**** Spoiler alert! This review reveals major plot elements of the film Planet of the Apes.

Planet of the Apes (2001, directed by Tim Burton)

About:
The new Planet of the Apes movie - released in 2001 - is not an exact remake of the original 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. But, the 2001 version does have similarities to the original. The new Tim Burton film takes place far away from Earth around the year 2029. Our protagonist is a human being, astronaut Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg), who is on a space research station called Oberon. Most of the station's crew are human beings, but there are about twenty genetically-enhanced chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans who are also on the ship, caged until ready for use. Although the apes are smart, they still can't speak like a human.

While on the run, Davidson meets up with thousands of other human savages who had been hiding in the wilderness and wages a battle against the ape army that pursued him from the ape city. During the heat of battle, a space capsule lands right in the middle of the battlefield, and from the capsule emerges Davidson's chimp-friend that he knew in 2029. Both Davidson and the new chimp had been transported to the same planet at roughly the same month in time (plus or minus a few days). The ape-human battle suddenly ceases and both the apes and humans look agape at the mysterious new chimp with the technologically-advanced spaceship. The apes are persuaded by the humans to take care of the chimp astronaut, while Davidson is allowed to leave the planet in the chimp's spacecraft and return back to his own time.

Once in space, Davidson's capsule is somehow redirected back into the same space-storm that had brought him to the ape planet in the first place. He goes through the time-space storm again, and his ship is transported back in time to something later than 2029 (it's many decades later — in the year 2155). But the year is still earlier than on the ape planet he had escaped. Davidson again crash-lands, but this time he crash-lands on Earth in Washington, D.C. The film ends with Davidson staring at a famous statue but it's not of a marble Abraham Lincoln seated at his marble chair, rather it's the giant marble statue of an ape general but with the same pose as Lincoln's statue. It seems that in the year 2155, the apes had also overtaken humanity on Earth. Davidson, to his horror, is captured by armed ape police in police cars. The film ends with a sense of doom, that apes had become not just smart enough to be stone-age/iron-age conquerors as on the recently-visited ape planet, but smart enough to be computer-age conquerors who can make automobiles, guns, helicopters, and radios here on Earth.

Positives:
Director Tim Burton has leant his unique visual style to the film, and injected it with his unique quirky style of humor. The opening credits show a giant gorilla in the background while the credits roll. On the gorilla's armored breastplate is a stylized image of an ape that scowls with stylized oversized fangs. If any other director than Burton had made the film, the breastplate artwork would have looked different. Instead, Burton has chosen this artwork which is very suggestive of a complex ape culture that we will see in the film. Burton has a unique visual style that audiences have come to love. The breastplate artwork is uniquely Burton-esque — and effective. Burton injected many humorous moments into the ape culture. In one scene we see a 'monkey grinder,' but in reverse. An upright chimpanzee is 'grinding' his musical instrument box while a tiny human dances to the music, to the amusement of ape passersby.

Actress Estella Warren is a very pretty actress. She played a supporting character (one of the 'wild' humans who gets captured along with Captain Davidson). Warren definitely caused some on-screen sexual tension with the star, Mark Wahlberg.

In Planet of the Apes, we do get a sense of the peril that mankind has faced. We never see the apes overthrow Man in the movie, but it is implied — it has taken place in the past, and the viewer sees this through the protagonist Davidson. It is especially doom-filled at the film's end, when Davidson realizes he cannot escape ape rule. The film is yet another warning of Man's ingenuity coming back to bite him. In this way, Planet of the Apes resembles Frankenstein or The Terminator.

Lukewarms:
The music was composed by Danny Elfman. The musical score did an adequate job of suggesting primitive music that one would expect on an ape planet. The apes would have their own non-human music, and banging on things would seem very ape-like. The main theme sounded a lot like bamboo of different lengths being banged to create different tones. It sounded unlike any other traditional musical instrument. The score was orchestral with primitive accents throughout the main film, but disappointingly, the end credits had a synthesizer mashup, that ruined the earlier foreboding orchestral mood. The synthesizer song was good, but out of place in the film. Otherwise, the musical score was adequate.

Negatives:
Early in the film, Davidson and some other humans were captured, placed in a cage on a wheeled cart, and transported toward the ape's city. The Ape City was not really visible, and was more of a hill in the distance. The hill could almost have been any hill or mountain. It would have been better with one more 'approach shot' that signified how big and complex the city really was. Instead, there is a wide view of a hill with flickering fires on it. Suddenly the human prisoners are inside the city. But the city could just as easily have been a small village of a hundred apes, as far as the viewer was concerned. There is no connection between the true size of the ape city, which must have contained thousands and thousands of apes. If the true magnitude of the ape city was more prominent in the viewer's mind, he could better capture the true intelligence of the new apes. In other words, big cities = big intelligence.

Time Travel. Although human time travel is currently impossible, it is a common Sci-Fi movie element. The viewer must temporarily suspend reality while watching such a Sci-Fi adventure film. However, it seems more plausible to me if time-transport goes in only one direction. The time machine in Back to the Future was deliberately designed to move objects back and forth in time, so it seems more plausible. Instead, in Apes, Captain Davidson is first transported by the space-storm into his future, then back again into his past. That seems too much to believe for a physical phenomenon like a space storm. Why would a random space storm change time both forward and backward?

The film was set in 2029. That's only 28 years from 2001. Somehow this is too short a timespan for human beings to have giant space stations that explore other planets. Even genetic DNA splicing with human DNA seems like it should be far later in human future than 28 years. The ethical aspects of DNA manipulation are still being figured out today, so the movie seems like it should be set in a far later time, like in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, for example.

There are three plot holes I can think of:

On the aforementioned breasplate armor, there were many symbols from an ape-language. If the apes speak English, then what is the meaning of the strange characters that are not from the English alphabet? The apes should have their own language if they have their own alphabet, no? Also, how did the apes acquire speech, if they could not talk on the original spaceship Oberon back in 2029? The engineered-chimps and other apes in 2029 were more monkey-like, and could not yet speak. So how did the apes come to speak at all, and why would they be speaking English if no human had ever taught them English?

There are human beings on the ape planet. How did humans get there in the first place? We are told later in the film, that Captain Davidson's mother-spaceship Oberon had crash-landed on the ape planet and all the humans were killed by the ape escapees. Yet there are thousands of humans on the ape-planet. How did any founding humans get on the ape planet at all?

On the ape planet, the apes rode horses. Where did the horses come from? We saw no evidence of horses on Davidson's space mothership Oberon back in 2029. The only possible source of horses would be from the space mothership that had crashed many centuries ago. So how did horses get onto the new ape planet?

There was one bad dialog moment. It was between Captain Davidson and a female chimp that sympathized with humans.
     Female chimp: "The universe seems only to reward cruelty with power."
     Davidson: "No... Not always. Not if we fight back."
That dialog made me wince. So... is the character saying the way to prevent violence is... with more violence? It was unintentionally ironic dialog and it stood out.

Trivia:
The ape vs. human battle at the films' end shows a bald human character falling to the ground and screaming as he falls. The exact same scream can be heard in Star Wars - a New Hope when a stormtrooper falls to his death in a giant metal chasm on the Death Star. The original scream was taken from a 1951 film and has now been used in dozens of movies. It has become known as the 'Wilhelm scream.'

Overall:
In order to summarize the 2001 Planet of the Apes, it's worth comparing it with the plot of 1968 version of Planet of the Apes.
To put things in perspective: The original version of Planet of the Apes starred Charlton Heston and was made in 1968. Heston's astronaut character, Taylor, is in a space capsule and somehow gets transported through a time-warp. He then lands back on what he thinks is Earth. Indeed, it is Earth, but it is different somehow. He is lost. He gets captured by apes that can walk upright like a man. In this world, apes are the masters and humans are speechless vermin. Only later does the human astronaut realize that Earth has undergone a great nuclear war. He has somehow been transported into man's future by many centuries. The chimpanzees and other genetically-enhanced ape species that were once servants to man, had overtaken the planet.

The 1968 movie had a more serious tone. The original film suggested more of an ape culture with real differences between the chimps, orangs, and gorillas. It showed a more complex ape society, with its own internal ape species biases that the 2001 film lacked.

Unlike, the 2001 film, the 1968 movie took place on Earth, so it is not a real stretch to imagine horses still existed after a nuclear-war. Whereas, in the 2001 film, we don't ever find out where the horses came from, so it's a puzzle.

The original 1968 film had more of a sense of ape-superiority (because their humans couldn't speak, there was little evidence of humans being smart). Because they couldn't speak, the wild humans used a few hand gestures to communicate. Contrast this with the 2001 film version where humans spoke. Humans speaking made them seem more intelligent, despite being below the apes. This was a relative deficiency in the 2001 movie.

The original 1968 film had much more of a message about mankind: that man's warlike nature will be his downfall. The 1968 film even had the advantage of being released during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, with all its potential for an apocalyptic nuclear battle. The Burton version of Planet of the Apes film has less of that feeling of impending human-caused self-destruction. The 2001 film seems to show a human-caused laboratory accident gone wrong, rather than man's downfall due to his bellicosity. Still, both the new movie and original one are warnings about human technology gone awry.

The 1968 film was a serious movie with some funny dialog. While the 2001 Burton version was perhaps too funny, which distracted from the challenges that protagonist Davidson must be feeling.

Still, despite some flaws in the film, Burton has created a watchable film that would have been entirely different without him. The Burton version benefits from CGI special effects that were impossible in 1968. For modern audiences who never saw the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes, the 2001 version is a useful introduction to the Apes franchise, and would be enjoyable to them. To someone who has seen the 1968 version, the new 2001 film is good in its own right, and an interesting addition to the Apes franchise. While there were some flaws in the film, the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes was still a good movie.

Rating: 7/10

                               For your viewing pleasure →

This video was shot on a nice sunny summer day of 2007 in southern California, USA
It shows mostly longboarders.