I was always planning on looking into the Planet of the Apes franchise at some point.

It is the first movie franchise or at least one of the first to have multi showings in cinemas, one film quickly followed by another. Not a double feature but a multi movie marathon, something we now see with the likes of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

But you may wonder, then why am I not starting with the first film? Well for two reasons. First I haven’t seen the first one recently and that film, I’d need to be in the right mood to watch. The second is this film is the single most important one for the modern Planet of the Apes films.

As mentioned in that opening, this is the 4th of the original 5 Planet of the Apes movies. So after encountering the planet, finding out it’s Earth in the future, seeing it blown up only for 3 apes to travel back in time. When the American government found out about the future, they panicked and had them killed, only for their child to have been swapped out with that of a circus chimp. It’s been 50 years you know the elements of the first 2 by cultural osmosis by now. You may not have known about the 3rd but felt it was important to say that here.

We pick up the 4th film now some roughly 20 years after the 3rd. Despite knowing the future, Man has fallen into what happened, yet is aware of the coming of an ape that will start the uprising and fear it could be the child of the two from the future, if he had faked his death.

We see a world that has become an authoritarian government. Apes have become used not as pets like they once were after the virus wiped out cats and dogs, but now basically slaves. Indeed watching this its impossible to not see the slavery analog.

Our lead is not a human but Milo the children of those apes now fully grown. He is friendly with the owner of the circus Armando (played by KHAAAAAAAAAN! aka Ricardo Montalbán) who will talk with him and treat him as an equal while hiding his friends intelligence.

Problems occur when Milo cannot hold back his disgust seeing his fellow apes being abused by authority, while they escape, Armando is captured and Milo goes into hiding as just another ape. Here by chance he is picked up by the head of security, Governor Breck. It is here he is given the option to pick a name for himself, and it is one of legend, Caesar.

It’s impossible not to see this film and see the relation to slavery, made blatant by our other lead Macdonald who is African American and the one who shows the most compassion to Caesar even when he finds out about his intelligence, even stating himself as the descendant of slaves at the end as a statement in hopes it will stop Caesar from taking his revolution down the path so many others have.

The film is in many opinions, including my own, the second best of the original 5 being beaten only by the original. We see a world where despite knowledge of the future, is through its own greed seemingly doomed to repeat mistakes it already made. Yet while man’s arrogance would doom it, it is through our lead an Ape that there may be a chance that the cycle will be broken, a cycle that ends with the destruction of the Earth itself if it continues as it has. Though this is in the altered theatrical ending, which I do prefer honestly.

It takes a lot for a film to make us sympathise and root for a character in ape prosthetics for the movie over regular humans, but Caesar’s actor Roddy McDowall does that job. He ultimately shows more humanity than most of the humans in the film, for that darker original ending you could see how from there the apes became civilized while humans beasts long before the fall of man.

At the start this is the film that the recent films especially the first ones most take after. The leader of the ape uprising was a new take on Caesar after all, so if you have seen those films but not any of the originals, this is that most important one for you.

As for the 5th film, I learned that the only version I would have ready access to, even by buying home media, is a very incomplete cut and I have no interest in seeing the film unless it’s the full version. But I can see myself delving into this franchise again… I’d like to think I would have been like Armando when it came to apes, I hope I would be.

Rating: 🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️