Planet of The Apes Ending (*** Spoiler***)

Cafe Society
1

MY son and I caught the midnight showing of POTA this morning. Not too bad, but what the heck was the ending about?

Here is what I got out of the movie:

  1. The planet Marky Mark crashed on was not earth,
  2. The intelligent apes on the planet were descendents of the genetically engineered apes on the mother ship (good irony)

So, questions:

  1. Where did the horses come from?
  2. Where did MM return to in the end: future earth, past earth, alternate earth, earth changed because of some time paradox, …?

Last thought, was that Ape-raham Lincoln?

2

Horses are a universal paradox…they exist in all times (Mind you, the reason is rather sticky…something to do with a large wager in a poker match, a photograph, Abe Vigoda, several gallons of coconut pudding and a cricket bat but I have said too much already)

Hopefully Mark ended up in the same time paradox as Homer did with his toaster. I imagine he should be hitting the place where it rains doughnuts shortly

What I don’t get is why he wants to hit it with the dumb blonde chick when Helena/Ari is makin goo goo eyes at him. I don’t care what you say, I am ready for hot wet monkey love with with a chimp that looks like that.

3

I couldn’t make much sense of the ending either and I have no explanation for the horses.

While the clock seemed to suggest that time went backwards it appeared to be a future version of the planet. Aperaham was General Thade.

4

To hear director Tim Burton describe it, it isn’t supposed to make any sense at all. It’s just a whammy for the sake of a whammy. (I read this in an interview recently. Let me know if you want me to dig up a cite.)

Whether they’ll attempt to explore it in the obligatory sequel is a matter for discussion.

5

the apes are horses dressed up in apes costumes. Talking horses ALWAYS disguise themselves, because every time a human hears a talking horse they yell "Hey it’s Mr.ED

6

Haven’t seen the new POTA yet, but I used to teach the novel years ago to college students, and the critic in the LA Times seems to think the ending comes from the novel.
My memory may be off (and please point out if it is and you’ve read the book), but at the end of the novel, Ulysse Merou (yes, that was the original astronaut’s name) manages to get back to Earth, only to find out that it has also “gone ape,” just like the planet he had crashed on. So he has to take off again. It makes sense the way it was set up in the book. *Also, the entire story is in the form of Ulysse’s log/manuscript which has been recovered by two space-traveling chimps named Jinn and Phyllis, who decide at the end that it’s all fiction.
Now that I’ve Spoiled it for myself…Did any of the above happen at the end of the movie?

7

Forget all of the other BS: here’s the original plot hole big enough to…to…well, drive a tank battalion through.

In the original, Taylor & Co. are travelling to a new world to “start over” (kind of a small group to try to re-populate a whole new world, hmmm?).

MarkyMark zaps through a temporal disturbance and gets launched some time into the future, to a different world?

In both of these different worlds, all the apes speak English.

HEL-LO! That’s a pretty giant indicator that the underlying truth of this reality is somehow based upon your own.

IN this POTA: Burton severely disappoints. He should have spent more money on script than special effects.

The 3 or 4 star general commanding that space station decided to go after MarkyMark into some kind of energetic disturbance of unknown properties?

An animal research facility around Saturn? Is real estate getting that pricey in near-Earth orbit?

MarkyMark’s big plan was to flash fry the first wave and duke it out with the rest? While the Air Force Academy may concentrate more on Engineering and Sciences than ground warfare theory and application, I sure as hell hope that our Air Force types aren’t that stupid. If they are, I want my tax money back; all of it, thank you very much!

Hell, I’m just a beat-up ex E-6 with a bad back and fucked knees, and I got better sense than that.

Head for the hills and begin learning how to make long bows and catapults. Set up Sun-Tzu’s War Academy. Something.

Sheesh. I want my $8.50 back.

8

This probably belongs in IMHO, but, what the heck.

Here’s my take on it. First, everyone speaking English is explained by the fact that the apes and humans are all descended from the survivors of the mother ship, all of whom spoke English.

The ending is more problematical. What we know is that Leo goes through the time storm and arrives on the POTA. We assume that he goes forward in time because we glimpse his time indicator going forward. The Oberon follows him, goes throught the time storm, and arrives on the same planet, but thousands of years before Leo gets there. We hear a snippet of a log that refers to the planet as “uncharted and uninhabited”, at least by intelligent life. One of the apes, Seamus, leads a revolt against the humans and thousands of years later, we have a society dominated by apes due to their superior strength.

Leo arrives in this time, organizes the human revolt, and leaves when General Thade is locked up (but still alive, and very angry) and it seems that humans and apes are prepared to develop a society where they respect each other. Then we have the ending, where he arrives back home in his own time, on a planet gone ape, and on which General Thade is a celebrated historical hero who finally helped the apes gain dominance over humans.

My interpretation was that Leo and the Oberon actually arrive on Earth thousands of years in the past, before humans were the dominant creatures, or perhaps just before the advent of human civilization 6000 years ago. This explains the presense of the horses. The Thade memorial shows us that, with the absense of their savior from the stars, the peace was short lived, General Thade was released alive, and managed to lead the greatly outnumbered apes (who are outnumbered by humans 4-1) to a military and technological revolution. Thus, by leaving, Leo ensured the dominance of the apes, which may not have happened otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this explains all of the holes. How likely is it that the Thade memorial would be exactly like the Lincoln memorial, and similarly located at the end of a reflecting pool? The black and white police cars, the Washington memorial look-a-like, etc., don’t make logical sense, they are obviously meant to fool the viewer into thinking this is our Washington, D. C.

There are other plot holes: why are there so many species of apes? I counted baboons, chimps, and gorillas. They should all have been chimps, having been descended from the survivors of the Oberon. Why are there only three species on this planet (humans, apes, horses)?

But given that this is Tim Burton, the story actually makes more logical sense than usual.

I kinda liked it, but I won’t be back for a second viewing in the theater or on video.

9

Thanks NumberSix, your interpretation makes sense.

10

I thought about Numbersix’s interpretation as well and it is compelling except for one problem. The planet he left at the end wasn’t earth, didn’t look a bit like it. The planet he landed on did look like earth.

11

Okay, I just got back from watching this, and I’ll throw in my two cents.

I’m with Number Six, in that, I think General Thade was released shortly after Leo left. I also have this whole theory behind his release, but I won’t get into it now. Let’s just say I don’t think the mindset of an entire planet of human-like apes could be changed overnight.

So Thade is released, and of course, he rallies his troops and they retake the planet. I’m sure Thade spread the standard propaganda about humans being the root of all evil and things of that sort. The apes, of course, buy into it, because that’s what they’ve been brought up to believe their entire lives.

That brings us to our final scene of a modern day earth being inhabited by apes.

My take on that is that the Apes’ intelligence has evolved after thousands of years (the apes from the primitive jungle planet). See, now that they know the technology exists to build such space faring craft, it would only make sense that some of them would want to copy it.

So I’m sure a couple of the apes started working on some similar craft. All of their work being based upon Leo’s crashed ship, of course. Whatever was left of the humans after Thade’s uprising, the apes used to their advantage - they used the humans for their intelligence.

Now, obviously, this undertaking wouldn’t have been completed by the apes we were shown. This would take hundreds of years. So once this ship is built, a few of the apes (the scientists, the mechanics, etc.) leave the planet and think they’re going to go exploring.

But, of course, they unexpectedly fly into one of the worm holes and get shot out into another time. The time they’re shot out into is a primitive earth where apes are the dominant mammals (humans aren’t around yet). Our “intelligent” apes breed with the native apes, and thousands of years later, we have our earth with apes in police cars and a monument of General Thade.

12

I considered the possibility that the apes eventually developed space travel and settled Earth. This would explain why the planet looks different from Earth. But it then brings up the problem of the horses. I don’t think this can be resolved. In order for there to be horses on the planet, it would have to be Earth, but the planet and its system don’t look like Earth’s.

13

My comment about “English-speaking Apes” was resolved through the movie, yes.

However, upon his introduction to the Apes (when he’s captured) he hears them speaking English.

Little alarm bells would be going off in my mind, were I in his place.

My mind would be going: *"Hmmmm. I leave a human space station in orbit around Saturn, fly through some stellar phenonmenon, arrive at a planet that looks nothing like Earth, with intelligent, bi-pedal, English speaking simians riding horses, of all things. Since I was chasing a genetically enhanced chimp in an out-of-control space pod (open the pod bay doors, HAL!):

Theory #1: Alternate Realities

Theory #2: Time Travel*

The scientist in him wasn’t in the least bit intrigued?

Yet he just stumbles through the movie in the single-minded pursuit of “going home”. While understandable as a basic motivation (who wants to be a slave?), he doesn’t even once seem to look around and try to puzzle out his surroundings. At all.

Maybe I just read too much science fiction, and saw old plot devices a mile away. But I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters, with the possible exception of Ari.

To my eye: the bad guys were one dimensional, the good guys two dimensional, the dialogue was trite and forced, the plot a disjointed jumble of convenient circumstances, the special effects were good.

Another Hollywood special-effects extravaganza that substituted eye-candy for story and character development.

14

My take is this: the horses are just a big plot hole. We only saw chimps, but they must have had other genetically altered apes (orangs, etc) who became much smarter when their altered dna combined with others. The movie did not take place on earth. Leo traveled only in time on the first trip. By going back in the storm, he altered the whole timeline again. The earth ending was a pure salute to Rod Serling who wrote the 1969 script, and was Twilight Zone punishment for Leo not staying with the girl (or ape) at the end. He clearly travelled in time and space the second time out, and it was earth, but this time, the Oberon got there before him.

Added bonus: Thade is an anagram of death. (I am usually blind to anagrams.)

15

Just want to add my tasteless pun of him encountering Ape Lincoln at the end.

16

I, for one, would like to know where you saw this. If this is true, I think it’s the slightest bit careless, artistically, but then this is from the man responsible for Mars Attacks!!!

17

Perhaps the station had horse embryos, and machines which could bring them to term. Once the colonists landed, they would want to use these embryos because of the labor the horses could provide.

18

I was extremely dissapointed. Here I was expecting something along the lines of the original, character development,twists and turns etc, and all I get is action for actions’ sake. And the ending was such a paradox! I hate paradox endings! I can understand one rebel ape taking over and mating with the natives, thus creating the civilization as Leo finds it, but where did all the humans come from? There would have to have been several hundred humans aboard the Oberon to explain the presence of the 4-1 ration of humans. (Anyone care to explain that to me?) Also, when Leo makes the trip through the storm, his clock only moved forward a few hundred years, didn’t it? Yet doesn’t Ari say at one point that the ruins ahd been there for several thousand years? And if General Thade was released after Leo left, who released him? Wasn’t the chamber activated by Leo’s hand? or could it be activated by anyone’s hand? However, I did like Charlton Heston’s ape character’s little speech…“Damn them, damn them all to hell” - straight out of the original.

19

Does anybody else think that was really Jim Carrey in the slave trader ape costume? This was a movie that should have had no comic relief.

20

Well, Leo’s pod had suffered some electrical damage, which effected the pod’s equipment (at one point, it was completely disabled). So we don’t even know if the gauge was measuring time accurately. But that brings me to another question…

How is the pod able to measure time anyway? I don’t think it was intended for time travel, so why would there be a time gauge on board in the first place?