A Timeline and Exploration of the Original 'Planet of the Apes' Franchise - ComingSoon.net

By Brad Brevet

ON August 2, 2011

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A scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Photo: 20th Century Fox
Planet run by Apes,impossible you say ? "

I revisited the original Planet of the Apes films recently and when I say original I mean I didn’t include Tim Burton’s 2001 remake. I’ve seen that film once in my life and that was enough and it didn’t really suit my intentions. However, the original five films are awfully entertaining as well as thought-provoking. Themes of slavery, power, nuclear war, ignorance, intolerance and so on are peppered throughout all five films, five films that are also incredibly dark in nature.

Now Fox has revived the franchise with Rise of the Planet of the Apesmarking the first film in the franchise to not use men in rubber ape suits, but instead employing the talents of the folks at WETA Digital (Avatar) to use performance capture to create all-digital photo-realistic apes.

Bad film or not, the makeup effects in Burton’s 2001 remake were spectacular, and Tim Roth as Thade was excellent, but the story was a mess, leading to an atrocious conclusion. Rise of the Planet of the Apesproved to be a much different scenario and who knows, maybe in 38 years people will be looking back at this new series the same way I am the original late ’60s and early ’70s predecessors.

Before we get started, if you’re wondering how Rise of the Planet of the Apes may or may not fit in with the original five films, it is something of a remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the second best film in the original Apes franchise, which features Roddy McDowell as Caesar, a chimpanzee who leads a revolt against mankind as his brethren are being treated as pets and slaves.

The difference, however, between Conquest and Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the origin of the simian revolution. The original franchise, as a matter of fact, has two origin stories and Rise of the Planet of the Apespresents something of a third with genetic engineering leading to the development of intelligence in apes rather than evolution or time traveling chimps from the future. The new film certainly pays homage to the films of the past and includes several references to events seen in previous films, the characters and the actors. Perhaps you’ll spot a few as I breakdown the story of the past and see what clues it may hold.

What follows is a quick look at the timeline as presented in the five films that make up the original Planet of the Apes franchise: Planet of the Apes(1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Not all details are covered, but I believe it presents a clear picture of the overall story.

November 3954

A scene from Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

A spaceship that left Earth in 1972 carrying a four-person crew — Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner), Dodge (Jeff Burton) and Stewart (Dianne Stanley) — crash lands on Earth in November 3954. Stewart is dead when the ship lands, leaving Taylor, Landon and Dodge to explore what is seen as a barren wasteland until they ultimately stumble across a colony of intelligent apes and a world where humans are hunted and studied just as apes were the year they left Earth.

Dodge is killed, Landon lobotomized and Taylor is injured, put on trial and eventually freed by two chimpanzee scientists, Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowell), who escape with Taylor and a female companion (Nova played by Linda Harrison) to the Forbidden Zone, an area destroyed by nuclear war.

NOTE: The chronometer reads 11-25-3978 when the ship crashes, but in Beneath the Planet of the Apes we learn the ship’s chronometer was off by 24 years.

January 3955

A scene from Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

After escaping and venturing on his own, leaving Cornelius and Zira behind and departing as equals, Taylor and Nova discover the planet Taylor has been on this entire time is actually Earth, destroyed by nuclear war.

February 3955

A scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

A second spaceship, launched in February 1973, after the first ship dropped out of communication, follows Taylor’s ship’s trajectory in a rescue effort and crash lands on Earth carrying Brent (James Franciscus) and Maddox. Maddox dies shortly after landing.

Brent eventually runs into Nova, but Taylor has gone missing. Nova takes him to Cornelius and Zira. Brent and Nova eventually head into the Forbidden Zone.

A Timeline and Exploration of the Original 'Planet of the Apes' Franchise - Page 2 of 3 - ComingSoon.net

By Brad Brevet

ON August 2, 2011

00

February 3955

A scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

Brent stumbles upon a group of telepathic mutant humans living in what was once New York’s subway system where they are housing a nuclear bomb.

February 3955

A scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

Brent finds Taylor imprisoned by the mutant humans and as they try to escape the apes are attacking the underground compound.

February 3955

A scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

As the battle wages on, Brent and Nova are killed and Taylor is the last to be shot, but before he dies he triggers the nuclear bomb, destroying Earth and all its inhabitants. Boom, done, everyone’s dead.

April 1973

A scene from Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

While battle waged in the underground mutant compound at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in the opening moments of Escape from the Planet of the Apes we learn Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo) were able to find Taylor’s original crashed ship, restore it and conduct a test flight. As a result, when Taylor triggered the bomb the three apes were sent back in time to 1973, one year after Taylor’s original mission, creating an alternate timeline.

May 1973

A scene from Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Milo are originally held captive in a zoo on arrival, but after Dr. Milo is killed by a gorilla, Zira reveals she can speak. Cornelius and Zira become a media sensation for a short time until it is learned Zira is pregnant and in a drunken mistake she reveals what the future holds for apes and humans. As a result, in an attempt to preserve the human race, it is declared Zira’s baby must never be born.

Before the baby can be aborted, Cornelius and Zira escape, Zira gives birth to a baby chimp they name Milo and give to Armando (Ricardo Montalban), a traveling circus owner. Shortly thereafter Cornelius and Zira are found and shot along with what is believed to be Zira’s baby.

May 1973

A scene from Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

It is then revealed that the baby Zira was carrying was actually not her child and Milo is still alive with Armando. At the end of Escape from the Planet of the Apes the film fades to black with Milo saying, “Mamma.”

July 1991

A scene from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

In 1983, a parasite brought back from space killed off all dogs and cats. Later that same year apes became the predominant pet for humans.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes begins eight years after that incident and Armando has been raising Milo, whose name has been changed to Caesar (Roddy McDowell), for the last 17 years. He can now speak, but he is the only ape that can although other apes are showing advancements in domestic tasks and serve as pets, but more appropriately slaves and servants for humans.

The rumors of Cornelius and Zira’s baby persists and in the film’s opening moments Caesar speaks while witnessing violence against an ape. Armando takes the blame and ultimately dies attempting to escape police custody while Caesar enters the Ape Integration Training program, all while trying not to let on he can speak.

September 1991

A scene from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

Caesar begins what I have to assume served as a major influence on David Fincher’s Fight Club (after all one of the names The Narrator uses at the Testiculr Cancer Support Group is Cornelius). Caesar forms his own Project Mayhem and begins building an army that will soon lead to revolution.

Caesar leads his simian army in full revolt and gives the menacing speech you can watch above, a moment I would say is right up there with Taylor’s discovery of the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes as the two greatest moments in the franchise:

Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch and conspire and plot and plan for the inevitable day of Man’s downfall–the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we will build our own cities in which there will be no place for humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you… NOW!

That speech was presented a little differently upon theatrical release with a softer and more hopeful conclusion. The Blu-ray edition of the film allows you to watch the unrated version of the film, though, without the tacked on soft and cozy ending.

June 2004

A scene from Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

13 years have passed since Caesar’s revolt. The world has been largely destroyed by a global nuclear war waged by mankind in a last ditch effort to survive the apes uprising. It failed. The apes are now starting from scratch in a ravaged land and humans are now serving apes, teaching them to read and write and performing menial tasks.

June 2004

A scene from Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

During an expedition to the ruins of New York City, the apes come across a group of mutant humans as well as finds a record of Caesar’s parents’ story of the future and the destruction that lead to their time-traveling flight. The question the audience now raises is whether that future is truly in the offing or if the future has now been permanently altered after Cornelius and Zira traveled back in time.

In Escape from the Planet of the Apes Cornelius quotes the Sacred Scrolls, telling of the first ape that dared defied humans, saying:

“On an historic day, which is commemorated by my species and fully documented in the Sacred Scrolls, there came Aldo. He did not grunt. He articulated. He spoke a word which had been spoken to him time without number by humans. He said, ‘No’.”

Aldo is revealed in Battle for the Planet of the Apes to be a gorilla general in Caesar’s army played by Claude Akins.

June 2004

A scene from Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Photo: Fox Home Entertainment

Learning of the apes whereabouts, the mutant army goes on the attack, scared the apes will capture them and also make reference to a nuclear bomb they are holding and expect to launch should they be defeated.

The mutants are defeated, but the surviving mutants choose not to launch the bomb, but instead revere and respect it, just as the telepathic mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes did. Is it a sign history will repeat itself? It seems so.

As for the original timeline, before Cornelius and Zira upset it by traveling back in time, it too is different than the one that will be presented in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The original story tells of apes naturally evolving in the year 2050, 450 years after a similar parasite killed dogs and cats and saw man taking on apes as pets. 50 years later, Aldo leads the Ape Revolution, being the first ape to say “no” to his master as referenced in the quote from Cornelius above.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) and James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Photo: 20th Century Fox

This is where questions begin to arise when looking at Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In the one trailer I saw the apes did not speak, will we hear them speak in this film? My guess is we will in the final moments, which will leave us with more story to be told in eventual sequels.

I also wonder if this film will merely through nods for those looking to the original franchise or if it will be looked at as a complete reboot of the franchise. Considering it is set in present-day San Francisco, reboot is the only way I can look at it. The press notes don’t even mention Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, though senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri does call it an “origin story” saying, “Planet of the Apes is such a classic and beloved film that the idea of working on an origin story – the story about how it all came to be – was interesting, especially being able to focus on the point of view of Caesar as our main character.”

The official synopsis also calls it an origin story in the truest sense of the term, which is a bit confusing if you look at either the original or alternate timelines I mentioned above. Based on those, in 2011 the world was either dominated by apes or the idea of an Ape Revolution was over 500 years away.

My assumption is that the only way to look at it is to say it’s the origin of a brand new story that simply holds a common bond to the original franchise and the characters created by Pierre Boulle in his 1963 novel “La Planete des singes” (Monkey Planet). Either way, I hope it satisfies.

Now, I leave you with a special treat I found while putting this article together, the entirety of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes presented by YouTube. If you haven’t seen it and enjoy a bit of campy science fiction meets science fact have a look below. Personally, the build to the finale is excellent if you ask me.

As for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it hits theaters this Friday, August 5. For more on the film including pictures, trailers and more click here.