Planet of the Apes review (1968)

 Number 363 on the top 1000 films of all time is Franklin J Schaffner's 1968 science-fiction Planet of the Apes.

Set two thousand years in the future, astronauts George Taylor (Charlton Heston,) Dodge (Jeff Burton) and Landon (Robert Gunner) crash-land on an alien planet. The planet is a desolate wasteland where the dominant form of life are sentient, intelligent apes. Meanwhile humans have been rendered mute savages including Nova (Linda Harrison.)

This is the film that has spawned one of Hollywood's biggest franchises including endless sequels, reboots and Tim Burton's god-awful 2001 remake. But this is where it all started.

And it was a great start to the franchise. Right from the start, we were given a mystery to solve and across the two-hour runtime, the layers of the mystery were peeled back leading to one of the best-executed twist-endings in science-fiction. Don't worry, I won't spoil it here. Although this film is almost sixty years old. If you have somehow avoided the twist ending then you've performed a miracle. All you need is to martyr yourself and you'll become a saint.

What I liked most about this film was its quiet, intimate nature. There is a minimal cast, few sets and a lack of explosions and gunfire. Taylor's fellow astronauts are quickly lobotomised/killed by the apes leaving him and the other humans to be taken prisoner by the apes.

I was half-expecting him to lead a rebellion and to topple the oppressive ape society - this was the predictable way the story could have gone, but instead Taylor breaks himself and Nova, for some reason, out of jail where they escape the apes and ride off into the sunset - with the help of a family of scientists who became unlikely allies.

Let's talk about Nova who seemed pretty superfluous to the pitch. The scientists originally wanted Taylor to mate with her, hence why the two were imprisoned together. Instead, when Taylor makes a break for it, he insists that Nova comes too, because of reasons. And she agrees because of reasons. And later on, she rides off into the sunset with him, because of reasons, instead of returning to her own people. The fact that she had no lines and did little but stand around and look pretty, it was difficult to see her a little more than eye-candy.

Charlton Heston made for a good leading man even if he was a bit theatrical for my tastes. Nonetheless, if you're going to watch the Planet of the Apes franchise, do yourself a favour and start here - not with Tim Burton's terrible remake.