A Review of "Planet of the Apes" (2001)

Why they called him General Thade and not "Ape-raham Lincoln" was a serious lapse in judgment.

Happy Friday, fellow ape-sketeers! Summer and warm weather is upon us. Travel plans a'plenty, for baseball and tropical climates are in the air. So too is a continuing series of reviews for Apes movies.

"Excuse me, sir, but would you
happen to have a breath mint?"

That's right, today's review is yet another Planet of the Apes movie! Last week, we concluded the original Roddy McDowall Apes series with our review of Battle for the Planet of the Apes... but the Apes saga isn't over, not by a long shot! Sure, it took about twenty-eight years for another entry to spawn. The original series was all tapped out, all the actors/actresses in those movies grew old as the 70s wore into the 1980s... and the 1980s turned into the 1990s... and by then, interest in an Apes sequel had greatly diminished. Well... when you lose your audience trying to make a sequel, you find a new audience with a FRESH take! In the director's chair is renowned visionary whack-a-doodle Tim Burton, known for stellar films like Batman, Ed Wood, Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks!... also known for Edward Scissorhands though... so a bit of a mixed blessing. In the starring role? Mark Wahlberg. That's right... Marky Mark leads us in our action-packed Apes sequel.

Or no wait, it's not a sequel? That's right! It's a remake. Well... not a remake either, as it doesn't follow the exact plotline of the original film at all. This is where Tim Burton coined the phrase "re-imagining". They simply took the Apes universe, and then wrote their own story with their own characters in that universe. Aside from being called Planet of the Apes, featuring a planet of talking anthropomorphic gorillas and chimps... this movie has zero to do with the original Charlton Heston film. I watched it for the first time as part of my new boxset this past week and... good LORD. I mean, I see what they were going for, but it does not work for me at all. The plot is convoluted, the characters are ridiculous, and while the make-up is spectacular (shout out to Rick Baker), the actors delve much too deep into the chimp mannerisms. To the point that scenes get... unsettling. As a whole, the production was a difficult experience for Tim Burton. This was largely contributed by 20th Century Fox's adamant release date of July 2001, which meant that everything from pre-production to editing and visual effects work was rushed... and boy it shows. Let's slice and dice this turd and see what Tim Burton brings to the Planet of the Apes saga.

In 2029, aboard the United States Air Force space station Oberon, Leo Davidson (Marky Mark) works closely with apes who are trained for space missions. His favorite ape co-worker is a chimpanzee named Pericles. With a deadly electromagnetic storm (it's always an electromagnetic something-or-other in these movies) approaching the station, a small space pod piloted by Pericles is used to probe the storm. Pericles's pod heads into the storm and disappears. Leo takes a second pod and finds Pericles. Entering the storm, Leo loses contact with the Oberon and, in 5021 A.D., crashes on a planet called Ashlar. He learns that the world is ruled by humanoid apes who speak English, use domesticated horses for transportation, and treat human beings as slaves. So... it's a separate planet, but there are human beings and there's also colloquial English being spoken. Not to mention CHIMPS, GORILLAS, and APES! Already I am pretty confused. If they're going for the same twist-ending as the '68 film, there's no need for the build up because we already know. If they aren't, there's got to be a lot of explaining to do.

"Alright Helena, now that you're in full ape make-up,
give us your best L'Oreal girl impression!"

Leo meets a female chimpanzee named Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who protests the mistreatment humans receive. Ari decides to buy Leo and a female slave named Daena (Estella Warren) to have them work as servants in the house of her father, Senator Sandar (David Warner). Leo escapes his cage and frees other humans. Limbo (Paul Giamatti), an orangutan trader in captured humans, sees them but is taken prisoner to ensure his silence. The murderous General Thade (Tim Roth) and his junior, Colonel Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), march ape warriors to pursue the humans. Leo discovers Calima, the forbidden, but holy temple of "Semos", the first ape whom the apes revere as a god. Oh boy... Tim Roth. I'll delve into his performance at the end, but just know... *shudders*.

Calima turns out to be the remains of the Oberon which had crashed on the planet's surface and now looks ancient (the name Calima coming from the sign "CAution LIve aniMAls", the relevant letters being the only ones not covered in dust). According to the computer logs, the station has been there for thousands of years. Leo deduces that when he entered the vortex, he was pushed forward in time, while the Oberon, searching after him, was not, crashing on the planet long before he did. No shit, Sherlock. Did the rotting substructure and outdated log tapes tell you that? Any who, in a major revelation, the Oberon's log reveals that the apes on board, led by Semos, organized a mutiny and took over the vessel after it crashed. How the apes became intelligent is left completely ambiguous... unless it was just an ape-level mutiny. As in gorillas just went apeshit (pun intended) and killed all the humans. Which is fine, but that doesn't explain how the apes eventually became intelligent and developed their own culture and society.

"Alright Pericles, now it's fourth quarter and
your team is down by two. Stop monkeying
around and make this shot!"

The human and ape survivors of the struggle left the ship and their descendants are the people Leo has encountered since landing. The apes arrive and attack the humans who have gathered to see Leo, although he is able to even the odds when he uses the Oberon's last fragments of fuel to fire a final blast at the first wave of apes. "I love the smell of roasted ape flesh in the morning!" No, that's not a real line, but in this cheese-fest I would not have put it past them. The battle stops when a familiar vehicle descends from the sky, which Leo immediately identifies as the pod piloted by Pericles, the chimpanzee astronaut who was pushed forward in time as Leo was and had just now found his way to the planet, the electromagnetic storm actually releasing people from it in an opposite direction in time to their entrance. Wow... that's... oddly convenient. Didn't know an electromagnetic storm had so many rules. When Pericles lands and the pod opens, the apes bow, interpreting his arrival as the return of Semos, and hostilities between humans and apes suddenly cease.

Pericles runs into the wreck of the Oberon and Leo runs after him, followed by General Thade. Thade and Leo fight. Pericles tries to help Leo, but Thade throws him hard against a wall. Imagine if a hardcore devout follower of Christ... let's say Ben Shapiro, I don't know why but he gives me Thade vibes; imagine if Ben Shapiro saw Jesus come down from the sky and then, because he ceased warfare with the liberals, just started throwing Jesus against the wall and beating the shit out of Him. That's what this exchange feels like. Reeeeeeaally forced. Anyways, Thade takes Leo's gun from him and tries to fire it at Leo. Leo sees that Thade is within the pilot's deck and closes the automatic door, trapping Thade inside. Thade fires the gun repeatedly at the door but the ricochets create sparks that scare Thade, who huddles under a control panel. So our big villain for the film has the same fears that dogs do on the Fourth of July. How terrifying.

"Mr. Baker! Give me a zipper in my ape costume so
I may properly relieve myself, lest I snap this extra's neck!"

Deciding to escape Ashlar and return to Earth, Leo gives Pericles to Ari, who promises to look after him. After saying farewell to Ari and Daena, Leo climbs aboard Pericles's undamaged pod and travels back in time through the same electromagnetic storm, which I guess allows that... even though entry of time is supposedly the opposite of when you entered, which makes me wonder where the hell the "median" point is where--oh fuck, never mind. Marky Mark then crashes in Washington, D.C. on Earth. He looks up at what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial, only to find that it is now a monument memorializing General Thade. A swarm of police officers, firefighters, and news reporters descend upon him, revealed to all be apes... and that's this movie's "twist" ending.

Now... whew, what a stinker. I mean I wanted to like it, just to see if I can feel smarter than the average internet community filmgoer; but no, the internet and the general populace is pretty much right about this one. Planet of the Apes from 2001 is a grade-A mess of good ideas executed very piss-poorly. First of all, while I do buy Mark Wahlberg as the lead, he feels so much less equipped than Charlton Heston was and seems too out of place for a movie like this. With Heston, I go "Oh that's Taylor". With Wahlberg, I keep going "MARKY MARK!". He just doesn't fit. Paul Giamatti is a real ham in this, too, and I gotta admit... I loved watching him work, even when he went in full monkey mode. He brought some hilarity and levity to an otherwise bizarre, dull, or outwardly weird script. Tim Roth however BUSTED MY GUT, I never laughed so hard. He killed it in some scenes all menacing like, but there are scenes where he just loses himself in the role or in a line delivery and I crack up into hysterics. Like near the end where he's begging Attar to let him out and he just awkwardly growls "MY FRIIIIEND" out of the blue? I about pissed my pants. The "DO YOU HAVE A TOWEL?!" snarl also killed me... it's like "Dude, you're overacting so hard."

"Do you see that ape army coming over the horizon,
Leo?" "I see that... and I also see that quartet of ape
strippers arousing me with their monkey hoots!"

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't give one last shout out to Rick Baker and his team for their makeup effects for this movie. These are some of the most convincing ape makeup jobs I've ever seen. While I love Roddy McDowall and his ape movies, those did unfortunately, certainly in a few screaming scenes, seem to expose themselves as masks made-up to the actors' faces. In Conquest at the end when Roddy is screaming Caesar's lines, you can pause-step (thanks to advent of DVD and Blu-ray) and literally see his lips and teeth inside of the ape mask's mouth. It ruins the illusion, but still for 1972 it was pretty great as in most scenes it's not really noticeable unless you, again, pause-step it. Something I'm sure filmmakers in 1972 didn't anticipate becoming a thing, especially in households across the country. Rick Baker's ape masks on the other hand were fluid, easily forming as the characters' faces, and you thought thanks to the actors uh... ape mannerisms, that these were instead super-intelligent chimps. Props to Rick Baker.

While not a full-on remake, but again just a "reimagining"... there are still a few callbacks to the original movie. Speaking of Charlton Heston, he actually has a cameo here. There's a scene where Thade is talking to his dying father, an elderly ape named Zaius (callback to the orangutan from the '68 film) who is played in full make-up by the seventy-eight-year-old Heston. He even echoes his famous "Damn them all to Hell" line as he dies... which only feels VERY forced. Which is on par with Attar telling Leo earlier in the movie "Take your stinkin' paws off me you damn, dirty human!" Ah ha ha ha, what a callback. There's also Linda Harrison, who played Nova in the '68 film, also has a cameo, though it's much more brief... she plays a captive who shakes her head when Leo asks "What is this place?" So... good to see after nearly thirty-five years, she still is stuck in the Godforsaken ape cage.

I do not recommend 2001's remake... sorry, reimagining of Planet of the Apes. It's convoluted, it's confusing, it's mind-boggling, it's cringy, it's unintentionally goofy, and above all; it doesn't do the series a whole lot of justice. It's inventive but what it invents just doesn't work. I think they tried so hard to be different but in creating something entirely different using only the gel of the original idea ended up creating something so radically different it became almost a farce, somewhat nonsensical in its story display. On top of that it's so overacted that the casual viewer might dig it but stuff like ape children leading human children around on leashes like dogs and Lisa Marie doing ape lovemaking hoots with a dude in a giant Bornean orangutan getup was... unsettling. Thank God for fast forward... which is a phrase you'll utter a lot watching this movie.