type of ending. The ending reminds me of those low budget, cheap sci fi endings from the 1950's and 60's. If I wanted to see sci fi movies with a cheap , laughable, ending I would watched the reruns of "Mystery Science Theater 3000"!!.

What upsets me about the ending, is that before the ending, we are lead to believe that the movie is going to end one way. In fact, if the movie ended up the way I thought it was going to end, I would have given it a perfect 10!!! But Burton (I don't know what he was thinking)sabotages, the good film with a cheap ending, that leaves you feeling rip-offed. He is not the only guy to do this, the legendary Roman Polanski likewise had the dumbest ending of his career in the movie "Femme Fatale" with Antonio Banderas.

Several weeks after the movie was released, Burton said he would not do a sequel to "Planet Of The Apes". It seems that Burton himself, knew that he messed up a perfectly good film and , proved that remakes of classic films should be left alone. I am big Tim Burton fan, but the remake of "Planet Of The Apes" is probably the worst film that he has done.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: not a very good version
Review: this is tim burtons adaption of the original movie from 68.the story strays way off course from the original but is way funnier.marky mark stars in it.oh yeah!now will take it seriously.as if it wasnt bad enough we were watching a bad remake of an old classic,now it stars one of the worst bands in histories brothers.bbbboooooooooooooo!the kids will like it.tim burton directed it.besides the lack of keeping with the original and bad casting,this movie is good.it is a disapointment from a lot of his far better movies though.there are a lot of racial undertones in it.they are done in a funny way.is this even possible?its kind of a down but still manages a 3 star rating due to tim burtons masterful save.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I really liked this!
Review: What a fun flick this is! It surprised and delighted me! I'm not a huge fan of Tim Burton, but this is a very under-rated fun film. Walhberg let me down (perhaps he tried to anchor the whole thing in realism a little too much) but the rest of the cast and the movie were a joy to watch. A good time!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Better than expected!
Review: This movie was entertaining and very different from either the original movie or the book (actually it was closer to the book). The special effects were excellent as well as the make-up and the body movements of the actors.

Charlton Heston makes an appearance as an ape and quotes verbatim one of his most famous lines from the original movie but it seems out of context.

Possible Spoiler ahead:

Not to give away the ending, but it seemed the writer tried to have it parallel Pierre Boulle's ending but it causes great confusion. You are never quite sure whether they are traveling to the future, past or to a parallel world existing in the same time continuum.


Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Generally Fun Romp if You Check Your Skepticism at the Door
Review: Let me admit off the bat, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. For the most part it was a very engaging film, with only a few misconceived dips into the low-brow humor barrel, which had the unfortunate effect of bursting the suspension-of-disbelief bubble so essential to going along with a movie like this. ("Okay, evolved, talking apes. Respect them. Fear them. Believe them. Okay. Oh, lookit that ape! Isn't that cute? Isn't that ridiculous? Oh, wait. Respect them. Fear them. Right.")

Some of the acting was brilliant. Not, sadly, Mark Wahlberg's--not unless Burton directed him to act like he was sleepwalking, in which case he did that masterfully. But Tim Roth pulled off his role very convincingly, in spite of what was essentially a really non-threatening appearance. Oh, I don't doubt that enraged chimps in the wild are very frightening, but we've seen too many of these guys hamming it up on t.v. for me to really find them awesome in their native aspect. Kudos to Tim. Kudos, too, to Helena Bonham Carter, who even managed to minimize the disadvantage of a ludicrous 'do. Her performance was outstanding. She did the ape routine without making it seem camp--alas, more than some of her fellow simians could do.

What drags this movie down primarily are the plot problems. People make stupid decisions. Monkeys make stupid decisions. The generally brilliant director makes a few clunkers himself. I can't really be more explicit than that without spoilers.

The movie can be fun, if you don't go in expecting too much. I'm with film critic Alex Sandell, from "Juicy Cerebellum," who said, "Tim Burton doesn't quite manage to hit a homerun, but he does give us 2 hours of superficial fun, and, as far as this summer goes, that's good enough."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: my whole family loves this
Review: Many critics here have put Tim Burton down for making this movie kid friendly and have told him to "grow up". I don't agree.
My family greatly enjoys and appreciates this movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: this is fun!
Review: Saw this for the first time over the weekend and adored it. Many of the negative reviews trash this for not being realistic. What was your first clue the TALKING APES? Other's hated the breasts of one of the actresses. I'm not making that up! Look for yourself. They didn't like her breast size! Other's said this looks "cheap"?! Those type of people better stay away from the original Apes movies and the TV show if they think this looks cheap! People will say anything to pick on this one but my main concern with this one was "Am I having fun?" and I did! I enjoyed this and plan to buy it. It's fun,funny, and charming. I also don't have a problem with the actress' breasts. Not at all.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Boring and Tedious Film
Review: It is amazing how mediocre directors like Tim Burton are hailed as something invigorating and imbued with genius when actually all they give us are tired and banal films. Planet of the Apes was marketed as something "new" but all parts of it were stolen from classic science fiction films from the 1950's. Bascially there is no plot in this film and if you were a European director, it wouldn't matter but Burton has the capabilities of a 12 year old teen and those qualities are evident here.

He uses "movements" from the first film (ex: the apes catching a human with a neck container) which are part of our collective conscience except this time around, there is no energy in them. The cartoonish film has terrible sets, which look like some cheap soap opera and there is no realist sustainabilty. The characters walk around the same sound set covered with plastic ferns and trees and it seems like they are going nowhere, even worse is the 'ape city' which is so ridiculous that one doesn't even think that it is populated. Problem after problem punctuates what we see. Walhberg is so boring as a rebellious captain that he doesn't seem real but the "humans" are worshipping him as a leader? Give us a break.

The humans themselves are ludicrious, because they are clean, and have a perfect communication skill and the women are half naked with big breasts. Ghee Tim, are you trying to market your film to horny 11 year olds? What else? Everything, uneven acting, even worse, cliche that puts us to sleep. All we see is how 'evil' the chimp general is, and how 'good' the humans and sanctimonious chimp peace lover is. Yawn, yawn. Even the special effects begin to wear thin, notice how cheap the crash landing on earth looked. I wouldn't see this film again, ever. Burton, grow up and give us something decent to watch, you make enough money.



Rating: 4 stars
Summary: magical fun
Review: There seems to be a deep hatred for this fun movie among the pretentious. I too have every completed film by Welles in my collection and I've studied his work. I too have studied Serling and have collectected his works. I've seen all of the previous Ape films and the TV program and read the novel. To the reviewer who questioned the 20 somethings who had just viewed this film and did not recieve much of a response: you wouldn't have recieved one from me either. I too would have smiled politely and said "Um...yeah...okay" and gotten the hell out of there! Why should I battle at the cinema with the pretentious who fail to understand that it's okay to enjoy a fun movie and each individual reacts differently to different films? I greatly enjoyed this film. I enjoyed the joy, laughter and wonder of the children at the cinema while watching this. I loved Heston's work. Tim Roth was fantastic and other's in the cast did very well too. There's a lot to love about this movie. It touched a place in me where the kid in me still plays and has a deep love for many of the previous Ape films and comics. It put me in touch with my childhood daydreams about those damned dirty apes. That's a special brand of magic that I can appreciate.
Remakes suck? Stay away form the Maltese Falcon then. That was the third time they filmed that one and I loved it too.


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