Was going to see it but when I told my girlfriend she went ape shit.

It was one of the worst films of all time. Terrible.

"Was?"

What the original or the remake?

One of the rumours doing the rounds is that some of the supporting actors were really pissed off at Tim Burton, cos they got paid peanuts.
(Turns around and runs away as quickly as possible).

Dear God that joke!

I saw it today, it was alright, predictable though. Even my new girlfriend, who I'm teaching to edit spot and such thought it was a bit dodgy. Some bits were ace, but I could tell it coming a mile off, especially the end.

Christ, it was terrible. Possibly the biggest disappointment I've ever had a the movies...

Normally I'd say right now that I'm about to spoil the ending, so anyone who hasn't seen it read no further, but can I be arsed...?

Oh alright. Everybody who's seen it, scroll down... the rest of you click off.

















There, now they've gone, what the FUCK was that "twist" all about? Are we to suppose that the "planet" was prehistoric Earth all a long, and that Davidson has is some way fucked up history?
IN WHICH CASE
Why did the "planet" have two moons?
Why did this ape-orientated society mimic human society to the point of building Washington DC, driving round on police cars and putting a suit and tie on the statue of Thade?

And if the "planet" WASN'T Earth... WHERE DID THE HORSES COME FROM? Were they being trained on the Oberon as well?

Honestly, if it had been directed by anybody else it'd have been a bummer but coming from Tim Burton it's heartbreaking.

Truly pointless.

The ending was particularly naff.

A friend of mine came up with a marginally better twist ending. Leo should have come back to Earth and found the Statue Of Liberty with an ape's face on. Neat reversal of the first film, non?

However it still couldn't have made up for the preceding two hours.

I've not seen the film and I'm not overly fussed about it, but it seems weird that a director of Tim Burton's calibre would fuck up on such a monumental scale. And I think the ending sounds pretty cool (read about it a while back).

>I've not seen the film and I'm not overly fussed about it, but it seems weird that a director of Tim Burton's calibre would fuck up on such a monumental scale. And I think the ending sounds pretty cool (read about it a while back).


I thought it was typical burton,close but no cigar.
I think the only complete artistic sucess hes had was "Ed Wood"
And why do his film sets always look just like erm..Film Sets.
Good apes,Bad tim roth,Confused/confusing story.
Plus when is this homage bollocks gonna end.
The heston ones were funny,but 2001,star trek etc?

Yeah, Ed Wood's my favourite. I'm not a huge Burton fan, but in a world of mediocrity at least his films are a cut above the usual cack.

>And why do his film sets always look just like erm..Film Sets.

He's not exactly about realism is he though? On any level. That's why I adore most of his films, they've never made me irritated, instead I usually feel simply awed and wishing I was his offspring.

It seems quite a few people here should actually see the new "Apes". Maybe after witnessing the disappointing lack of Burton touches, the underwhelming sets and locations and the totally illogical end twist, they can come back and talk about it.

>
>I thought it was typical burton,close but no cigar.
>I think the only complete artistic sucess hes had was "Ed Wood"

Good film, certainly, but I don't think it's Burton's best. What about Nightmare before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks even?

Incidentally, does anyone remember the Ed Wood documentary shown around the same time as the release of the film? It featured a demonstration of how to construct a short Bela Lugosi film entirely from stock footage (Dracula does battle with some cowboys, a giant octopus, fighter planes, etc.)

>And why do his film sets always look just like erm..Film Sets.

Oddly, many film sets do. I think that's possibly missing the point. In many Tim Burton films the sets are exaggerated to an absurd degree, and as such make no pretence as to being realistic. In Batman Returns for example, or Beetlejuice. Would you accuse the sets in Brazil or Blade Runner of being too film setty?

Whoa there Max! I didn't say your opinion is wrong, I just said Tim Burton making an almost universally panned film was unexpected. I don't need to see the film to make that statement, nor to say that the ending sounds cool. It sounds cool, dammit!

I'm gonna kick Heston's ass when I see the gun sucking son of a bitch (can't be too long now). How dare he show his snout in this dumb-ass pice of crap. What the fuck is this picture? Bill And Ted Meet The Monkey Man? Jeeezus!

The worst thing about the film was Marky Mark Walburg. You could have replaced him with a kitchen table and it would have displayed the same range of emotions. As for getting certain characters to quote lines from the original film, I wouldn't have thought that Tim Burton wouldn't want to remind them of that vastly superior version. This remake is ridiculous film, although with great effects. Does anyone know what the rumoured six other endings they rejected were?

By the way, Tim Burton has hours of never released Vincent Price footage that he was going to turn into a documentary before Price died.

Still not seen the film, but heard enough bad rumours about it to believe that word of mouth's going to knacker week two takings.

Why go to the trouble of doing a different twist ending? If you're remaking a movie with a good twist - like Planet of The Apes - surely that twist is integral to the nature of the film. You can't just make the same film and graft a different resolution on the end.

No wonder everyone's disappointed. You'll feel cheated, and spend the evening afterwards trying to work out ways in which the twist did / didn't work, distracting from any possible merits of the film as a whole. See also "Unbreakable", where the twist changes the nature of the film so much (from slightly unconvincing Superhero comic to psychological nutcase movie) that you feel you've wasted the previous two hours and need to watch the whole thing again. A good twist should sneak up on the viewer, not make them feel like a cretin, who's been watching a totally different film. That kind of volte face works for a short story, or a Twilight Zone episode, but is insulting to the audience in a full length movie.

It's a rare example (Fight Club, for instance) that manages to make a radical twist work for the audience - in that case because the rest of the film is enjoyable on its own terms, full of other satisfying elements that don't depend on the twist.

Usually you either see the twist coming (so, yawn, has this finished yet?) or are so disorientated by it that in invalidates the previous two hours (what? oh, I invested my emotions in that character and they turned out to be a wasp).

The voguish insistence on twist endings is becoming a slap in the face to the diligent filmgoer.

The obscurer twists are fun though, Don't Look Now, for example. And I want to see more films with "bad" endings. Films that make you think "Oh...my...God...". Perhaps that's why I was the only person to enjoy Blair Witch, I'm the only one naive enough to believe it...or want to believe it...

I'm not getting enough sleep, can you tell?

Both of those are shock endings rather than twists, though, which is far better.

Neither of those films is invalidated or changed by the way they end. They're just cracking good I-never-saw-that-coming moments.

More of those, please. Less I woke up and it was all a dream.

>Both of those are shock endings rather than twists, though, which is far better.

I would have to stop you there and go :
Don't Look Now is both, if you think about it... Anyway even if you know what's coming in Don't Look Now it still scares you awake for 45 hours.

Yeah, I suppose so, but since you never really know who he's following through the streets of Venice, you're waiting for it to be revealed to be SOMEONE at the end. So, the revelation doesn't invalidate the rest of the film experience (ie: it's a who-is-it movie so the ending has to be this-is-who-it-is. It's a shock, but not a ghastly nouveau-hollywood twist, revealing that you were wasting your time for the last two hours following the wrong story.)

I couldn't sleep for days after Don't Look Now either. And the friend who showed it to me first - who had seen it seventeen times - made me check the boot of his car that night before he drove away.

I also can't go to the toilet during Robert Wise's "The Haunting" for fear that the statue of Hugh Crane might loom out of the darkness at me, or that I might hear violent muttering behind the toilet roll holder.

I never like those people who claim to be horror fans, yet never act scared. That's the point of the films, you cretins. Real horror movie fans wet themselves.

Amen to that. I can only think of one more movie with a twist presently, which is Pyscho... but I don't remember it scaring me much.

Nosferatu scares me, it always has, although for the life of me I couldn't name the director.

Being scared by film depends on your willingness to suspend disbelief, some people are never bothered because they know it's not real, it's we who can't shut out the what ifs that suffer. :)

The point about the new ending is not whether it's cool or unexpected, but that it MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. The twists at the end of Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Don't Look Now etc. did actually conform to the internal logic af the plot as established thus far. The ending to the Planet of the Apes remake (remake remake remake it's a FUCKING REMAKE) just seems to be there 'cos someone at some point said...

Fuck it, those of you who haven't seen it don't scroll down)










... "Hey. wouldn;t it be cool, yeah, if like, he comes back to Earth, yeah, and like everybody's apes?"

WHY?

IT MAKES NO SENSE!

PS. One of the alternative endings (not shot) was that Leo crashes in Shea Stadium in mid baseball match... and all the players and spectators are apes...

WHICH STILL MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!!!!

My father suggested that he ride 500 yards from the Ape settlement to discover modern day New York, and everybody going about their business as usual...

You know how you're all being careful not to spoil the new PoE twist ending whenever you refer to it?

Speaking as someone who hasn't seen the remake, can I just say "Don't bother".

I've tried to understand what you're implying happens at the end, but you're right. It's so unrelated to the concept or plot of Planet of The Apes, that I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

You're saying he suddenly discovers he's gone back in time? What? How?

>Nosferatu scares me, it always has, although for the life of me I couldn't name the director.
>
It's F.W. Murnau, Radi. In the Max Shreck version that is. Not sure about the (in my opinion poor) Klaus Kinski version.

If you like Nosferatu, see Shadow of the Vampire (available on video now). It's a superb little film, despite the half-hearted ending. But see it! Do!

No point in remaking it.

Films with twists.

What, exactly, happens at the end of Peformance with Mick Jagger and James Fox?

They become each other. Right? Merging, as two products of utterly different backgrounds eventually turn into exactly the same person. Making a point about the breakdown of structure and class in 60s society. The way that a state school oik could, through becoming a rock star or photographer or writer, suddenly become more powerful than an Eton educated toff.

Or maybe it's just a weird face in the retreating car.

So which one gets shot? Who "wins"?

... if anybody's interested.

Are they going to install you in every Multiplex in the country, to help out as people leave the cinema?

PLEASE

Okay... (sigh)

The ending DOESN'T work if it's suppose to be a twist but it MIGHT just work if it's supposed to be a cliffhanger setting up a sequel (presumptious bastards), the plot of the sequel being as follows...

Having promised to behave himself and stop firing that blaster-thing, Thade eventually gets let out of that perspex cell on the wreck of the Oberon, whereupon he either:

a) figures out how to launch one of the ancient space-pods still aboard the Oberon (Pericles the chimp was in alpha-pod and Leo was in delta-pod, so presumably there's at least two left)
or...
b)dredges up Leo's pod from the swamp and figures out how to fire it up
and...
sets off into space to wreak vengeance on Leo.
But...
We've already seen that things passing through the anomaly arrive on the other side in the wrong order and with much bigger time delays (Leo was a few seconds behind Pericles and ended up several days ahead of him; the Oberon was a few days or hours behind Leo and ended up several thousand years ahead of him), so, if Thade is a couple of hours behind Leo he should arrive on Earth sometime in the 20th century.
My theory is that Thade leads the apes of Earth in revolt against the humans and helps them replace human society with a similiar ape society (so still with cars etc.) which now reveres him as its founder and saviour (hence the statue.
So when Leo finally turns up in the 21st Century...

It's a bit bollocks but it works. And I'm buggered if I can think of anything else.

The original certainly didn't need remaking - but now they've gone and done it...here's what I reckon:

There were two 'twisty' bits that they could have made twistier. The bit near the end where the pod with the chimp lands - that would have been better if the astronaut had taken off his helmet to reveal he was a humanoid frog.

Alternatively, at the very end, when the man arrives back in present day America, it would have been really cool if the statue of Lincoln had had a dog's face. And then a big bunch of dogs pulled up in police cars and started licking his face.

Burton has said he will not do a sequel to it. And the apes of earth, they're not quite as clever, or easy to lead in a revolt as the ones on Thades planet, are they? Those ones have had several thousand years to evolve with the added bonus of all the crazy shit the humans injected in them. I've come up with 3 feasible explanations.

1-it's not the same Thade, it's just a co-incidence. or an alternate dimension. or something.

2-Wahlberg landed on the same planet again, many years into the future.

3-Thade realised that he could crawl under the glass door, cos it's only sand underneath it. And he went mental. And squeezed as many apes as he could into the one remaining pod and fired themselves at earth, to kick arse.

4-it was all a dream. or marky marks on drugs or something.

from Roger Eberts Answer Man column...





After sitting through ''Planet of the Apes'' I was compelled to go to several online forums that were discussing the ending. Many argued that the ending was great due to its ''shock value'' and ''ambiguity.'' All will be revealed in the sequel, they say. I felt cheated by the ending. The twist at the end of a movie has to make sense in the context of the movie itself, not as a weak marketing ploy to attract potential customers for a sequel. I didn't appreciate watching a two-hour commercial for ''Planet of the Apes 2.''

Brian Thomsen, Schaumburg

A. (Spoiler warning!) I liked the ending because it was such an ironic twist, and to the degree I tried to explain it to myself, I assumed that Leo Davidson, the Mark Wahlberg character, had been flipped into another space-time continuum by the electromagnetic storm. Then I found a convincing explanation by Josh Daniel, on Slate.com. He writes: ''Before Davidson leaves the ape planet, there's a quick shot of Limbo, the orangutan slave trader, rummaging through his spaceship and slyly pocketing something. Evidently whatever he pockets contains the secret to space travel. (Maybe it's a manual: 'Space Travel So Easy, a Chimp Could Do It.') Thade, who's pointedly left alive at the end of the climactic battle, must have built a ship, flown into the time-warping electromagnetic storm, and landed on Earth at some point before Davidson returned. Then he led Earth's apes in a rebellion against humans, took over the Earth, and had the monument built for him. Of course, back on their home planet, the apes don't even have simple motors yet. So, whatever Limbo takes from the spaceship allows them to, in Thade's lifetime, master physics, build computers, design space suits, test spacecraft, and send the general into space while he's still young enough to conquer the Earth. Remember, we didn't say it was plausible.''

The last posts explanation was getting into scifidoms arena of looking into incidental irrelevances and using them to make up any old blither.
On this forum i want to know how this monkey rubbish can be explained to an intelligent movie goer,not someone with an attic full of dr who memorabillia.
Was he even on earth?
It didnt look like earth when seen from space.
Thing is,as the plot of the original is the most "plausible" story,(astronaut flung to earth of distant future where apes have evolved/dominated)and also we are clearly alerted that the apes in the newy are genetically enhanced i thought it was gonna be straightforward,same story with a genetic angle to make it sit more comfortably with a modern audience.
It didnt work on any level except "the apes were cool"
At least he made the warmongering speciesist one a chimp.I think it was probably just patched together in post production,

No, he wasn't on Earth. His ship went looking for him, and managed to crash land on the same (alien) planet as him many years before he did. By the time he got there, the monkeys they had injected stuff into to make 'em clever had taken over

It wasn't Earth, 'cos it had two moons.
I'm sticking with my theory.
STILL doesn;t explain where they got the horses.

I want to know if a film of The Chrysalids exists.

I want to know!

>I want to know if a film of The Chrysalids exists.
>
>I want to know!

As far as I'm aware, the only Wyndham novels to be filmed are The Day of the Triffids (1961, not too good) and The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned, 195?). Triffids and Chocky's Children also made into TV shows.

Now, The Kraken Wakes would make a good film...