Movies
Planet of the Apes
The "unique personal vision" of Tim Burton comes down here to the burgeoning field of science-fiction graphics: a new illustrated edition of an old familiar classic. (Rather dark and murky illustrations, too, with a forest-primeval feel to deepen the timeless mythicality of it all.) Sure, the ape makeup, to say nothing of the beetly battle armor, is an improvement over the 1968 screen treatment, but so what? (Myth doesn't demand verisimilitude.) Mark Wahlberg, meanwhile, whose notion of heavy emoting consists of breathing through an open mouth, is the farthest thing from an improvement on Charlton Heston. (The latter, content these days to be a joke, has an unbilled cameo in a monkey mask, reprising the curtain lines of the original.) The moral sententiousness, even in the absence of Rod Serling on the screenwriting team, remains very much the same. As does the lameness of the humor: "Extremism in defense of apes is no vice," "Can't we all just get along?" and the like. More fundamentally, the entire concept of an evolutionary inversion -- talking apes and caged humans -- is too much a novelty to bear a remake, just as it couldn't bear four sequels. And the new and different surprise ending is apt to wring from the viewer a befuddled "Huh?" where the old one wrung an "Ah!" Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, Estella Warren. 2001.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: PG-13
A forest planet for apes DOES make more sense than a sandy desert world, tho this is one of the few tweaks to the original that qualifies as any sort of improvement. Putting the "origin" story in the hands of goth cartoonatic Tim Burton is almost as misplaced an idea as it was to have Rod “Twilight Zone” Serling script the original version (very few of Serling's ideas, words, and social commentary actually made it onto the screen, despite him usually being cited as "screenwriter").
Perhaps this franchise should instead be restarted with a do-over, as in the second Hulk movie that attempted to cleanse the public’s palate of Eric Bana(l) – how cool would it be to see Remake of the Apes by Terry Gilliam and the crew behind Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth? Ooooh, or now that Sam Raimi is off Spidey Four….
By jayallen 12:32 a.m., Feb 4, 2010 > Report it