I feel compelled to start this review by saying that I loved the original Planet of the Apes movies and you will find the others on this list as well but this was my least favourite of the five movies. This was the 1970 follow up to the first movie and had Charlton Heston return to the story. When the producers realised they had a hit with the first film they wanted to make a sequel to milk the cash cow (Seeing a theme yet?) they chased around to get a story they were happy with well it wasn’t a good enough story for me as the later films had much less of a budget and much poorer special effects but for me much better story line. Which is why part 2 of the story is my least liked by me. What’s this story all about?
If you are aware of the original movie and the big shock at the end of the movie and just in case I won’t go spoiling it here, well I will try not to but I feel it will be impossible to give you any kind of plot without doing so.
This film follows on from the first film and begins with Charlton and Nova (I am fully aware I’ve used the actors name for one and the character name for the other but please ask me if I care) in the forbidden zone. Seeing something very weird Charlton goes to investigate. Meanwhile a second earth rockets lands with a whole new set of astronauts to go through the same crap as the first team. Now my grey matter will struggle for the story for a bit as they find a group of humans that are living under the ground who have telepathy and a big bomb that could blow up the planet that they are on. They see the giant bomb as a last resort and if threatened by the apes they will detonate the bomb and wipe everyone out. The apes then decide they are going to attack these newly discovered humans are forced into a war, they do not want. They are either slain or commit suicide before the apes arrive but the battle moves toward the big BIG bomb and it is now armed and activated. What could possibly go wrong from here? Well spoilers mean nothing until you see it for yourself.
As already mentioned this is the worst of the 5 movies for me I couldn’t buy into the telepathic humans hiding underground with the illusions of fire and make believe and I can hear you saying but you can believe monkeys can run a planet and can talk and attack this random bunch of humans anyway. Well yes, I can buy that based on the first movie and enjoying the twist and the interesting takes on human morality implied in this story as a whole. In the later movies which form the circle of the apes uprising and becoming aggressive after the apes made their own spaceship and flew to earth and having to run and hide from the humans that then starts the circle this one is the odd man out. It was out on its own and it did follow the first movie but it just didn’t work for me. There are many positives in this movie that other people keep pointing out to me but still I cannot give it more of a score in this list. I won’t stop you from watching it and probably enjoying a classic film with some very interesting political points and thought-provoking ideas so please go enjoy and tell me I am wrong.
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