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Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I read the book a looooong time ago!
Review: I enjoyed this film much more than I thought I would. It didn't get the best reviews, but I feel the story was handled well, the characters were believable and easy to relate to, the action was enough without being too much and the ending, (which many thought was such a 'different' one) was actually the way it was written originally in Pierre Boullet's book. I was almost disappointed with the Liberty statue ending in the Heston version because I was expecting the author's ending. Well, that was Hollywood, I thought. It may still be Hollywood, but I think it was an improvement in spite of the fact I always liked the other one - mainly because of being a Heston fan.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: entertaining and well written story!
Review: I'm really staggered to see how this movie has gotten so trashed by everyone. Just because the story is different than the original? Just 'cause Mark Wahlberg wanted to return home and nothing else? Because the ending was different? Because Estella Warren wasn't a "fully developed" character? Well, damn you all! Aren't you able to simply sit back and enjoy a movie anymore? You americans obviously wanted a remake along the lines of Psycho, like a shot-by-shot reconstruction. But those kinds of films completely lack dignity and almost can't be called movies. More like imitations of movies. All this film has in common with its original is that there is a planet ruled by apes. It is not set on this planet, but in another time and another place. Mark Wahlberg replaces the legendary C. Heston as the lead, and some have said that the former just doesn't measure up to the latter. But come on, people, Wahlberg is playing a completely different character! Heston was 43 when he filmed the original, and Wahlberg was 29 when he filmed this! The former's character was cynical and gruffy, the latter's is young, confused, and inexperienced. He may not be as intriguing a character as Heston's, but it's still a well-written role in its own right. The script is also generally well-written, although it admittedly has some trouble in the scenes when Wahlberg first crashes on the planet. They are a bit confusing and messy. But from there it's all uphill. We meet a variety of imaginative and engrossing characters like human slave trader Limbo, human rights activist Ari, general Thade, colonel Attar, and two pleasantly funny and goofy old ape senators in a really funny dinner scene. Halfway through the film's plot starts unfolding and Heston has a really enjoyable little scene where he explains almost every loose thread of the story. Th battle scene between the humans and the apes is a little too low-key, but it doesn't hurt the movie at all. All in all, this is a quality effort that, for my money, really lives up to all the hype. Well done once again, Tim! The bad reviews had me fearing you'd delivered your first failure, but it's clear to me now that you can do no wrong!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horrible "re-imagineering"
Review: The only good things about this new version (ie. Hollywood interpretation of Boulle's novel) were the makeup and special effects. But let's face it, that just doesn't cut it anymore. Any monkey (excuse the pun) in Hollywood can do FX these days. We need substance too!! Burton really butchered this one. I didn't care one bit about any of the characters. Davidson was uncaring about everything. Ari was just strange a aloof. And the model that was cast as the love interest was a waste of air, film, and space. The ending was just ridiculous! The ending of the original film version (even though it differed from the book ending) wrapped up everything into nice package with a bow on it. The ending of Burton's version simply said: "Cut, that's a wrap. Let's start filming the sequel in two weeks everyone! Nice job!" The ending had no meaning to the movie that came before it. It was pathetic and an insult to my intelligence.

Booooo to Tim Burton and Hollywood for making drivel like this.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A typically intelligent Tim Burton film.
Review: 'Planet of the Apes' is a very clever film, easily superceding the 'original', throwing ideas and allusions all over the place without ever really following them up. It plays with the old 'stick a bunch of apes in a room and they'll eventually come up with Shakespeare' chestnut, by alluding to 'Pericles', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Hamlet' etc. 'Apes' is not a futuristic warning, but a documentary about the way we live now, prey to our violent instincts, desperate for charismatic, fascistic leaders: degenerate, uncultured, unthinking beasts.

Like 'Mars Attacks', 'Apes' is an attack on American philistinism; like the aliens, the apes in the first section mercilessly mock the pretensions of humans, with their faith in science and technology. Neither race, human or ape, would come come up with Shakespeare today if you locked them in a room with the complete works of Shakespeare to copy.

This sense of degeneracy structures another mythic narrative, that of Christ - after the appearance of Charlton Heston, the film goes all Ben-Hur and Cecil B. Demille. Wahlburg is the man who arrives from the stars to deliver the human faithful from an ape empire deliberately modelled on the Romans. This millenial theme also figures in the allusions to another space/monkey classic, Kubrick's '2001: a Space odyssey'. Overall, the film is closer to the science fiction of HG Wells, with its anxieties about race and what it means to be human, than the late 60s that produced the original.

Visually, the film is frequently miraculous, with some lovely conceits, my favourites being the shuttling pod looking like an anguished tear-drop, the ape scarecrows that litter the desert to ward off humans (an eerily Gothic image) and the ruins of the spaceship. There are some truly haunting sequences, such as the 'Blair Witch'-like footage of the lost crew. The portentous epic form (especially 'Gladiator') is frequently invoked only to be bathetically undermined (although Burton is sometimes too convincing in replicating their dinosaur dullness).

The actual experience of watching the movie, though is dispiriting. The idea of inversing his usual narrative of outsider vs. settled community, with the WASP as outsider and the freaks as the hierarchical society, could have been interesting if the hero wasn't so stolid. Roth as a Mockney Darth Vader is annoying. The narrative is non-existent, simply capture, escape, revolt (I'm Spartacus!), and Burton's usual gallery of amiable and awful eccentrics is replaced by vacuous supermodels and the spirits of Jar-Jar Binks.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: One shouldn't "monkey around" with a classic!
Review: Being a longtime fan of director Burton, I anxiously awaited his revamping of the 60's classic. With make-up by Oscar winner Rick Baker, score by Danny Elfman, and featuring a cameo by ole' Chuck Heston himself, I just knew that the filmmaker had a hit on his hands.
Well, I have seen it and was marginally impressed. The movie doesn't come close to the strengths of the original. I realize that Burton claims not to have "remade" the classic but "reinterpreted" it. If this is so, then, why were some of the first flicks' lines so liberally "borrowed"? Why did the apes' march on the humans in the Forbidden Zone reminiscent of a scene in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes? Was Elfman consciously aware that he tried to duplicate the excitement of the wondrously innovate Goldsmith score from the original?
And the ending? I had figured that one out thirty minutes earlier. It even lacked the "punch" that the partially revealed Statue of Liberty did in the '68 great.
Acting nods go to Tim Roth, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Charlton Heston's brief but memorable appearance. Star Mark Wahlberg is rather bland, but that is due, in part, to the lack of development of his character.
It is films like this one that makes me thankful for matinees.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Action
Review: Planet of the Apes was good movie because the action
with great but the story was confusing!!! I would see it again!!! I think it was pretty good movie!!! I rate it a 4!!!
you should see it!!!Bye!! Thanks for Reading!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great graphics,Great acting, but confuseing
Review: Mark Whalberg brings a space guy in a space station in the year 2019 who goes threw a a hole threw time chaseing after a nother space capsul, Wile he crahs s in the feature (witch is after a nuclear war where most of man-kind got wiped out)witch also the space station carshÂ's on the planet sometime in the past witch was somewhat a thousand years back where Whalberg crashed. The ending of the movie will have on the edge of your seat rather at home or theature.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Depressing
Review: As I watched for about 20 minutes, especially when the Mark Wahlberg landed on the Ape Planet, saw the children apes behave so barbaric and unkind, I decided to leave and see The Curse of the Jade Scorpion which was more light and funny. Planet of the Apes is not for adult consumption, I can see where it was high tech and involved alients. Not monkeys, please. I was already stressed out from work, this movie is a "stress" jerker not buster.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This is a horrible movie.
Review: There are many lines that stick out from this movie that exemplify the aforementioned horrible-ness, namely:
"Don't leave a monkey to do a man's job."
The entire dialogue is so ridiculously contrived it is insulting. There are no character developments, no interesting plot twists, nothing believable about it. Specifically, the scantily-clad blonde comes to mind. She literally had maybe a half dozen lines before the end of the movie, yet we were supposed to believe there was some great love from her toward the main character just because she shot him some doe-eyed looks here and there. The plot was HORRIBLE. The characters were HORRIBLE. There was some nice special effects and the environment was lush and beautiful, and that's the only reason I gave it 2 stars.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Tim Burton adds his own twist
Review: I cringed when I heard that Planet of the Apes was going to be re-done. After all, who could replace Roddy McDowall?

Tim Burton pays homage to the original by adding special effects that were beyond the technology and beyond the budget of the original films. If you've seen other Tim Burton films, especially "Ed Wood," you know that he has tremendous respect for the originals and classics... and his intent is to compliment, not replace the original "Ape" series.

The make-up is superior and the spin on Burton's version allows for an explaination as to why these apes can talk, why they don't look quite like the apes we're accustomed to and why they choose to wear clothing. The original did not attempt to explain this, but using your own imagination also had its appeal. While the make-up is superior, I missed the "sweet" expressions on the older generation of ape masks and prosthetics... I guess I'm old fashioned. :-)

While this version does not have the appeal of the original w/ the sweet characters such as Cornelius and Zera, it was an interesting new twist that Burton didn't lock the different species into different career paths... the army isn't exclusively gorillas, and is commanded by a chimp... orangutans aren't only religious leaders, some are businessmen (aka slave traders), etc.

The special effects were great and for a modern sit-and-relax while you enjoy the show kinda sci-fi, this film does a good job. I would have given this a 3.5 stars, but as that rating system is unavailable, I rounded it up. The make-up used for Helena Bonham Carter's chimp character was pretty unrealistic, but I suppose they were trying to make a chimpanzee look as "sexy" as possible. The look they gave her was a bit of a disappointment.

As usual, Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Clark Duncan are excellent. Roth's character as the military leader may get an Oscar nod for best supporting actor... he is the strongest element in this film. A lot of attention was given not only to make-up and prothsetics, but also to the way the actors moved in their costumes. Instead of shuffling along as they did in the old series, these characters tend to move in a more ape-like fashion.

While Roth's character is shown briefly as a sympathetic character when he sees his dying father (aka Charlton Heston in an uncredited cameo appearance), the audience isn't able to feel empathy for this character and simply loathing... his counterpart (IMO) in the original series would be Dr. Zaius, the orangutan spiritual leader who continued the deception of the origin of the species as it were. While he was devious, there were still appealing elements to his character which provided more overall audience emotional involvement, which I believe this film lacks. His spin on having the planet of the Apes actually be on a planet different than earth is a good one... and how the apes ended up there is explained... but no one has explained where the horses came from... a definite hole in the plot.

Tim Burton accomplishes a very difficult task... re-making a cult-classic that doesn't disgust the nolstagic, but actually entertains. The result is a definitely a fun film, but there will never be a replacement for Roddy McDowall and in the long term, this film will never evoke the nostalgic goose-bumps of the original. Seeing this film once was enough for a lifetime.


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