coleslaw

Alright, this movie was really cool for the most part. Some pretty good action sequences, some parts that I laughed at which I don't think were intended to be laughed at (like when the little CMOS (hehe) mokey got throw against the wall), BUT THE ENDING??? What the heck is up with that??? The whole travel-forward-in-time thing was somewhat believeable, but the ending just was not believeable at all!!

So did Leo's mothership travel through space in real-time and crash on the ape planet? Or did they, too, hit the magnetic storm, propelling them through time and space. If the latter is the case, then the story has no credibility at all because Leo would have crashed before they got there, unless somehow the mothership was propelled at a much higer velocity, causing it to arrive in the future but still much sooner than "the space man."

But the ending, oh the ending. Can someone explain this to me??

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revil

Ugh, I liked the movie for the most part. The ending is the one thing i disliked. That is just confusing! I can't concieve any possible way that could have happened! I guess i just have to wait for the dvd and listen to the commentary.

Chinpoko_Mon

okay.. this is gonna be somewhat of a long email...

With regards to how the mothership/research station got there before Leo did, it's all got to do with the magnetic storm effect on time and how "uncertain" it is. It's just like how come Cmos (the second coming) arrived after Leo, even though his pod went into the storm first. So at which point in time the pod or mothership showed up at the planet was kinda by chance.

As for the ending, my rationale is that since Thade did not die as we saw in the alternate future. He may have been able to persuade some of the apes who were in favor of the "old" way of life with humans as slave, as oppposed to being equals in the new future. So he managed to become free again... and then since now they know of the technolgy available to them at "COLIMA". They begin to innovate and successfully build their own spacecraft, with which they travel to space, locating the same magnetic storm and traveling "back" in time to before the era of Ab Lincoln and all that. Bringing the apes to power and of course dominance on the planet Earth.

I guess this leaves room for a sequel where they'll show Leo try and go back in time and stop Thade from ever going to our past to change our future..

Hope I made some sense....

LPMiller

Ok.

#1 CMOS was the SON of the ape that got lost. The ape that got lost was Percules

#2 Did no one notice that the space station had 3 spaceships?

#3 Did no one notice how much tim roths ape looked like the lincoln ape?

Ok, I wasn't big into the ending either, but here is how it COULD have worked out...though frankly, I dont' buy it.

Tim Roth gets into a surving spaceship. He's not an idiot, I mean, we've seen that a monkey can fly it!

Ends up in the storm, goes back in time to earth. Starts monkey revolution. Mates with lots of chimps.

His descendant becomes monkey lincoln.

or

When Marky Mark goes back in time, he crosses universal lines, ending up in a parallel Earth, not actually his own. Note too that he couldn't have gone back to 2029, unless Chevy Impalas are better built than I think - notice the cop cars.

So, some variation of tim roth going back and screwing things. Then the sequal will be sort of like Planet of the Apes 3, only Marky is the guy the government fears, and I would even predict that in that movie, he will screw a hottie ape, die, and the ape will find out she is preggers.

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Chinpoko_Mon

Well, the inscription on the wall did say, "in memory of Thade"....kinda figured that it was the Thade that we knew. OR Thade II or III or IV.

That was another one of my many theories as well... but it's too Star Trekkish. All this talk of space-time continuem, alternate time lines/universes...

coleslaw

Yes, I now remember them telling Perecles that he was a father.

Actually, the mothership had 4 pods. Perecles was sent out in Alpha pod, and Leo pursued him in the Delta pod. If your reasoning is correct, CMOS would have taken one of the other 2 pods (Beta or Gamma), and General Thade would have journeyed in the remaining pod.

Tim Roth's character was General Thade, correct? When they finally showed the face in the Lincoln Memorial, the quote on the wall mentioned the memory of Genaral Thade.

[Edited by coleslaw on 07-29-2001 at 12:13 PM]

coleslaw

There are some other plot holes as well. Where did the horses come from? If all of the humans on the planet are decendants of the Oberon crew, where did the African man and the Asian couple come from? Also, were there any apes on the Oberon, or just chimps? Seems peculiar to me that monkeys could evolve into apes in such a short time.

LPMiller

Well, I missed the name on the wall, actually

as to the horses, I just assumed that the space station, since it had genetcially enchanced chimps, had other genetic stock as well. Notice they didnt' have a lot of horses, implying a breeding program not fully successful.

CMOS I dont' think took a ship...you can faintly hear the lady doc talk about how she raised CMOS, just before the static kills the recording. something like I raised him from a baby, and he is leading the rebellion. So really, there might have been 2 pods left over - maybe thade somehow got more then one ape to go back with him. I do kind of doubt the apes would have kept him locked up in the oberon.

I also just assumed that they had more then one kind of monkey on board, though you are right, they should have shown that better. Possibly the genetically enhanced chimps had DNA from other monkeys, and they didn't always breed true. I imagine cross breeding, if possible, would also affect the species as a whole. I mean, gorillas and chimps don't normally get it on.

I mean, if you look at the original series of movies, in the 3rd/4th one, only chimps were raised up to be pets - so where did the gorillas and orangatangs come from? Again, safe to assume there was more then one genetic enhancement program going on. I imagine the station had many such projects. Why they would have horse dna, I have no idea, but I can at least stretch it enough to think they might have.

As for blacks and asians, I dunno, international space station. There had to be a decent amount of crew on that thing, or the humans never would have survived in any kind of numbers.

i6s1

I figure they'll explain the ending in "Planet of the Apes II: Marky Mark Makes out with More Monkeys"

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revil

hehe, you should have heard all the people in the theater i went to when marky mark kissed the ape.

Grimm

Planet of the Apes SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED. And it sucked too.
Even the Charlton Heston cameo wasn't good. Tim Burton should be beaten within an inch of his life for that film, then put into the hospital until he has fully recovered and then beat again. Some of the costumes were good, most sucked. The story line wasn't even there. Did I mention that it sucked? Well it's a wasted $8.50.

And for those who weren't paying attention CMOS was one of the apes on the spaceship that crashed way back in the past. He led the revolt against the human survivors. There was more than one kind of ape in the cages on the spaceship. There was no explination for the presence of horses. The ending mad no sense whatsoever, it must be a lead in for the next movie, if one is made.

How could Tim Burton make such a bad movie?

sho.gun

Agreed, this movie seems unfinished and they just threw in a "quickie" ending. Remember that part when the evil leader ape got his hands on the UZI? That did not play any part in the movie. Also, what's with the ion storm?? They said they finally found the ion storm when all that time it was like 3 feet in front of them, makes no sense. And, if the captain of the space station hesitated that much to let marky boy go get his chimp, why the hell did he risk his whole ship to find marky boy?? The ending, oh the ending was the most horrible part, left me with one eyeball hanging out of my seriously confused head. And did they have to stick the romance part in there?? I mean, the guy kissed the ape, that was gross enough then right after he and the human girl kisses. Was that just some kind of cheap love crap Tim Burton felt he had to put in? As for the horses issue, I thought I heard insect noises in the jungle, crickets I think.. now how did crickets get in there? Or maybe I was so whacked out of my brain trying to figure out the movie I was imagining cricket noises.

About the thing you guys were talking about regarding the extra pods on the mothership, I think if they have extra pods left, the human survivors would have used them to get out of the planet when the apes were starting to rebel. Either they leave with the pods or shove all the apes in there and send em off somewhere. I think that would make a lot more sense. But then, if this is correct, how the hell did Thade get to earth...

Oh yeah, I think I saw a scene in the previews with the statue of liberty on a beach and the humans were walking there. Didn't see this in the movie, I guess they've cut it out.

Apes drink water, therefore they shouldn't be that scared of them as the movie showed...

I bet I can go on and on but I'm getting a headache now, oh I did notice that the "human" symbol that the apes use to brand people looks a lot like the Quake logo..

Chinpoko_Mon

You mean towards the end? Well, it did make a point that humans aren't the only ones capable of great atrocities and such, as Thade's father had put it. That everyone, regardless of species, has the potential to become "evil".

It's "3 feet" in front of them because they had finally located it. Perhaps they had traveled/explored a long time to find it, seeing as how the ion storm was able to transcend time and space, in all probability the storm could fade in and out of space. Remember this is a Sci-Fi movie, not a documentary....

This in a sense had to deal with how humans treated the apes, that they weren't willing to go after a "chimp" because the value of its life is not equal to that of a human. Plus, if they didn't go after Leo, then there wouldn't be an explanation for how the humans and apes got to the planet...

The ending was kinda bad, in the sense that it left a lot of questions unanswered. But I guess it's leaves the door open for a sequeal, maybe next time, the studio execs will be smarter and not SET a release date until at least halfway through production. They had set the release date for this movie even before pre-production began, so it didn't leave much time for re-shooting and re-writing parts of the script. Most unfortunate....

oh, and I hope your eyeball is back in place...


I guess I agree with this somewhat.....Romance was not really necessary in this movie, should've been just straight sci-fi. If they wanted a romance angle, they should have at least shown some Estella Warren boobage...

Perhaps they did have horse DNA on board the Oberon, so they were able to clone a horse for their own use when they crashed. *once again, just assume certain things, cuz it's sci-fi* As for the cricket/insect sounds. Since the planet itself has all the conditions to support life, who's to say that the insects weren't already there in the first place? They just sounded very much like crickets that's all...

True, which is way I rationalized it by saying that after Leo left (and Thade was let out of the control room). Ape and humans began learning about the technology onboard the Oberon and developed very similar spacecrafts which allowed them to travel into space. Much easier since they probably had schematics to work with from the Oberon Computer.


I guess you didn't hear about this, but Tim Burton was rumoured to have film 7 different endings. So as to ensure that no one would know which one of the 7 is released in the final cut of the movie.


Cats drink water, I don't see my cat enjoying his bath. You might like to drink hot coffee, but you probably won't like soaking or swimming in it now would you? Plus apes have lots of fur, I'm sure it'll get pretty heavy once they get wet.

Quake RULES!

sho.gun

I thought Thade's father talked about how the UZI is a sign of human intelligence. I don't recall it being about evil except that it had the power of a thousand spears. I suppose it did play that part, but if that's its only purpose, they could've used a coat hanger, or speakers, or a flashlight. During the movie, I thought that UZI weapon was going to play a big part, like Thade is going to hold the human girl hostage when he knew he was going to lose, or maybe use it to kill Pericles to Leo's surprise.

Oh yeah, I was thinking, what if all that time they were on Earth, just different time or maybe it's a parallel existence of it? I mean, there was that one scene of statue of liberty right? That could explain cricket noises, although there weren't any other animals present.

This movie is like a riddle, they throw a bunch of stuff at viewers and hope the viewers would make a movie out of it by putting together the pieces in every sort of way imaginable. I bet what we're saying about all this is totally different than how they wanted it to mean.

[Edited by sho.gun on 08-01-2001 at 11:10 AM]

Chinpoko_Mon

yeah, I guess we'll just have to wait for the DVD to come out. Rent it and watch the Director's commentary and find out exactly what it was suppose to be all about.

Watch him tell us that the whole movie was just Leo's dream.... or something weird like that..

ArkiStan

Once again ChinpokoMon, I bow before your movie analyzing skills. I feel like a chimp.

Mezpin

Sorry to disappoint, but it looks like there's no "right" answer to what happens at the end.

Here's a link to this article:

Bruce Snyder, 20th Century Fox's head of distribution, talked to Zap2it.com about the controversial ending of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes movie. Following are his comments, which may contain spoilers for the film.

The new surprise ending, intended to top the original 1968 film's Statue of Liberty ending, has many viewers scratching their heads. But, Snyder told the site, "Actually, you're not supposed to be able to [explain it]. If the truth be known, it wasn't really supposed to make sense. It was just supposed to go 'whoa,' make you think. Now is he in another world, did he go back in time, did he get forward in time?"

Snyder added, "The reality is, there's no firm answer to that. It's whatever you want it to be. Everybody keeps looking for [the answer], but you've got to remember you just watched a movie about talking monkeys in outer space. Don't look for too much logic, you know." Apes is now playing.

And, yes, I was bored enough to actually try and find an answer.

Mezpin

ArkiStan

haha "just supposed to make you think..." God try Tim, but you haven't quite made another 2001 Space Odyssey.