I was wondering who that was. It reminded me of Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy), who is long dead. I thought whoever it was, Tim Roth and Helena Bonham Carter should certainly get Oscar nominations. They were wonderful, even with all that make-up, especially Helena.
Humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, all apes. Think about it.
The logic behind the plot, such as it was, seemed very obvious to me. I’m not sure what I’m missing, but:
The planet Mark Wahlberg lands on is some other planet. The Oberon crashed there thousands of years earlier, leading to the ape/human colonization of the planet;
What’s the problem with horses, anyway? Maybe the planet already had horse-like animals. They domesticated them the same way they did on Earth.
After Wahlberg leaves Apeworld, Thade breaks loose and, being a clever little monkey, figures out how to fly one or more of the pods aboard the Oberon - there were more than two - into a magnetic storm.
Thade, and perhaps a few followers, end up on Earth BEFORE our time, maybe centuries or even millennia, and leads the apes to global domination. I guess this would require him to mate with some animalesqe apes to get working vocal chords spread around a little more. Woo hoo! Hot hot monkey sex.
The New Ape Earth looks a lot like our Earth just because it looks cool and makes a good ending.
Lyllyan:
No, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Over the course of a few millennia, a small difference in birth rate will give you a 4:1 ratio. The initial population doesn’t really mean anything.
I looked it up, it was:
"PAUL GIAMATTI (Limbo) delighted audiences with his performance in the hit comedy “Private Parts,” as the young eager NBC executive derisively nicknamed Pig Vomit by Howard Stern. Since then, he has appeared in Milos Forman’s “Man On The Moon,” Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show,” Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry,” P.J. Hogan’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” F. Gary Gray’s “The Negotiator,” Mike Newell’s “Donnie Brasco” and Tim Robbins’ “The Cradle Will Rock.”
"Most recently, Giamatti was seen in the Twentieth Century Fox/New Regency comedy hit “Big Momma’s House” and “Duets.” His upcoming films are “Pay Or Play” and “The Untitled Todd Solondz Project.” An accomplished stage actor, Giamatti appeared on Broadway as Jimmy Tomorrow in “The Iceman Cometh,” for which he received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other Broadway credits include “The Three Sisters,” directed by Scott Elliot, and “Arcadia,” directed by Trevor Nunn. Television credits include HBO’s “Winchell,” opposite Stanley Tucci; and Jane Anderson’s “If These Walls Could Talk 2.” He has also appeared in guest roles on “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “NYPD Blue.” "
Y’know, this isn’t Citizen Kane it isn’t even A.I.. It’s a cheesy piece of science-fantasy/action with a dash of satire thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t great, but it was fun. Looked at in these terms, it worked, pretty much. Not a perfect movie, and far from Tim Burton’s best work, but still worth a Saturday afternoon.
The Apes in their various form were all Republicans, with a dash of only-slightly-less-evil Nazism thrown in for good measure. That was obvious from the dinner. General Thade just had a much simpler plan for the Endlösung.
The ending had less to do with the end of previous part of the movie, and more to do with completing the Republican analogy, showing (what we saw as) the thuggish, brutal General Thade revered as the great saviour, where we (the viewers) saw the reference to Abraham Lincoln–the founder (so to speak) of the Republican party.
Woke up this morning, determined to creat a POTA thread on SD because I was so confused. I was beaten to the punch of course–I love this forum!
I see it this way: It was always Earth. Wait, hear me out.
2039: Leo and Co. are on the Oberon. Pericles and Leo leave in pods and encounter the Cosmic Storm, which has been shown to warp time but not space (I know, they’re the same in particle physics. You know what I mean.)
Oberon follows.
Oberon arrives on Earth in year 2139. Earth has been destoyed by nuclear war, as suggested in 1968 POTA movie (“You blew it up!”) Humans are scattered, tribe-like, carry guns, speak English. There are horses. Plant life is different because of global warming. Planet is “uninhabited” because Oberon crashes in desert. Oberon apes including Simos kill scientists, escape, get smarter, breed, take over planet, create mythology and Forbidden Zone. Old ape (Thade’s Dad, played by Charles H)finds old gun and hides it in vase. He knows.
2639: Apes in charge. Leo crashes, coming out of Cosmic Storm. He fights, escapes, yadda yadda yadda, finds 500-year-old Oberon ruins, starts revolution, kicks ape ass.
Pericles lands, fulfilling prophecy. Leo leaves, leaving apes and humans in peace. Thade is not dead, and now he knows how to use a gun. Thade becomes hero-god of new ape order.
2939: Apes, under the tech revolution of Thade, have developed advanced society, largely based on archive database recovered from Oberon computer banks. Thus it all looks like DC. Leo arrives, thinking he’s gone back in time even though Einstein sez we can only go forward not back. Leo sees statue of Ape Lincoln.
So that’s my theory. It involves a nuclear war that’s never discussed or even implied, but I can’t work it out any other way.
I’ve been musing on exactly what was going on. I went to the Rotton Tomatoes forum, and saw some interesting theories there stuck in among the “it was great” “was not” comments. I also visited the official web site and dug around in the “Library” section, which is like a series of encyclopedia entries viewing the time shown in the movie from a historical distance, i.e, from far in the future of the events in the movie.
Some interesting info we get from the library:
[ul]
[li]Genreal Thade was a dominant force in Ape politics for some time following the events in the movie, and is viewed as a kind of overzealous whacko by the main populous of apes. It is believed that his hatred of humans was one of the causes of the uprising.[/li][li]Ari led a group of scientists who dredged the water hole with pod A to recover and study it.[/li][li]The battle in the movie is referred to as “The First Civil War” implying that there was a second one.[/li][li]Apes are still dominant, and humans revere Leo Davidson as a kind of religious figure.[/li][/ul]
I’ve revised my theory as to the end of the movie thus:
[list=1]
[li]The time storm throws Pericles, Leo, and the Oberon forward in time and elsewhere in space.[/li][li]The Oberon, damaged by the storm, crashes on the pota (which is not Earth, hence the three moons).[/li][li]Semus leads a revolt, the apes and humans separate into different societies, with the apes dominating due to their vastly superior strength.[/li][li]The horses must have come from the Oberon. Remember, Leo says something about “all of the trees being chopped down”; a hint that I took to mean that the purpose of the Oberon was to search for habitable planets to settle. The Oberon may have been some kind of nature preserve, or included horse embryos, as horses would be extremely helpful in settling a new planet.[/li][li]Thousands of years later, Leo arrives, and the events in the movie play out. Pericles arrives, provinding Leo with a working pod, which he uses to return to roughly his time and space.[/li][li]Thade is released, and continues to be the General of the ape army. The first pod is recovered. The ape-human conflict continues, at some point leading to a second civil war, with some apes on the side of the humans (this comes from the web site info).[/li][li]Leo arrives on Earth, in Washington D.C. only to find that the Lincoln Memorial is now the Thade Memorial, and Thade is a hero who lead the apes to domination over the humans.[/list=1][/li]
All of the above comes directly from the moveie and web site, which leads to the big question that the ending prompts. How did Earth “go ape”? The only clue we’re given is that General Thade was the leader. This does tell us, however, that Thade somehow managed to come from the POTA to Earth (perhaps in the recovered pod, or one of the pods left on the Oberon; only A and D were used, so presumably there were still pods B and C) and that he arrived long before Leo. How this happened is left for the sequel. (Actually, this sets up at least two or three different sequels; more on this in a moment).
We assume that this is a historical monument, but must that necessarily be true? Thade has an enormous ego; it is concievable that he would, like many Earth dictators, have erected monuments to himself. He may still be the “head ape in charge”, here, which again would be potential sequel fodder.
Since this is obviously Washington D. C., the simplest explanation is that the apes took over the existing city and replace the Lincoln memorial with one of their own.
Did Thade come back by himself, or with a group of apes? I think by himself in one of the pods. There wasn’t enough time to develop technology the humans had in a single lifetime, so he had to use existing technology, i.e. that left behind by the humans. The Oberon had no fuel, so it had to be a pod, probably the one Leo crashed in.
What happened when Thade arrived on Earth? There must have been some intelligent, gene-spliced apes there for him to organize into a rebellion. How did he do this? No clue–again, sequel time. The key is that it is Leo’s departure from the POTA that makes this possible.
I can see the sequels progressing in this order:
[list=1]
[li]Picks up on the POTA immediately following Leo’s departure, and deals with the changes in ape and human society caused by Leo’s presense, possibly culminating in the events that lead to Thade leaving the planet and travelling back in time to Earth.[/li][li]Follows Thade as he organizes the Earth apes and the details that lead up to the ape rebellion and the rebellion itself. Ends with the arrival of Leo in the ape Washington. This could also work as two movies one leading up to the beginning of the ape rebellion, and one following the rebellion itself and the establishment of ape civilization.[/li][li]Occurs immediately after the end of the first movie, and follows a human rebellion led by Leo once again, perhaps against Thade or (one of his descendants) as leader of the apes.[/li][/list=1]
I think we will definitely get a sequel, given the success of the current movie. Although I think the above sequence would be quite an interesting path to take for the inevitable sequals, I’d be willing to bet that the first sequel will pick up with the ending of POTA (sequel #3 in my sequence), because the producers will want to include Mark Wahlberg in the sequel. The information that would be in my sequel #2 would have to fit in as back story. I doubt we’ll see much of the POTA in the sequel.
My theory may have been covered already, and in fact has been surmised by previous posts.
In the begining of the movie, we see Leo going after the chimp pilot only to get caught in a comsic storm. This cosmic storm throws him on a planet other than earth. We know this because the ape planet had more than one moon.
Now we fast forward to the end of the movie. We never see Thade die, so we know that he lives. So we can asume that any peace is short lived, and Thade someone regains power.
Under Thade’s rule, the apes gather the orginal wreckage of Leo’s space craft (remember it was left under water). Eventually they discover how to build there own space craft (probally not in Thade’s or any of the other characters life time). Now once this first ape, or group of apes, travel into space they run into the same cosmic storm. They are then taken to Earth, probablly into Earth’s recent past. Now once they get to earth it follows the line of one of the orginal ape movies. The apes are eventally made to be servents of man, but eventally overun and rule the world.
So when Leo leaves arrives back on Earth, it is populated by apes with everything else the same (well almost everthing).
And as far as the horses, I agress with a previous post about the Oberon having horse and maybe other animal embryo on board.
I have seen a few posts wondering if the Planet of the Apes is Earth in the past or if the ending is the Planet of the Apes in the Future. Neither can be right.
The dead give away is the fact that in the night sky of the POTA has more than one Moon! It is shown several times.
As for the time frame we can clearly see Leo’s Chronometer counting both up and down. And the Planet he lands on is Definitely Earth.
The only explanation is as far fetched as the beginning premise of Escape from Planet of the Apes.
Thade somehow retrieves Leo’s ship and travels into the Time warp to Earth’s past where he finds a way to conquer our world.
Still I don’t think it works too well.
A Mr. Ed planet! Now THAT would have been a great ending.
My guess is in line with some of those already posted, basically Thane gets loose and follows Marky Mark home, arriving far enough in the past to set up Earth the way he wants it. At the end of the movie, the space station is powered up, complete with working computer and assumedly data banks on earth history, technology, warfare, etc. IIRC, the two pods mentioned were A and D, implying that at least two more pods might be aboard. Throw in the maybe fixable pod at the bottom of the pond and a handy phenomenon that moves you around in space and time, and a scenario getting Thade to Earth and taking over becomes plausible.
The horses made no sense whatsoever. Why would the space station have horses or even horse embryos aboard? Were they going to try horses in the pilot seat if the chimps didn’t work out?
This movie was a big disappointment to me. The actors plus Rick Baker did an excellent job in portraying a non-human intelligence, but the plot was very sketchy, and all of Wahlberg’s one-liners made me think I was at an Schwarzenegger film.
Here’s yet another lame attempt at inventing a patch for the torn fabric of the space-time continuum. Not a new concept, of course - eventually the actors on the Star Trek series could barely keep straight faces every time the writers bald-facedly pushed that ol’ time-warp / alternate universe button.
More likely, this was a simple homage to Rod Serling and his penchant for twisted, continuity-flouting endings on “Twilight Zone”.
Don’t look for this to get explained in POTA 2, though - it’ll (they’ll?) resemble “Escape from …”, “Return to …” etc. set on the ape-ruled Earth.
I thought this movie was just ok. Or maybe slightly less than ok. Much as I love Marky Mark (oops, sorry…I mean Mark Wahlberg.) there just wasn’t enough story development to make it work well. He crashes! He’s captured! He escapes! They fight! He leaves! The End.
I do have to agree with whoever said that maybe the POTA just happened to have remarkably horse-like animals. For me, the horses were a non-issue, like the fact that the Apes all speak English. They’re not going to make us read subtitles the whole movie. I don’t think it’s important.
My thoughts: POTA is NOT Earth. The planet he lands on at the end IS Earth. I agree that Thade somehow traveled to Earth and warped history.
Oh, and I definitely did see orangutangs on the Oberon, so I’m assuming there were also gorillas, as well as the chimps for the POTA inhabitants to evolve from.
Okay, I admit I missed the three moons thing. So POTA is not Earth. Damn.
They could have made things more digestible by letting us know the Oberon was like huge and full of animal species and thousands of people.
Or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which did end each episode with a twist. On The Twilight Zone, the twist ending was hardly universal, and the twist endings usually fit in with the continuity of the story.
The POTA ending did seem stuck on, but it’s fun trying to reconcile the ending anyway. In the 70’s and 80’s, Marvel comics would send a “no-prize” to readers who could explain continuity or logical errors that always end up in comics. The idea was to take a genuine continuity or logical error, and explain why it wasn’t really an error.
Okay, I found a cite describing how the ending isn’t supposed to make logical sense, that it’s simply a big twist for the sake of the mindfuck.
Bruce Snyder, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox: “If the truth be known, it wasn’t really supposed to make sense.” (full story)
I know I saw something similar from the actual creators (Burton and company). I’ll keep scrounging, and be back soon.
I think we all need to take a deep breath and realize that the film ends with Markie Mark hopping into his teeny little space pod, blasting off at a slooow 1.x G in the middle of a crowd of people, zipping up to well beyond escape velocity and leaving the obviously alien planet with no oceans, several moons, and an orbiting sphincter. (I guess fusion power really is only thirty years away. Except the mothership’s rockets run on fuel cells. Go figure.) Roll credits, power down the belief suspension field. Fwip!
Then, an executive threw the script down, kicked his secretary out from under the desk, got on the phone and said, “Tim, goddammit! Do you know who my father was? In his day f*&^# sci-fi movies had suprise endings, or at least something the kids could enjoy on drugs. Where’s the F#$%^& suprise goddamned ending? I want one under–on my desk by the end of the week! Hey, that tickles!”
So Tim hangs up, goes to the freezer where he’s got his last four hundred mikes of Owlsley Crystal stashed, snorts it, makes a martini, and drops Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma on the Bang & Olufsen.
And there it is.
*Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon there on the run, Titania
Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten
Ahh ahh ahhh ahhh ahh ahh ahhh ahhh
Winding signs flap
flicker flicker flicker flam pow pow
stairways scared and death rules there
Ahh ahh ahhh ahhh ahh ahh ahhh*
“AaaIhhh’ve got an ending! Gotta get this down, man. Pencil, pencil, PENCIL! This eye liner will do. What were those lyrics again? Screw it, I’m tripping anyway, there’s no chance I heard em’ right. Hell, Syd Barret ain’t gonna tell, anyway. Jupiter… Saturn… pow!.. stairway… yeah! This is gonna work!”
The next day, the producer is evaluating his new secretary. He reaches onto his desk, grabs a handful of paper, fans his face, then casually tosses it into the outbox.
Months later, said producer discovers that not only did he approve the drug-addled ending to the film, but he also released Arnold Schwarzenegger from the film to do voice-over work for Dr. Doolittle 2. True Lies 2 and Terminator 3 are immediately green-lighted. Fwip!
Please check circuit on belief suspension field.
wanders in, looking slightly dazed
blinks a few times
Okay, you people have got waaaaaaaay too much time on your hands.
ducks and runs for cover
Another strange little thing in the movie…
The pilot giving a mayday to the Oberon wasn’t Mark Wahlberg.
A) We saw that mark wasn’t sending one.
B) The pilot who WAS sending one had a moustache and was older.
So MY take on the ending was that the storm didn’t throw him around to different times, but to different parallel universes. Parallel universe A is the one with the Oberon time-loop. Parallel universe B has a planet WHERE APES EVOLVED FROM MEN?!? (sorry… Chuck Heston Moment…) anyway… in universe B, there just happened to be another General Thade that looked like the General Thade in universe A.
Have a hard time accepting that? Fine. Explain how, in the 25-or-so years from now where the film begins, we have a gigantic space station orbiting saturn.
Explain how everyone survived the NUCLEAR EXPLOSION that Leo triggered on the Oberon to defeat the apes INCLUDING the apes right in front of the explosion!
Explain how the apes in the couple of thousand years since Pericles’ time got so much taller.
Well…the original series explained that last one very well. Watch all the Apes films after Beneath… Apes, according to that movie series, were always people-sized and walked upright with a hunch. Of course, the original series also said that after all the dogs and cats die from a strange disease, apes become common house pets…
But hey, any excuse to watch Ricardo Montolban in a bad toupee…
As I understood it, they probably wanted to be farther away from earth because part of their research was illegal.