Planet of the Apes

Rating:
Summary: okimguilty
Review: i gave it a 3 stars for one reason. WHY MARK WAHLBERG???? to bad, a great special effects and kudos to Tim Burton for his visuals. Charlton Heston maybe as old as my grandfather but i bet he do a better job than Wahlberg. Get rid of Wahlberg and throw in Heston, i give the new version a 5 star.

Rating:
Summary: "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!"
Review: Movies nowadays! I mean come on! The old ones were just OK and this ones pretty bad. This movie relies A LOT on special effects, and not the story or character development. I'm not saying that movies shouldn't use cool FX, but they shouldn't rely on it. By watching this, I thought the movie makers wrote the story as they went along. You can tell this movie was made in hurry, maybe if they worked harder on it, it would be half way decent. However, this movie is very pleasing to look at, the whole ape city, and the costumes, and special effects. But despite the Eye Candy, this was just a piece of ape ....

Rating:
Summary: A solid re-imagining of a classic
Review: "Planet of the Apes," director Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the classic 1968 original, was a film that I awaited with great anticipation. After all, the original POTA was a genuine pop culture landmark (one which spawned movie sequels, a live action TV series, an animated TV series, and other phenomena), and Burton has proven his prowess at revisiting cherished cultural properties (consider "Batman" and "Sleepy Hollow"). Although not without flaws, Burton's "Planet" is, on the whole, a rousing success.

POTA '01 follows the same basic premise of the original film: a human astronaut from Earth finds himself stranded on a planet where humans are primitive, and the world is ruled by intelligent talking apes. But Burton's story is radically different from the original, and is populated by a whole new collection of characters. One of the interesting touches in Burton's film is that it features not only human actors in ape makeup, but also real apes.

The film features stunning special effects, impressive sets, and truly amazing ape makeup designs. Indeed, the film is a visual feast from start to end. The rich visual tapestry is well complemented by Danny Elfman's energetic, inventive musical score.

The performances are good overall. Mark Wahlberg is suitably heroic as the astronaut, although his portrayal lacks the weight of Charlton Heston's performance in POTA '68. Helena Bonham Carter is quite charming as a chimpanzee who empathizes with the plight of the persecuted humans. But the richest and most affecting performance is probably given by Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa as a noble gorilla warrior who has been unfairly disgraced. Paul Giamatti provides great comic relief as a sleazy orangutan who deals in human slaves.

The film's attempt to outdo the shocker twist ending of POTA '68 is not wholly successful. Although lacking the philosophical depth of the original, POTA '01 is still an enjoyable and well-crafted science fiction epic.

Rating:
Summary: i'm saddened
Review: you know, i was excited about seeing this film, after all, tim burton doesn't fail, but unfortunately he did, or at least the screenwriter did...why burton signed on after reading the script fails my knowledge. and why mark whalberg and other quite good actors also signed up after reading the script fails my understanding as well.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite what you expect from the previews...
Review: The make-up is incredible. The action sequences are great. Acting is pretty good. Scenery is beautiful and right in line with what Tim Burton's known for.

BUT...

When I saw the previews fro the first (and 10th) time, I expected an "epic-like" movie. One with complicated characters, underlying stories, swelling music.

Planet of the Apes 2001 is not an epic, and it's certainly lacking compared to the original.

Some examples:
a) The classic first line uttered by Heston,in the original,to the apes was - "Get your stinking paws off me, you d***ed dirty ape!". The 2001 version manages to fit it in the movie with a twist, but pulls it off as just a gimmick.

b) Numerous underlying attacks on Christianity run throughout. Burton has publicly stated his disdain for organized religion, and apparently used this movie as his podium.

The "bad" apes pray to their "Heavenly father" ape. Talk of the "return" and prophesies about the "god-ape" pepper the conversations quite frequently. The "good" scientist-apes reject these notions as fantasy and bunk, of course. By the end of the movie, the "religious" apes find what they belived in to be false, and renounce their beliefs.

This was absolutely not mentioned in the movie or the book, and came off extremely heavy-handed.

3) The female partner for Mark Wahlburg was a total bore. A cardboard box would have sufficed in her place.

4) Also a heavy-handed anti-gun statement was made mid-way through.

5) The ending still leaves me wondering what Burton was somking at the time of filming it. The most "left-field" ending I could have imagined. Nothing near as imaginative as the original.

Ultimatedly a very dissapointing movie (compared to the hype, and the original), but fairly entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: What a loud of sucky suck suck!
Review: I expected a little better from something called Planet Of The Apes. I expected "Get Your Paws Off Me You Damn Dirty Ape!" and of course "Dr. Zauis, Dr. Zauis!". Instead we got angry yawns and snores. Mark Wahlberg and the people in the ape outfit give less than stellar performances. And of course, the ending sucks. I recommend you see the original Planet Of The Apes.

Rating:
Summary: Style over substance, sure, but good style and lots of it
Review: This is a better crafted film than any in the original series. That's no great surprise: Tim Burton is one of the more interesting directors around, with an original and distinctive visual style, while the original films were turned out by hacks of varying degrees of competence.

The original series is remembered for one great image, the head of the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the sand at the end of the first film. It tells us that Charlton Heston's hero travelled not in space but in time, into Earth's post-nuclear apocalypse future: that one image transforms the film, at the last second, from routine adventure to anti-nuclear parable. The Burton film never produces anything as startling as that, but the level of invention is higher over the film as a whole. His technology looks great, as do his apes, and the city built by apes is an inspired creation, an organic, low-tech counterpart of Gotham City in the first two Batman films.

The acting is a more complicated case. Charlton Heston's acting, especially where he realised he was still on Earth, could be described as Shatneresque: over-the-top awful, but still compelling your attention. In this _Planet_ Mark Wahlberg's hero is a zero: the gaze slides off Wahlberg as it might off a fire hydrant or filing cabinet, in search of something more interesting. Actually Wahlberg is so blank and bland he probably could be upstaged by a hydrant.

Other human characters are no more interesting: in fact "character" exaggerates the case slightly. I don't think any human other than Wahlberg gets more than a dozen or so lines. Most interesting is a girl in a "Me Jane" outfit who gets so much screentime that she must be meant as a "character"; the interesting thing about her is that she is never without lip gloss in a culture that should logically have lost the ability to make the stuff. No, actually it's that she has nice legs and fine cleavage; she's there to appeal to the adolescent in me, and the adolescent is duly grateful. Kris Kristopherson also appears in a virtually silent role; but silence suits him as an actor, and may have improved his music career.

But dehumanising the "human" figures is part of the film's effect, emphasising the humanisation of the apes, who have real personalities, conflicts and inner lives. They are richly characterised, some - even the bad guys - having a certain Shakespearean nobility. Others, such as the slave trader turned fugitive, are comically alive. Liveliest is Tim Roth's deranged fascist General Thade, out to exterminate the remnants of humanity.

Which brings us to one of the film's themes. Not the ape-jokes on the absurdity of racism, or the animal rights message, but a philosophical question: If apes got smart, really smart, what would their culture be like?

Wittgenstein argued that if a lion spoke English, we still wouldn't understand it. For example if a lion says "Hello" we know the word, but we don't know precisely what the lion _means_. That is, to us gregarious apes, "hello" contains messages about social circle and mutual obligation. A lion's "hello" might mean: "I see you, fellow predator; I'm not going to kill you today, and I trust you feel the same". Even if we know the same words, our experiences, perceptions, bodies, drives and cultures mean that each word has a slightly different meaning for us and for them. And if words are defective for inter-species communication, we can't fix the problem by discussing it in words.

The answer (not supplied by Wittgenstein) is that you must learn lion English by entering the physical culture of lions, watching and smelling their body language and hearing their sounds as they speak, until we learn "Lionglish" as we might learn any language by immersion. The oddity is that once we have learned "Lionglish" outside observers would notice no difference. The words we used would still be virtually the same as if we spoke English while the lion spoke Lionglish: only our understanding would have changed.

Burton's film, unlike the original series, shows that speaking apes would still be apes: they would still have non-human gestures and concerns. They use smell, for example, to test if another ape is lying, or read their emotional state. Ape ideas of hierarchy survive, with a non-human vocabulary of gestures of submission and supplication alongside the spoken language. Though sometimes Burton tones down the ape-ness, for example when Helena Bonham-Carter's Ari, a human-rights-activist chimpanzee, tries to buy her humans time by offering her body to the deranged humanophobe General Thade. A female chimp should have got down on all fours to wave her brightly coloured rump at him, but (to my inner adolescent's sore disappointment) Bonham-Carter doesn't go that far.

As the camera pans over Ape City we see examples of how ape physiology would affect ape culture. For example an ape plays a harp-like instrument, but with feet as well as hands: the music that apes hear will be different because their bodies are different. And so on. It's not a central theme, but an interesting one, and Burton and his designers have made sure it is there, while the apes in the original series were all too plainly humans in hairy costumes.

I won't give away the ending, but I will defend its logic. General Thade is left trapped and angry inside working human technology, with memory banks showing vital historical information. He has an energy source, and he knows the whereabouts of a space ship and a "time warp" in nearby space. It's clear from that not only what happened at the end of the film, but how and why. The end is not a complete surprise, but a logical outcome of the information we - and Thade - have been given.

_Planet_ is lots of fun, has great music, and it moves along quickly. Recommended.

Cheers!

Laon

Rating:
Summary: Not As Good As Original
Review: The new updated version of Planet of The Apes may have better special effects,in fact Tim Burton's usual use of gothic imagery is as stunning as ever.The acting maybe excellent-especially Mark Wahlberg's performance.The action and pace of the movie shifts along quite nicely-but it is ruined by an awful ending.In comparison to the ending of the original film it left me quite dissappointed with this film.I know they had to change things around but the ending they came up with for this film was predictable and also quite ridiculous.The ape effects were quite incredible-in fact they almost looked too human and almost good-looking.Some of the scenes are spectacular especially the closing battle scene-well especially the build up.But overall I was really looking forward to this movie for a long time,but in the end I thought it was rather disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Escellent! It does have a cliffhanger ending though.
Review: This movie is excellent! The special effects, the story, everything right down to the monkey suits is phenominal. This is one I definatly will find myself watching over and over. My only gripe with it is that the ending was a little too shamelessly set up for a sequal. It kinda left you hanging.

I certainly hope that the fine fellows down at Fox announce "Return to Planet of the Apes" in the coming months, because I want to know what happens next!

Rating:
Summary: Best sci-fi action film in recent memory
Review: I think some people are holding this movie to all the wrong standards. Planet of the Apes is not as eerie and oddball as Scissorhands or other Tim Burton cult classics. Nor is it meant to be a faithful remake of the original 60's film. This "Planet" is a Summer Blockbuster with a great, great (borrowed) concept. And as such, it's pretty awesome.

This film is just stunning to look at. The space stuff in the beginning is nice. The crash to the ape home planet is terrifying. The ape city and cityscapes are gorgeous. And the apes themselves--makeup, costumes, weapons and armor, acrobatics--are endless fun to watch.

While it not a character-driven film, "Planet" has some great performances. Tim Roth is superb, as always, and wonderfully monkeyish in his motions as the arch-foe General Thade. Both Limbo the slavemaster and Thade's Lt. are terrific too--no idea who the actors are. Helena Bonham Carter (whom I love and also waited on once) is surprisingly bad, but this is not too big a deal.

This is one of those movies that all by itself make a good case to join the DVD generation. This is a movie that must be seen widescreen and highres, and hopefully with more than 2-speaker audio as well. Besides if you read the DVD press you will know that this was designed as the most bonus-packed, technologically advanced DVD to-date. It includes multiple discs and I think more than 20 hours of extra features and documentaries. It also has branching navigation--no idea what that means, maybe someone could post if they know. Also the pre-order sale price here (I've seen the same price at other stores as well) is quite low, and will most likely go closer to "retail" once it's released. I'm buying the folks a DVD player for Xmas and this will most likely be the movie I give them with it. That is a good recommendation from me.

Enjoy.