My first memories of Planet of the Apes is the musical with Troy Mcclure on The Simpsons. Perhaps not the best way to get introduced into the franchise, besides that it was my mother telling stories of the movie and specifically the tv show she used to watch about it. I also remember Chris Jericho and Stephanie Macmahon Apes segemnt on wwf, which confused me since I was young enough to think wrestling was real but old enough to know those weren’t real apes from the movie. It wasn’t until the 2001 Tim Burton remake that I watched anything but my memories are a bit blurry, I might’ve watched the original movie marathon at night before that. So let’s take a look at different spin-offs and Alternate Unvierse sequels to the Planet of the Apes.
Planet of the Apes 2001
I really like the look of the movie, I feel the ape make up and suits are a nice modern version of the original ones, still looking alien like while remaining more ape like. A nice mix o realistic and unrealistic of the original and reboot movies. It’ll always be my preferred look. I like that the movie treid for some original choices and remixed other ones since it’s indeed something new. At the very same time, there are many bad choices all around and it’s not a solid movie, rather forgettable one It’d be hard to write sequels to this universe and I don’t feel Burton added enough of his style here either. It just kind of is.
I do find the perfect looking human girl distracting, even more than Nova from the original movie. The prior take to this remake was having a new direct sequel to the original movie igonring everything else with a Spartacus type approach for the humans to take back the planet. This woudl’ve ignored the other sequels that had come before, I feel that woudl’ve been the far better alternative to what we got.
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Planet of the Apes TV Series
The concept of this tv show is odd, it tells a new set of humans going to the planet of the apes, and uses some of the lore of the original movies though it’s placement in continuity could be a bit tricky because of the differences. Here the humans are not mute and the apes are living on the west coast an know of the abandoned cities of the humans. I guess it can still work as a prequel on the other side of the planet. Humans talking gives a new dynamic to the Ape / Human relations and conflicts which works to the favors of the show. You have two austronauts that become fugitives because they showed far more intelligence and befriend a chimp. Each episode is them going through different conflicts or resolving problems of some apes or humans.
Everything is on a smaller scale since it’s on a much lower budget but the situations are interesting inspite of the budget though sometimes you can tell how they stretched things to make certain stories work or extend. Some episdes can be boring because of this, it doesn’t help that it’s just a slower show because of the time it came out. The episodes have generic names but they did edit most episodes into TV Movies and gave them more appropriate titles: Back to the Planet of the Apes, Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes , Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes, Life, Liberty and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes, Farewell to the Planet of the Apes. The show deserved a conclusion of some type.
I previously talked about the Planet of the Apes animated show which is also solid in its own way. I won’t go into details with comics here or any of the paodies like the Cher one. The Planet of the Apes franchise is apt for more adaptations, I’d love a new tv series or cartoon. These two seem like the forgotten entries in the franchise and they deserve some spotlight which is what this is for.