Thus imagined ‘the planet of the apes’ a future that continues to chase us

The film that questioned our idea of ​​the future of humanity (and made us look otherwise the monkeys) marked a milestone not only in the use of makeup in the cinema.

Is it exaggerated to say that there are films that are remembered for a single scene? The planet of the apes, without a doubt, would be one of them. Not just that, It could be affirmed that it is a film that has all its justification in the last plane, and that it must even be seen from this.

It is not as surprising as it seems; Many spectators already suspected that planet inhabited by intelligent and humanized apes It was, after all, the Earth, to which Astronaut Taylor has returned after a trip that for him has lasted years, and that have actually been millennia.

But the impact of Taylor shouting on the beach on the beach before the half -soup History of cinemawhich has adopted it as one of its most recognizable images.

Key points

The story is well known and it is not worth summarizing here: But if the film is reviewed, many more scenes appear, apart from the final, which justify the success it had between critics and spectators:

• Desert landscapes – Rodados in Utah – where astronauts initially arrive; The detail of the American flag that plants one of them and that causes Taylor’s negligatory laugh.
• The appearance of Humanized humans and hunter apes mounted on horseback.
• Presences as disturbing as the doctor Zaiusthe orangutan who directs the city, and who knows many things that he does not reveal for what he believes is the common good.
• The idea of ​​separating similar society into Three castes: the military (gorillas), the scientist (chimpanzees) and the governmental and religious (orangutans), and show the frictions between them indicating that these intelligent apes have been able to inherit the least edifying aspects of human behavior.

Freely based on a book

None of this appears in The original novel, written as a social satire by the Frenchman Pierre Boullé, in which the world of apes is highly technological and speak of their own language, which the astronaut, called here Ulises Mérou, has to learn.

The film director, Franklin J. Schaffner, opted for a much more primitive society – and also less expensive to reproduce – and to make the apes speak in English, an apparent incongruity that only in the end is understood.

The end of the novel is also different: the planet of the apes is not the earth, but Mérou’s story is found in space by two astronauts that turn out to be chimpanzees, indicating that smart monkeys have spread throughout the universe.

New protagonists

The success of the feature film was such that it led to four continuations.

That the planet was destroyed after the second, “return to the planet of the apes” (1970), it was not an inconvenience: the couple of chimpanzees Zira and Cornelius became the new protagonists, who They traveled to the past, when humans were still the dominant species.

The fourth and fifth part narrated the Conquest of the planet by the apesled, in full temporary paradox, by César, their son.

Successes and failures

Tim Burton He filmed in 2001 a new version of the film, with rather mediocre results.

More success has had the new series that began with ‘the origin of the planet of the apes’ (2011) and that, with three films already and a fourth on the road, says The history in chronological orderwith César as the main protagonist.