Word: planetful
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...original "Planet of the Apes" was sci-fi with a conscience and camp with a purpose - not to mention one of popular cinema?s great all-time conceits. (You know, with the apes and the men). It came with higher hopes, and those were the hopes that Burton dashed when he decided to apply his "unique vision" to the sets - but not the script...
...Borrring. Heston?s Taylor, drawn in the same few strokes, was perhaps perfectly suited to be stranded on a high-concept sci-fi planet. Single - and a real ladies? man, by his own recollection - cynical, bitter and biting, Heston strides on to the "world turned upside down" already knowing that everyone he ever knew was dead, and he?s not shedding any tears. He?s searching ("Somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man") and much of the film?s power is derived from the fact that from the beginning, Taylor is on this crazy mixed...
...Pericles. But he couldn?t be less interested in the implied philosophical musings that come with the movie - and distinguished it from the mass of movies before or since - and on screen they suffer from lack of nourishment. (Wahlberg does manage a few good lines about how nutty this planet is, but the promising vein is under-tapped.) All he wants to do is go home. ("The Simpsons" already did this better, in a musical called "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want...
...This is the part when I?m supposed to say SPOILER AHEAD, but if you haven?t seen it yet you probably wouldn?t be reading this. Given that this was a planet of apes, and not just Earth, the structural nut of the movie - that the genetically enhanced lab apes on Davidson?s ship rose up and took over - is solid enough. Nobody was ever going to top the Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-sand trick from the original; simply having little Pericles be the father of a new civilization would have been more than satisfactory, if not very...
...giving Davidson a choice between staying with a half-dressed Estella Warren and flying the Yugo-sized space pod into a mysterious electromagnetic storm with unknowable consequences, Davidson doesn?t even consider sticking around. In fact, the whole movie he?s practically checking his watch - what, is a planet ruled by talking apes not interesting enough...