Midweek Mention... Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes

Sidey: Once the vomit goes though, it just becomes a run of the mill sweet.

Cris: You

do know that I had to search for Planet of the Apes Heston? Just because I wasn't sure what I'm looking for? And then on the questions on the group, it was like, Ah, is that the one with Heston Blumenthal?

I was just thinking That's Is that I'm pretty sure that guy wasn't in a movie, but

no,

Sidey: This is the, the genesis of Ape Week.

Reegs: Yes. Back it all started.

Sidey: all

Dan: Yeah. The origin

Sidey: Right back to 1968. Yeah. Hmm.

Dan: that is, that's before man was invented really, I

Sidey: guess. Yeah, and we have spoken about this film before because it's cropped up in, I think, like, brilliant endings.

Yeah. And possibly other things of that nature.

Dan: My first time seeing this the whole way

Sidey: through, is it? Honestly,

yeah,

Dan: because I freaked out on this kind of thing when I was a kid. I hated this. The faces freaked me out. The really? Yeah. Yeah. I, I've, I've never been there before

Reegs: I

liked

all of the Planet of the Apes movies as a kid. I don't remember them that well, but this week has encouraged me to think about revisiting them all. But yeah, I did remember seeing them all as a kid. Which included Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape to the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle of the Planet of the Apes and that was all of

Dan: was a lot of ape stuff. It was going ape, but I never got into any of them.

I've, this is my debut on any of this. Obviously, I was aware of Planet of the Apes because who

Reegs: The Simpsons, basically. See?

Dan: And the, the Simpsons have made that strong. But even before that, I, what put me off and anything at Planet of the Ape related was this film that we watched. Because this would. Be played and repeated and just the, the apes in clothes and stuff like that.

I Yeah. I could never

Sidey: my head around it. Well, we don't have apes in clothes right out of the gate. No. Because we start off in outer space.

Reegs: It's an amazing scene,

Sidey: He smokes a ciggy, which is honestly my favourite bit of the movie. He's

Reegs: ruminating on the nature of the universe, man's place in the universe, and then he puts his cigar down on the plastic

Sidey: console as he

Reegs: As he preps a little injection for himself as they're going to hyperspace.

They're, they're sort of testing some relativistic type

Sidey: Yeah, they give you, basically the plot of the movie is to say that they go interstellar on it, don't they? You can say that relativity they're traveling at X blah blah blah relative to the speed of light, or close to the speed of light.

Yes. And so they are

At such and

such a point in time, but only You know a couple of hours has

passed

Dan: think,

Sidey: not

Reegs: a wormhole

Dan: think passengers with,

Sidey: more cigarettes.

Dan: Yeah. But, you know, with a, a very much more dated and a smaller ship. But.

It was

basically that because they're all in status, aren't they?

They're all kind of just Stasis. Yeah, yeah. They're all waiting around with Stacy. And they're he's just Yeah, as you say, bringing us up to speed

Sidey: gives us enough exposition to get us to where we need to be. There's three fellas and there's another chick and he goes into his little status pod. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: It looks pretty flimsy

Sidey: be honest. Well, I immediately was taken aback by the chair he was sitting in. It looked like some really great sort of mid century lounge furniture, not necessarily the kind of thing you'd

Reegs: Well, this was set in the futuristic year of 1972. Side. So gotta remember

Dan: the, we, his,

Sidey: I don't know if that comes across as being critical. I was loving it.

Reegs: Yeah, of course. It looks great.

Dan: Well, yeah, I mean it's all very Funky 60s sort of 70s stuff, but it looks like a greenhouse He's going into like a little thing that you would just

Reegs: Yeah. When you get the stasis

Dan: just in the status pod But but they go to sleep. I mean he you can see him some great acting by Charlton there Just as he's going to sleep their lids go to like half closed and then they go like to Almost closed and then they're closed.

Reegs: closed. And then we get the titles and then a crash, a crash sequence as they tumble,

Dan: There's some kind of whirly kind of wormhole

Sidey: we what their mission was?

Reegs: It was to test the faster than light travel. Yeah. So, and then when they wake up they're all sporting beards. They're all hipsters.

Sidey: Yeah. A little bit of grey as well. He like age shames like we do to Dan every week.

Reegs: And when they, when they get out, one of the crew members Stuart,

Dan: Yeah, mrs. Stewart she had an air

Reegs: fossilized. Yeah. She had an air leak and she's kind of been

Sidey: Do you think, right? So when they went, cause there was three fellas and her, and when she was dead, they were like, well, I guess we're gay now.

Reegs: gay now. Yeah, probably. Well, they, I mean, they strongly say later on in the movie that they were going out, if they

Dan: they did go out,

Reegs: was to re colonise

Dan: using three fellas

Reegs: and one chick.

It's

Dan: Yeah, and they were saying we were so,

Sidey: I know, you'd do one of each, you'd do two, two, right, wouldn't you?

Reegs: I, well, I wouldn't do any of them I don't think, but

Sidey: But, but to do three fellas and one chick is slightly strange.

Reegs: three, well, yeah,

Cris: Is it,

Sidey: I mean, I've seen, I

Reegs: you need more women.

Sidey: I have seen content online that

Reegs: You only really need, right, you only really need one man and many women.

As they point out in

Cris: well, Yes. but, but

Sidey: I've seen content like that online as well.

Reegs: don't

Dan: think you still need two men, wouldn't you? At least,

Cris: if one doesn't work,

Dan: you know? But yeah, the the It was really strange.

Sidey: Well that is, that really is the least of

their

Dan: really

Sidey: she's

Reegs: that they're in has crash landed in a lake, a beautiful lake, it looks stunning, and has quickly sprung a leak and they have to abandon ship not before Charlton Heston takes a look at the ship's clock.

Dan: and he sees that there about four,

Reegs: Two thousand years in the future or something.

Dan: and a half thousand years in the

Sidey: And obviously it's, it's, it's completely practical. It's very clearly like a real thing that's in the,

Reegs: it? Yeah,

Sidey: yeah, yeah. That's really

Reegs: So they chuck the life raft over it as it slowly sinks. They grab their really handy metal rucksacks. This was my, one of my favourite details of the movie, a metal

Dan: All the time in the world abandoning that ship, by the way.

I was thinking, because he, like, They're all scrambling through and he goes, All right, we better abandon ship. Finally, geez, they're about to go under. But they throw out this, the, I don't know, a life raft about the size of a lilo, isn't it? And they're all on there. And they paddle it into shore. One of them puts down a a little flag of America.

Reegs: Oh, well, Heston is, he's like, we're here to stay, chaps. He's so stoic about it. He's like, this is it now.

Dan: He's like, this is it now, we're going to stay. Honestly, I think I would have been much the same. What are you going to do

Sidey: think, I honestly think I would have been much the same.

Dan: with

Sidey: He's like, well, what are you gonna do about

Reegs: Just get on with

Sidey: fucking ship is gone. So cry or just get on

Reegs: And when Landon plants an American flag he cackles maniacally for about 15 seconds. It's amazing.

Dan: It

Sidey: it's like a supervillain laugh.

Reegs: He starts being a real dick to one of the other astronauts. Landon, I think it is about his self interested motivations, you know, his hopes of being glory and Heston.

Dan: I'm sure you've got a statue somewhere. It's about 2000 years old and nobody's looked at

Sidey: you know is dead, he

Dan: Everyone and everything you've ever known is over now.

It's gone. It's dust

Reegs: Yeah, so anyway, they move on through the desert picking any direction, which way, that way, why not, basically, or whatever it is, whatever the exchange is, and as they go around, you see figures.

Sidey: Well, they see a plant first.

Reegs: do see a plant,

Sidey: They see a plant, and they're like, okay, it supports life, because it's been desert up to this point.

Dan: let's rip that

Reegs: The first thing

Sidey: other, other than Other than they've landed in literal water, so you know they must be

Reegs: be alive. Yeah, yeah.

Sidey: but they see a plant and they're like, Ooh, science. And then, yeah, then you see nearly dick actually.

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: But whilst they get naked, you see some natives in the background and you kind of think, are they going to be apes?

Reegs: Yeah.

They

Dan: they all take the clothes and eventually they're chased into.

a big field where they've got some crops and things and they meet these natives who are human at least in appearance and they don't seem very communitive communicative but they're happy to

Put on that put on a big fucking scene of running away when they hear some

Reegs: Well, first of all, Heston's, he does like, they're stood there and he's like, he says within six months we'll be ruling the place. Like, he's just got thoughts of domination

Dan: if that's the best they've got

Reegs: Yeah, and then yeah, they are caught up in the humans sort of start a kind of stampede when they hear the noises of hoofbeats and, you know, things coming through the long grasses and they run off and then suddenly this is when we get our first reveal that there are in fact monkeys, gorillas, riding horses.

Sidey: apes. yeah,

Dan: apes, and one of our three survivors manages to get shot in this

Sidey: shot right through the back of his neck,

Dan: shot through the back of the head, what's his name?

Dodge. Dodge gets shot.

Sidey: Right. So

so, so at this point.

This is our first introduction to the Planet of the Apes. There are apes. There are apes on horseback and they've got rifles. Yes. And then it seems to very soon after this, devolve into sticks and,

Dan: yeah, there's a few guns around, but not everybody's got

Sidey: hang on, they were like marksmen before. Now they're just

Reegs: They blew their budget in the one scene, and yeah.

Sidey: They kind of heard, they heard the,

Dan: well,

Sidey: What are we calling them?

Dan: they heard them coming.

Reegs: The humans?

Dan: No, and they,

Sidey: there's,

there's obviously there's Heston and his lot but it's always the natives they heard them over a really really small cliff a very very small cliff budgetary, wise

Reegs: wise. I still wouldn't fancy jumping off it like some of them were.

Sidey: Uh into into some water And there's quite good net content.

content. There's quite a lot of them are thrown into nets and captured. Some of the actual net content that you've shown didn't seem like it would have actually captured anyone.

Dan: anyone.

Well, there's a good net content as well because Charlton

Sidey: his shot

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: and

Reegs: very handy plot wise, especially when you're trying to use apes to hold up a mirror to

Dan: trying to use apes to hold up a mirror to humanity. He's in some

Sidey: Well, he's taken back, isn't

he? Yeah, that's it. He's in some cage. He's in, they seem to be subterranean.

He's in a holding cell. There are of course now we've seen them talk. So we're like, Oh, wow. And there are science apes and there are kind of more military apes, but he is

Reegs: Well, first of all, we meet Dr. Zira. She's like a behavioral scientist.

She's a chimpanzee. Like, this whole There's kind of a caste system that you see that evolves throughout the movie, but the chimps are the head of the science and that kind of area. And then the orangutans, Dr. Zaius, who's going to turn up in a bit and talk about what an abomination Langdon is. He's the, They're the head of the theocracy and

Sidey: he's heads of what are the two roles he's head of he's head of faith.

Yeah, and he's head

Dan: Science.

Sidey: science and you're like,

Reegs: is Yeah, I know exactly.

Sidey: away. You're like, I don't think those

Reegs: and three orangutan judges sit on the court that we'll have later. But and

Sidey: it's Cornelius

and

there's her.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And

they are far more open minded to because he is because Heston, whilst he's injured, he's not able to speak, but he is obviously able to communicate.

Dan: well. They call him bright eyes and he, he seems the, the rest of the humans actually haven't got much intelligence about him. They're not able to communicate, and they are as if ape-like, you know, I mean they're, they're just naturally doing things through instinct, eating, communicate, communicating, feeding or whatever.

Whereas bright Eyes, Charlton he's, or Taylor as his name is he.

seems to

Obviously be able to communicate although he can't talk he's using gestures with his hands and and then she's just amazed and she's like this one's actually trying to talk to us this one

Reegs: one's actually

Dan: the missing

Reegs: But there is a

Sidey: But there is a little bit of backstory because Cornelius has found a cave in the Forbidden Zone, which has evidence of something. And when you know what the twist is, it's obvious. But there's, there's a civilization that has happened many, many millennia ago that Seems to be being ignored by the faith leaders, but cornea's like, no, we need to investigate this.

Yeah. And that's being like hush

Reegs: it's a heresy, as is the idea of an intelligent human. It's an abomination, because as well, they have a sort of, we'll see it later when Heston escapes after they threaten to fucking castrate him. But there's like a great leader ape, a great thinker, I think it is.

So, you know, it's an abomination in his image.

Dan: That's right. There's ancient scrolls that they refer to every now and again.

Reegs: He gets they throw in a chick to him Nova, who becomes his sort of companion. Yeah. She is

Dan: And there's,

Reegs: and there are various attempts at communication, writing in the sand, that sort of

Dan: Well, there's a few whimsical moments at one point he's talking just to no one in particular, because no one can understand him about how much he, he, he made love to people. There wasn't, I didn't fall in love much, but there was lots of love making.

Reegs: Ha ha ha ha!

Dan: ha. So much love

Reegs: I realised how much the Troy McClure character was inspired by Charlton Heston

Dan: is Troy, Troy McClure is Charlton

Reegs: Yeah, really, really is throughout the movie. But if you can take that away for yourself, it is actually the bit where they're talking about Basically, Zaius gets pissed off with him, like, being really intelligent, and wants to geld him, they say, but they castrate him. So Charlton Heston hears this and thinks, fuck that, I'm off.

Sidey: off.

He tries

Reegs: tries to write on a bit of paper, or is that afterwards? He's

Sidey: It's not just the castration, he ends up, at one point when he runs away, he sees his mate, I forget his name, and he's been lobotomised. He's got this huge horseshoe

Reegs: No, that's later, that's during the hearing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

That's the kind of

Sidey: that's the kind of shit they're gonna do yeah

Reegs: do. It's very primitive. They're in, they're

Sidey: Because it's very primitive they're in they're in

These old school kind of cells, like you see in like a million westerns, where it's just bars. It's not very sophisticated at all. And if you just overpower one guard, you can get out. And so he's able to

Reegs: does escape and this is where we have the big sort of running through the apes village sort of thing and the climactic moment, I guess, where they corner him in the market and take your

Sidey: another net,

it's more net

Reegs: net stuff.

Yeah. And take your paws off me, you damn dirty ape. And he, oh my goodness, me

Sidey: It's flipped

Reegs: He can sing.

Sidey: their surprise

that he can, he can speak. Yeah.

Reegs: So this is where they then convene a big long hearing, basically. Yeah, there's a bit of see no evil, hear no evil,

Sidey: hit scene over here. Is it

Reegs: And it's a hearing really just to decide what he is. Is he an, is he an affront to chimp

Dan: decide what he is, is he in, is he in a front to To get away again and escape.

And he does this time, he, he runs away. And,

Reegs: well, not before he is, had a he's had a conversation with a private conversation with Zaas, where Zaas has basically admitted already.

Sidey: Yeah, he knows the script. Yeah,

Reegs: he doesn't really care what the guy says, he's gonna, you know, stick to his story.

He's not going to listen to any argument at all. So yeah, he's forced to escape. And he's escaped, I think Zira's nephew helps him escape, doesn't

Dan: that's right So there's basically some good apes and some bad apes and the good apes, following science and They want to learn about these humans and see what they can learn off them. And then you've got these other orangutan and and they're followers and everything with the apes who are running their, their planet.

And they know if word of

Sidey: know if

Dan: Yeah, they really are. They really are. And,

Sidey: out. Yeah, they do it a lot.

They do it a lot. Yeah,

Dan: because they need to keep everyone down for whatever reason. Of scrolls and information that humans fucked him up at one point and that's probably the story that gets passed down we don't hear this at the moment because We eventually go to this beautiful beach where the cliff is And they go in and find some artifacts, don't they which amounts to a

doll?

Sidey: been,

Reegs: They don't know what it is, do

Sidey: they? We've been told about it. We've been told that we've found evidence that there's a civil civilization pre

Reegs: ape

Dan: Pre apes.

Yeah

Sidey: In the forbidden zone any anytime someone's forbidden you're like, okay, what's going on there?

But they do, you know, they Part of the escape is to go there To find out exactly what's going on and we've given a reveal There's I think it's over a blanket and they pull that back and there's some bones there, but there's also a doll

And when they get the doll and it makes a noise, they're like that's pre Pre raphaelite

Reegs: Yeah, why would a monkey have made a talking human doll?

Dan: that says, mama.

Reegs: evidence of,

Dan: it says

Reegs: That humans predated them and could speak on the planet, which Dr.

Zayas again says basically, well, I knew about that already anyway.

Sidey: Blow up the blow up the cave.

Dan: Yeah. And, and Charlton at this. This stage is well, he just wants his own freedom and he, he wants to guarantee that the people that helped him or the apes that helped him Cornelius and Dr.

Zira aren't going to be mistreated because they helped him and they seem to be fairly solid enough that no, they'll be fine

Reegs: Yes, because we probably haven't made it completely clear, but the chimpanzees are effectively policed by the gorillas at the behest of the orangutans.

Pretty much is like how this

Dan: yeah, there's a definite hierarchy there, isn't there? But as I say, the orangutans were, were the top brass, but they, they need to let him go as well because at one moment Charlton's got a gun.

to take him hostage and tie him up and say, look, if you don't let me go. And give no, promise to give no problems. I'm, I won't shoot this guy. So, they agree with that. And as soon as he

trots

off

with Nova, which he takes Nova, his, his girl Friday. He says, blow up the tunnel. And he wants nothing to do with the past.

He wants to make sure that nobody's

Reegs: get rid of the evidence.

Dan: rid of the evidence.

Reegs: Ignorance is blister.

Sidey: and they did, they did blow it up.

Reegs: Yeah, they

1. They do. They do.

Dan: and Charlton trots aloft off down there

Sidey: It's literally, like, just a couple of

Dan: Yes, it's like simple odds going over to Wayne a or something,

Sidey: I was a bit, I was a bit like, well the tide's

Reegs: the tide's

Sidey: high up there, because he's on horseback, and they go round, and then they get another, like, little fade to the next bay, and he cuts rounds, and then you get the moment

Reegs: where The shot, and it's revealed in a little bit. You see the flame first from an angle. And then you see the, I think quite iconic, the spikes. They

Sidey: And then he realizes he sort of realizes and he says it. He says the line. He says, oh my god, you blew it up and he's pounding on the on the sand on the beach. There's waves coming. You blew it up

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: and he realises that

Sidey: then it then the the camera the pivots round and you get a.

A view of the Statue of Liberty buried in the beach and it's some sort of nuclear thing has

Reegs: Yeah. Well, it was Earth

all along.

Sidey: And it was

Dan: it, so two and a half thousand years and wandering around in space and everything They found some kind of wormhole which has brought them into the future in the same place

Reegs: place. Meanwhile, mankind has wiped each other out. You know, steeped in kind of Cold War anxiety, this, this

Sidey: because this is what? 68? 68,

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: and then yeah, go, gorillas have and apes and things have, have evolved and taken the earth.

So that's where it kind of ends.

And,

Reegs: It's such a compelling central idea, isn't it? The fact that there is something like nine or ten movies, this idea that you can explore humanity through through seeing your primates as a lens to do it and as a sort of holding up a mirror to certain aspects. Really great. And this one as well has loads of stuff going on as it does about the Cold War.

It's really cool. And about science denial and about institutional racism and all sorts of cool themes and stuff in it. It

Dan: He was a French guy that wrote it, wasn't it?

Reegs: Le Planète des Singes.

Dan: Oui, oui. And I think it was 1962 or something that a book came out around that time and the film then didn't take long to come out after this. So it was obviously a big hit in the literary world and, and took people's attention. But Charlton Heston in this he is

Sidey: Oh, every time there was a gun in it, I thought he's got a hard on, like, he must be like, so hard, just holding a rifle every time.

Dan: He's, he's a man's man macho man. And he wants Yeah, he's a real

Reegs: It's a real counterpoint to, like, the sort of the apes in the other Planet of the Apes movie that we watched this week. Because, like, he kicks them, when he does that escape, like, he's kicking them about like they're children. Like not

Sidey: kicking them about

Reegs: him to shreds. Yeah. As soon as, yeah.

Dan: Yeah, it was one of those films, as I said, that spooked the out of me when I was a kid. For some reason, it just didn't make me feel comfortable.

Reegs: Did you like it now, you're not such a pussy, or?

Dan: I did. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I was pleasantly surprised and actually we've got one for the, the main show this week where we're going to do Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

And I went to watch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last night as well. So I've, I've just

Reegs: on board the Ape

Dan: just, I've just flipped my ape yeah. My ape. My ape feelings and I'm now Into this I

Reegs: An Ape a holic.

Yeah,

Dan: I never thought I would and this film actually it was much more clever and much more nuanced than I my sort of 12 year old brain had given it credit for back at a time and Other than Charlton Heston who is as I say Troy McClure, and he just plays it really

Sidey: stop the planet the apes I want to get

Dan: yeah, it was like But pot,

Reegs: told you, didn't I, yesterday, that he knows it all the way along. That's why he's such a cynical arsehole, because he's seen the clock.

I think he knows it all the way along. He's, you know, at the end it just affirms what he already knew. I don't know.

Dan: yeah, no you're right he but he's straight away he was an asshole from the from the first line

Sidey: I think he was the ape chick.

Reegs: Bit of a action.

Sidey: Well

he?

Dan: feel about it, Chris? Oh, I only watched

Sidey: How do you feel about it Chris?

Cris: I only watched the first 10 minutes and I fell asleep.

Sidey: then

Cris: And then I woke up

Sidey: it was,

Cris: the credits was nearly the end. So I, all this, what you've said is all new to me.

Reegs: Did you get

Sidey: on that basis? Very

Cris: strong. Yeah. Considering the fact I've only, I kind of barely remember when they were in the water, when they landed, which now I know is back on earth.

I thought it would be

Sidey: Well, maybe, maybe, maybe not.

I don't want

Dan: Maybe, maybe not. For me it was,

Cris: me, it was, yeah, that was it. I, I,

Sidey: Honestly, watching it again for this obviously knew, knew. The headline pieces, but when he sparks a ciggy in the

spacecraft, I'm like, this is just so

Dan: sits it down

Reegs: puts it on the console. It's the amazing thing. It's not even his flight suit.

Sidey: And he's like because yeah, cuz he puts it away and he goes in the stasis and then he fucking lights it again when he gets that

Reegs: I know. It's

Sidey: Love that so good I'm a big, big fan of the music of Cornelius. I don't know if anyone knows that

Reegs: I thought the soundtrack in this was great. The score in this,

Sidey: There's an album by Cornelius called Phantasma. It's got loads of samples from this.

And obviously the name obviously is lifted straight out. It's amazing. And the film Yeah, so good. It's just it's just great. It's obviously like it's, it's well known because of Maybe you might know the

Dan: title,

Sidey: you might know the ending or the, the, yeah, you're right. The title is quite iconic

Reegs: the poster,

Sidey: the iconography of the stuff because there's loads of, like, I've got loads of Bathing Ape t shirts where they're that, that sort of the face, you know, the, the, the way they're made up is, is is on there.

So it's well known, but that shouldn't detract from actually how good the film really actually is, which is

Dan: Yeah, well I think if you've watched all of it, or just ten minutes of it, then it's

Cris: strong recommend.

Sidey: Strong recommend, yeah.