The planet of the apes has lost all its charm by becoming too realistic.
The old ape suits were charming, the new ones look like real apes - ugh.
They should have made the new version of the film with those old ape suits.
Don’t you agree?!
Same problem with Godzilla. Then look what happened, Godzilla 2000 rocked. There’s hope.
After reading this review, it looks like they should have made the new version of the film with the old script. I’ll probably still go see it, though. I’m stupid that way. Plus the new costumes look cool! 
Hijack!
Ok, the ending confused me.
SPOILER
I’m serious, there’s a
SPOILER]
Enough room. This is the SPOILER.
Okay, what happened in the end? Did he like go back in time and the Apes had retaken over? Or did he not go back far enough and he was where the Apes still had control of the earth? Explain!
I liked the realistic ape suits. They looked great. I may be the ionly one on the planet that thought the originals were worth watching on their own merits, and not for camp value, like the Godzilla flicks. The other change, I think, is the the Apes aren’t cultural icons in the same way Godilla is.
As for the rest of the film, it lacked the social satire of the first series. There are still things to be said about environmentalism and race relations that this movie could of, and i think tried to say, but failed. That chimp General was just evil. No real explanation, motivation, or facet to his character. He was just evil. And he jumped around too much. I also would have liked to see more of humanity, both free and captive. Tim bent over backwards to get Charlton Heston, a gun, and the lines “damn you all” on screen at the same time. It didn’t quite work.
OTOH, the Ape civilization was very well rounded. The religion was a nice touch. They were also very apelike in their mannerisms and attacks. All in all, a fun movie. Nothing to write home about, but pretty good. Burton didn’t top the first movie, but he didn’t betray it either.
As for the ending, I LOVED it! Never saw that coming! Any movie daring enough to have an ambiguous ending wins some amount of respect from me. Me, I’m guessing that the apes went back on their promise to secure human equality, wiped 'em out, and later advanced to present day earth technology. Another possibility is that he landed on an alternate universe, where apes evolved to the level of man.
SPOILER
Well, clues that confuesed me. He left in 2029. Went ahead to what looked like 2500. When he returned, he went back to 2100!!! Notice the time difference!
The apes took over thousands of years ago when the spaceship crashed. So humans and apes created themselves through a timewarp!
What did the dedication say over the Lincoln (Thade) Memorial say? Where I was sitting in the theater had me looking at it in an extreme angle, making it difficult to read.
I just got back from seeing this piece of shi…, urm, movie.
My impressions:
The costumes and make-up were cool. I thought the chimps look the most realistic, so much so, it really did creep me out. That was the best thing about the movie.
The gorillas looked too not-gorilla – they looked like cheesy masks.
The script was pretty friggin’ weak. All the action (which encompassed a slave uprising and a total societal reversal) took place over a couple of days.
The human slaves didn’t seem that unintelligent, like in the original. In the '68 version, at least having the humans unable to talk gave you an impression of why they weren’t the dominant species.
I saw the surprise endings coming a mile away…
And what the hell is with the, “can’t we all get along?” crap. Here we are in the middle of a war, the apes and the humans are just pounding the absolute snot out of each other, but wait, there’s a light in the sky. What could it be? Not the monkey that Leo was trying to find in the first place? Of course it is, which warps the apes world-view so much the very next line is some tripe like, “We won’t mark the graves. No one will be able to tell which are the apes’ graves and which are the humans, as it should be.” Holy Hollywood Touchy-Feely, Batman!
Ok, so I didn’t see the Lincoln as an ape thing right away, but as soon as they showed our intrepid hero at the base of the statue without revealing what he was looking at, I nailed it. I leaned over to the complete stranger next to me and said, “An ape in Lincoln’s chair.” She looked at me and said, “You think? - Oh my God, You’re right!”
Then I shot her.
Oh, the other thing that I didn’t find funny, probably because they were supposed to be funny but were presented as straight lines… the re-hashed, but turned around lines from the original.
The ape saying, “Get you filthy hands off of me you damned dirty human.” and Chuck Heston, as an ape, uttering as his dying words, “Damn them all to Hell.” Oooh, I wanted to scream.
I wanted to like this movie so much. I loved it going in. I was prepared to promise never to watch Shakes the Clown again, in favor of my new favorite movie. But it sucked like a black hole.
But at least it was better than The Mummy Returns
Didn’t anybody else think “Aperaham Lincoln!” at the end?
The social message was replaced with a religious message. Didn’t you notice how Leo was the messiah for the humans, and his pet monkey (no, not THAT!) was the messiah for the apes?
Personally, I think you people need to stop questioning the damn movie and just accept it at face value. If you want everything your way, go to Burger King.
I have accepted it at face value – it is the face of shit.
Too predictable.
Too Saturday Morning.
I never saw the original movie. I never read the book. This movie sucked big time, all on it’s own, however.
1st 1/2 of the movie: Ohh, lets go for laughs by having the apes act like humans in our society.
Next 3/8 of the movie: A chase scene. Tho Markie Mark is a complete idiot. He’s a trained soldier ( OK, USAF, but still…), facing an enemy that is stronger and faster. The solution? Range weapons ( bows and arrows if nothing else) and tactics( The apes have a short fuse. You could make them mad and lead them into all sorts of traps) his solution? Blast the first wave with the rockets, and then close hand to hand with an enemy in all ways superior in hand to hand combat than you are. Madness!
Last scene: Tim Burton desperly trying to come up with something with the impact of the Statue of Liberty from the first film. Sorry, Tim, you blew it BIG TIME. An ending that makes no sense is NOT a cinematic tour de force, it’s just BAD film making. I give POTA 0 stars, on a scale of 1-200.
Like I said… refusing to take the movie at face value.
Have YOU ever been thrust into a society of apemen, Dave? I trust that you have, to know exactly how a person would react to it. Have you ever been sucked through a wormhole in time? I trust that you have, to know exactly how a person would react to it.
Stop with the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” crap. There’re other ways to waste your money if you’re not going to allow yourself to be entertained.
There should have been some hot, inter-species lovin’ going on between the spaceman and the rebel ape chick!
Hey, if he’s gonna ignore the human hottie…
I would imagine that I would react to it the same way I do to most stressful situations, which is to say that I would crawl under my desk, curl up in a fetal position and whimper for a while. 
Seriously though, the guy is a trained soldier, right? I think he might have a different reaction. I also imagine that if he was put in charge of organizing tactics for a military operation he might, just might, use some of his military training.
Anyway, I never even thought about the tactics involved as a problem. There were far too many other problems with this pile to even notice it.
I’ll be waiting for it to come out on DVD, and will rent it when there is absolutely nothing else I need to see. Some things just shouldn’t be done, and new visions are one of them. I was excited at first, thinking it was a remake. When I found out the truth, I lost all interest. Perhaps I might love it. I’ll find out later. I saw it a lot in LA where play directors would redo something (usually a Shakespeare) to show “their interpretation” and basically, I see it as an announcement that “I have just enough imagination to butcher something original and good, but I need the original’s name and a bit of it’s plot to get people to come and see it”.
What’s next, Stallone and a flavor of the month babe redoing The African Queen where they float the river in a gunboat to try and capture the Alien before it breeds with some genetically manufactured dinosaurs that can only be defeated by a large flying turtle? Remake the original, or make an original movie.
As soon as Marky Mark left the ape planet, I knew what he would find on earth was another POTA, and I thought the Ape-raham Lincoln was a very cheesy ending. I can’t believe anyone would have been surprised by that ending.
But the thing I didn’t understand was how did Thade get to earth??? It was pretty clear that the planet MM arrived on was not earth, but then when he went “Back to the Future”, the memorial was to General Thade, who saved all the apes or some crap.
Does that mean we are talking sequel here??
I was disappointed in the movie overall, but I did like the special effects and costumes, and the first half of the movie had some clever lines and characters. Too bad the 2nd half was phoned in.
Ah, so it was a daring experiment in dadaist filmmaking, then, rather than an incoherent mess slapped together in a desperate attempt to make the release date. I feel better about that $8.50 now.
Let’s be honest here, my man. It’s a talking monkey movie. I was prepared, nay, eager to suspend my disbelief, and enjoy a couple of hours of talking monkeys hitting people, and people also hitting talking monkeys, and perhaps some explosions. And I got exactly that, I think, right up to the part where Marky Mark [Aside: You there. Yes, you, who haven’t seen the movie yet and will get all angry with me for revealing SPOILERS! What are you doing reading this thread if you don’t want SPOILERS? Get out.] blows up the fuel cell on the his space station. Boom. Monkeys fly everywhere. I was diggin’ it. But wait, the monkeys aren’t dead, I guess, and now Marky Mark’s plan hinges on waiting until the monkeys wake up before the humans club them to death, which, um, will negate the superior numbers, tactics, and general ass-kicking ability of the rest of the ape army, and look! what’s that in the sky?
…etc., etc., etc. And then Ape-raham Lincoln? What? Where’d that come from? Brain… melting. Simple notions of cause and effect… out the window. Movie… incomprehensible.
The studio gambled, by announcing the release date so early, that they could get Planet of the Apes finished and out to theaters in the time they’d allotted. They lost, and in the last minute scramble to get something on the screen, things such as storytelling had to take a back seat to simply getting the damn thing done. They fucked it up, and I’m certainly not going to cut them any slack for it.
It wasn’t all in vain, though: I’ve now added the phrase deus ex monkeyna to my lexicon.
Well, I have to say that I absolutely LOVED the movie. I hate to sound cocky, but seriously- anyone who truly <i>hated</i> it must not have understood the ending. It’s shown that we’re so used to having everything explained and laid right out for us, you have to actually THINK to understand the ending and it’s creating havoc.
WARNING:SPOILERS
I too thought I completely sucked until I thought about it for a while and figured out the ending. It’s a complete mindfuck - that’s the only word to explain it. I came to the same conclusion as Sterra: civilivation as we know it descended from the survivors of the Oberon, and by taking the pod without permission, Leo altered the course of history so that the Apes rule.
It also had elements of “genetic engineering is bad”. I loved the religious aspects that were thrown in, too.
Spoofe: “Personally, I think you people need to stop questioning the damn movie and just accept it at face value.” That’s where you’re wrong. If you accept it at face value, you won’t realize how amazing the ending really was, and the ending is what made the whole movie. I’m pretty sure you were MEANT to think “that sucked, it made no sense!” at first, and then after a while it finally hits you. Beautiful. I think we all just expected it to be apes fighting humans, guy falls in love with girl, guy gets girl, guy saves day, everything is wonderful and get thrown off when we have to figure it out for ourselves.
"But the thing I didn’t understand was how did Thade get to earth??? " - they were on earth the whole time.
The only part I didn’t like were the love parts… completely pointless and cheapened it slightly.
If you saw it and thought it made no sense, think about it some more. You’ll understand.