Planet of the Apes from the beginning (reviews by shaxper)

[shaxper]

(...continued from previous post)


Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Writers: Paul Dehn

Grade: A+

The fan-favorite film of the entire POTA franchise is set in a near future world in which apes have become slaves to humans and exude limited intelligence, though they are still not capable of speech. The son of Cornelius and Zira, Caesar (played by Roddy McDowall, who previously played Cornelius) has survived and witnesses the mistreatment of apes, ultimately leading them toward revolution.

Pros: Solid science fiction and political undertones, just like in the first film. Lots of action, fantastic acting from Roddy McDowall, who brings Caesar to life in a compelling, unforgettable way that feels entirely different from his father, Cornelius (also played by McDowall). The underlying message, critiquing slavery and segregation in an age in which racial hostilities were arguably more potent than ever, was the most controversial and powerful one yet.

Cons: None really, aside from the numerous glitches in this film.

Worth noting:

Armando explains in this film that a virus brought back from space caused the death of all housepets, ultimately resulting in apes being brought into domestic situations and gradually taking on the roles of servants. James Whitmore, in his “Outlines of Tomorrow” article in POTA (vol. 1) #11, will make the argument that this virus also caused the accelerated evolution of apes and potentially the gradual de-evolution of humans. This explanation has been largely accepted by POTA fans.

It’s also worth noting that a chimp named “Aldo” briefly appears in this film, though the script called for him to be a Gorilla. In the film adaptation in POTA (vol. 1) #17, Alfredo Alcala appears to draw “Aldo” correctly as a gorilla.

Finally, this film was originally supposed to end with Caesar deciding to build a civilization in which apes dominate humans, thus creating the civilization we saw in the first film. However, negative test-audience reactions (remember the racial parallels here) resulted in the final lines of dialogue being inserted at the end in which Caesar tempers hi attitude and decides the two species should co-exist. Doug Moench’s adaptation of the film in POTA (vol. 1) #21 leaves the original speech intact, as does the recent Blu Ray release of the film.

Glitches: How did the apes suddenly become so much more evolved only twenty years into the future, and why isn’t this change at least acknowledged? What are the consequences of Caesar starting the ape revolution so much sooner than it was supposed to be? In changing the events of the past so drastically, isn’t he throwing a giant monkey wrench into the events of the future, altering things to the extent that he probably never would have been born in the first place?


Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Writers: John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, and Paul Dehn
Grade: A-

Though largely dismissed for its low budget and lack of political subtext, this is a powerful film in which Caeser struggles to establish his ideal society in a newly post-apocalyptic world, while the gorilla militia led by Aldo (Claude Atkins) attempts to usurp power and create the ape supremacist society seen in the first film. Meanwhile, some early ancestors of the mutants from the second film show up for added conflict.

Pros: Great characters. Caesar gets his best moments as a conflicted leader forced to battle his heart and conscience constantly and ends up making some surprising choices (far from the ideal we’d expect, yet still a fully sympathetic character), his advisor, Virgil (Paul Williams) is one of the most fun characters in the entire series, the idea of having the guardian of the armory be a pacifist who also functions as the guardian of Caesar’s conscience is brilliant, Aldo plays the first truly convincing and terrifying villain of the franchise, and John Huston finally depicts the oft referenced Lawgiver. Additionally, the tragedy and revenge that unfolds between Caesar and Aldo is unforgettable.

Cons: Low low low budget film! Caesar’s “nation” consists of maybe forty citizens, and mutant forces are even smaller, and their war machines consist of an old car and school bus. With access to all the remaining resources of the demolished city, they couldn’t unearth one tank?

Worth noting: The seemingly tacked on twist ending of seeing Caesar’s statue cry makes no clear indication of whether or not Caesar has managed to prevent the old future from repeating itself by the end.

Glitches: Apes have evolved far further in this film, all now able to fully articulate themselves as well as humans whereas none could speak only a few years earlier in the previous film.

Seemingly unable to get the actor who played McDonald in the previous film to return, the actor in this one is said to be his “cousin,” even while he has effectively the same personality and role.

Of course, we never see nor learn about how the nuclear holocaust between this and the previous film occurred, though it is the subject of Revolution on the Planet of the Apes.


Planet of the Apes (TV Series, 1974)

Grade: C+

This series was airing at the same time that vol. 1 of the comic book series launched. It features two more astronauts who are somehow taken off course and end up thousands of years in the future on the Planet of the Apes. They are aided by chimp sympathizer, Galen (Roddy McDowall’s third role in the franchise). This series is generally considered to take place along the same continuity of the other Apes films, though I would argue that it cannot for two simple reasons:

1. We see dogs in at least two episodes of the series (episodes 1 and 5), but all house pets were wiped out by disease prior to the 1990s in the original Apes series.

2. The 2nd and 5th films clearly establish that the Ape City is one small, isolated community, surrounded by other lands and cultures that they have never previously encountered, including the mutants who were only a day’s ride away. Yet the TV series establishes the Ape City as a capital (actually called “Central City”) to an entire empire of surrounding ape communities, some of which many days’ travels away by horse.


Pros: Many very powerful episodes (The Trap, The Good Seeds, and The Legacy, The Surgeon, The Deception), and no particularly bad ones (Note, I have only viewed the first eight of fourteen total episodes at this point). Mark Lenard plays a very convincing and well-rounded antagonist who has real reasons to fear and hate the human protagonists. Also, Roddy McDowall takes on his third ape character and once again makes him memorable and different from the ones he’s played before. It would have been very easy for Galen to resemble Cornelius, and yet they are far from the same. I absolutely adore whenever Galen is confronted by astonishing future technologies and whines, “Is it mag-ic?”

Cons: In a world in which every village they meet follows the same hierarchy and class structure, there is only so much range for the entire series. Also, the humans are a little too clean-cut perfect. Beyond the fact that one is a family man who wants to get home and one gives up a little easier, there really isn't much to either's character.

Worth Noting: Nothing, really, beyond McDowall’s and Lenard’s performances.

Glitches: Once again, this cannot be in the same continuity as the rest of the original POTA franchise for the reasons stated above.

[shaxper]

Planet of the Apes (Curtis/Marvel) #21

“BEAST on the Planet of the Apes!”
Writer: Doug Moench
Pencils: Herb Trimpe
Inks: Dan Adkins

Grade: C

“Kingdom on an Island on the Planet of the Apes” (from POTA 9 and 10) was written as a self-contained story. Our protagonist, Derek Zane, transitioned from zero to hero with all thematic aspects of his journey answered by the end. It was ambitious and, perhaps, inevitable to see a sequel to this fan-favorite story, and yet this sequel fails to do honor to the original.

First off, Zane’s reason for leaving his newfound life as a revered hero on Avedon, with the love of his life by his side, is the reminder that his original reason for attempting to time travel to the future was to find the lost astronauts from the first POTA film. It would have been just as easy for him to forget them since they were never his true motivation for traveling to the future (it was to prove that his technology worked), but I suppose we can buy that a hero would feel such a sense of duty. Of course the larger problem is that the reader knows Zane has not traveled to the same time period the astronauts did. The Ape City he traveled through was too similar to the one Taylor went to for the resemblance to be a coincidence. It must be the same city at a different time. Therefore, we know Zane is doomed to come up empty handed, even if he does not.

Perhaps, though, the bigger question I have is – why doesn’t his sense of duty compel him to free ALL humans, not just the ones from his own time (a time that he detested and felt no allegiance to)?

That problem aside, the larger problem of this story is that it moves in the opposite direction of the original story. “Kingdom” was memorable because of its far out ideas. It took a 1950s style sci fi story, brought it to the Planet of the Apes, and then took it so much farther, introducing us to a wild world of Arthurian apes and humans. Essentially, the storyline took us far from the familiar. And yet, in this story, Zane leaves his Arthurian society to plunge right back into Ape civilization and essentially re-enact the most generic and over-replicated aspect of the franchise – the apes hunting and persecuting the human. We had our fair share of this in the first film and then got it in spades with the 1974 TV series (which just concluded). Even Zane’s brief trial scene stole an entire line of dialogue from the first film. I suppose new readers to the comic looking for the familiar might have enjoyed this, but faithful readers who had stuck with the comic for the past two years were inevitably looking for more of the far-out adventures that Moench had been faithfully delivering to them, month after month.

Finally, Herb Trimpe did a mostly excellent job on pencils, but some of his action shots were a tad weak. I suppose this was a perfect storm of Alcala working on the film adaptations, Sutton trying to catch up now that he’d taken over the “Terror” chapters, and Rival finishing up the “Quest” storyline that would be beginning next issue. With Ploog out of the picture, there were no other stand-by artists to take on this storyline. In fact, according to the letters column, this month’s feature was supposed to be another “Terror” chapter, but I think we can forgive Sutton that one. He’d just taken over Ploog’s backlog as of last issue.

So, for the most part, this felt like a generic POTA story with no unique elements to it aside from the addition of “Robin Hood,” who was quite fun as a traveling companion to Zane. Additionally, the index on the inside cover promised that this would be a “movie-length” storyline, but it’s the same 22 pages as all lead features in this mag post-page reduction. All that makes it “movie-like” is the black border. So really, this was a pretty forgettable sequel to a pretty unforgettable story.

Supplemental features:

“SFX on the Planet of the Apes Part II” article on special effects in the films by Tom Sciacca.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (film adaptation), Part VI: “Hail Caesar! Hail the King!” by Moench and Alcala. Final chapter of the adaptation. Surprisingly, Moench goes with the original ending and leaves out the tacked-on portion of Caesar’s speech in which he modifies his anti-human sentiments. I wonder how Moench will bridge this into his adaptation of the next film. Perhaps that’s where this “Quest” storyline, that happens between the two films, will come in next issue.

[shaxper]

Planet of the Apes (Curtis/Marvel) #22

Quest on the Planet of the Apes, Part I: "Seeds of Future Death" and Part II: "Keepers of Future Death!"
writer: Doug Moench
art: Rico Rival

grade: D-

(NOTE: I've since learned that many of the continuity errors that appear to exist in this story are the result of Moench using for reference a shooting script from Battle for the Planet of the Apes that was radically different from the final film).

This is an ambitious attempt to create a bridge between the fourth and fifth apes films, chronicling possibly the most demanded unfilmed story in the entire franchise -- the death of the human world and the rise of the ape world. However, it does this in recaps, instead depicting the main action of the story in the early days of Ape City, particularly on the struggle between Caesar and Aldo for control of ape destiny.

Unfortunately, I don't get the sense that Moench watched the fifth film more than once (I wonder if he'll smack himself once he starts writing the adaptation for it and realizing all that he screwed up). Before getting to all the minor (and sometimes not so minor) details Moench got wrong in attempting to align this story with the fifth film, though, let's take a look at the questions this storyline finally answers for us...

Facts Established
-Caesar's ape rebellion inspired similar rebellions in cities across the country
-foreign enemies used the distraction as an opportunity to wage nuclear war (this directly contradicts the "Terror" chapter in POTA #14, which established that the rebellions began after the bombs had begun to drop).
-America retaliated, creating a world-wide nuclear holocaust with only small pockets of survivors left behind
-Ape City was built by human slaves
-The mutants of the forbidden zone began as slaves in Caesar's city
-Aldo was the one who brought guns to the apes (from the wreckage of the city)
-Caesar declared it "The Forbidden Zone"


Now, the problems with the story:

- Caesar is already of the belief that humans and apes should co-exist in this story, yet he doesn't appear to have ever given it a second thought at the beginning of "Battle." While he allows them some freedom, he does not believe in allowing them equality and true coexistence until the end of the fifth film.

- If Caesar already knows Aldo has made two attempts on his life in this story, why in the world would he allow Aldo to continue to lead the militia, why would he turn his back on Aldo so often, and why wouldn't he tell everyone that Aldo tried to kill him? After all, they were stunned to learn that Aldo would kill another ape in the fifth film, and this proved to be his undoing.

- If Aldo had been the one to bring the guns to ape city, wouldn't he seem a little more entitled about breaking into the armory in the fifth film? His only justification at the time appeared to be that he wanted them.

- Where the heck is Virgil in this story? Not only is his absence suspicious, but it denies Moench of one of the most compelling characters in that film.

- Alma and Mendez couldn't have originally been slaves in Ape city because they don't even know Ape City exists until Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald show up on their territory in the fifth film.

- Breck warns Caesar that, "I have a feeling we'll meet again..." and Moench's narration says "...but could he see into the future and know that Breck's last words were highly prophetic." But Breck doesn't come back after this. He isn't in the fifth film!

- When Caesar appoints Mandemis to guard the armory, he never once asks him to be the keeper of his conscience.


For all these reasons, this story doesn't work as an effective bridge between the two films. Perhaps more annoying than that, it still fails to depict the actual end of man's civilization and the beginning of the ape one, revealing all the info we've wanted in summaries and instead wasting the focus of this story on a power struggle between Caesar and Aldo that should not have appeared this early on.

All in all, then, I call this ambitious story a near total failure. Too bad. I was really looking forward to it.


Supplemental features:

"13 Decades of the Apes" article in which Jim Whitmore explores the pop-culture presence of apes since the time of King Kong.

"From Shakespeare to Simian!" a brief look at Maurice Evans' acting career by Robert Cleveland.

(No film adaptation in this issue, as both the lead and backup feature were allotted to "Quest" this time around).

[shaxper]

Planet of the Apes (Curtis/Marvel) #23

Terror on the Planet of the Apes: "Messiah of Monkey Demons"
writer: Doug Moench
art: Tom Sutton

grade: B+

Two things that are becoming obvious since Tom Sutton took over Mike Ploog's art responsibilities on "Terror": The "Phase Two" subtitle has been dropped, and the characters are looking more and more cartoonish, almost like they're out of Elfquest. It's odd that Sutton draws such serious, exquisitely detailed backgrounds and creates such simple looking characters in contrast. I don't recall his doing this with the Future History Chronicles. I'm not sure I can get used to it.

As for the story itself, we're not really given anything strange and new this time around. Instead, we see more of the same psychedrome and winged monkey demons. It's exciting to be sure, but it doesn't raise the stakes the way the best "Terror" chapters often do. Moench does add the new plot element of a young Orangutan named Thaddeus heading out for the Forbidden Zone in search of a book of medical cures for the Lawgiver's life-threatening ailment, though this plot line feels really forced, and Thaddeus running into our protagonists would be really statistically unlikely, especially since they're several states away at the moment.

The Psychedrome is blown up in this issue, along with (presumably) the mutant forces and Brutus' army. In the meantime, one of the Psychedrome's keepers is along for the ride with our protagonists, and Lightsmith is beginning to show some signs of recovery from his brainwashing.

Minor details:

- Whether or not it was intended, the Thaddeus subplot loosely mirrors a Planet of the Apes TV show episode entitled "The Surgeon," in which a medical book housed far away must be found in order to save one of the wounded protagonists. Ironically, in the TV show episode, the book was housed in Dr. Zaius' house, whereas the goal in this story is to get the book to the house of Zaius' forefather.

- So let me get this straight: The Inheritors had no plan to turn on Brutus prior to this point, even though Brutus had taken their entire army and platoon of war machines by force and made it clear that he was a hostile enemy to them?

- And what was Brutus' plan for those nuclear missiles? How did he intend to use them to kill humans without killing apes?

- On page 15, Brutus and Warko are the ONLY two apes that leave the Psychedrome in order to deal with Maguanus, and yet on page 22 (after the nuclear missile blew up) he commands Warko to "go get the others." What others???

- Are the inheritors now defenseless? Was that their entire army that Brutus took with him?


A fun, action-packed adventure, though it lacked the fresh uniqueness of most other "Terror" chapters.



Supplemental features:

"Ape Out-Takes" -- 2 pages of silly photos (5 in all) taken on set with Roddy McDowall and some other apes during the filming of Conquest.

"Battle for the Planet of the Apes (film adaptation) by Doug Moench and Vicente Alcazar/Sonny Trinidad. WOW! This is definitely the best art I've ever seen in the pages of this mag, and that's saying quite a lot. Absolutely breath-taking to look at. Additionally, Moench adds a lot to the events of the beginning of "Battle," making the surprising choice to spend much of the issue in Aldo's head (he does an excellent job with this) and also giving more time to show the humans' perceptions of the film's events. This makes an excellent supplement to the film. I'm curious to see if the rest of the adaptation will hold up as well as this first chapter.

[shaxper]

Killraven
Well I'll be a monkey's second cousin

At this point, I have to put my POTA reviews on "pause," since I've not yet been able to track down affordable copies of the next three issues (I already have the rest). While we wait, let's talk about Killraven and how he relates to the POTA comic franchise.

While the POTA series was being produced in America on a (first) bi-monthly and (later) monthly schedule, its Marvel UK counterpart was published weekly. However, the UK edition was still only setup to reprint American content; it had no staff of its own. So, in order to maintain enough content for weekly publication, the UK title resorted to incorporating Killraven into the Planet of the Apes universe. By replacing all instances of the word "martians" with "apes," making some alterations to the artwork, and changing Killraven's name to "Apeslayer," this run became a new source of content that allowed the UK Planet of the Apes series to keep pace with its American counterpart.

So, while Killraven isn't techically a part of the POTA franchise and universe, it's a second cousin worth noting.

I've thus begun reviewing the Killraven series here while I continue the search for the remaining POTA issues I need. Check it out:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...8#post14876928

[MWGallaher]

"Battle for the Planet of the Apes (film adaptation) by Doug Moench and Vicente Alcazar/Sonny Trinidad. WOW! This is definitely the best art I've ever seen in the pages of this mag, and that's saying quite a lot. Absolutely breath-taking to look at. [...] I'm curious to see if the rest of the adaptation will hold up as well as this first chapter.

This enthusiastic anticipation makes me sad for you, shaxper.

[MWGallaher]

Glitches: How did the apes suddenly become so much more evolved only twenty years into the future, and why isn’t this change at least acknowledged?

This is aggravating for a film viewer, but I suppose it's more realistic that people wouldn't bother commenting on the changes. After all, when we pick up our smart phones, we don't habitually remark on how much they've changed since the phones we used 10 years ago.

[shaxper]

This enthusiastic anticipation makes me sad for you, shaxper.

Oh dear...

This is aggravating for a film viewer, but I suppose it's more realistic that people wouldn't bother commenting on the changes. After all, when we pick up our smart phones, we don't habitually remark on how much they've changed since the phones we used 10 years ago.

True, but Armando would

[shaxper]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I finally tracked down the two issues I was waiting on (#24 and #26) at about $10 a piece. As soon as they arrive, I'll continue the reviews.

Also, I've already ordered the first 12 issues of the Adventure Comics volume. So we should be good to resume without delays in about a week.

Thanks for your patience.

[shaxper]

Planet of the Apes (Curtis/Marvel) #24

Future History Chronicles IV: "The Shadows of Haunted Cathedraulus"
writer: Doug Moench
art: Tom Sutton
grade: B

Once more, this Future History installment seems centered on a single visual premise (in this case a cathedral on a ship -- possibly Notredame?), and once more, Tom Sutton's work is brilliant but far too dense to read without far too much exertion. The plot makes very little sense to me as we're given a mystery in which an ape and a human tell two drastically different stories of who their oppressor is, and the solution doesn't end up making all that much sense (and, for those of you who read this one, shouldn't the humans and apes locked OUT of the safe haven be the ones who turned into mutants???). However, as a nice twist, Moench finally does some developing of these utterly one dimensional ongoing characters by creating a damn powerful major conflict between our central protagonist and his wife that actually left me enraged on his behalf, having her return by the close as the kick-ass heroine she always wanted to prove she could be (thus making me love her on Alaric's behalf), and ending on a note of powerful uncertainty between them. Marital woes are something that you rarely (if ever) see dramatized on the comic book page, and Moench does it darn well here. For once, I care about what happens to these characters.

Also, Moench finally ends a chapter of Future History with a cliffhanger, and it's a pretty good one. Our main characters' ship is destroyed (along with the majority of its crew) and the rest are now stuck on a ship full of radioactive mutants who are slowly causing them to mutate as well.

Minor details: The human Alaric finds mentions the apes having been led by a Lawgiver. Clearly, this is not the same Lawgiver from the "Terror" storyline, thus begging the question of how many different "lawgivers" could have coincidentally arisen for different ape tribes at approximately the same time. Is Moench suggesting that neither is the original lawgiver and that the term "Lawgiver" denotes more of a priest and central governing figure role? If so, why wasn't Dr. Zaius a "lawgiver" in the first Apes film?


Supplemental features:

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (film adaptation) Part II: "The Doomsday Spawn" by Moench and Alcala. This adaptation continues to impress me by pretty much rewriting the fifth film, which was my favorite of the series but also clearly the most problematic of the bunch. In addition to some excellent new reactions and dialogue, as well as some superb art from Alcala (ex: Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald discovering the old ruins of the Forbidden Zone is FAR more dramatic here than it was in the film), Moench makes the daring call to tweak the story to align with his own "Quest for the Planet of the Apes" story from two issues back, having Governor Breck survive and remain the leader of the surviving mutated humans in the city. Really the only loss in this adaptation is Virgil, who is really just "there" and lacks all the presence he commanded in the film, even having MacDonald steal most of his lines that aren't outright omitted in this version.

"Reflections in an Imperfect Mirror!" an essay by Samuel Maronie arguing how putting on Ape masks allows this franchise to explore the depths of humanity with more scrutiny and less bias. Did we really need an article to tell us this?

Letters column: Herb Trimpe is taking over the art chores on "Terror". Boo. Plans are also announced to use Future History chapters to provide breaks between "Terror" storylines (every four or five issues -- little do they realize the magazine only has five issues left), and plans are announced for a third main feature to replace the film adaptations when "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" concludes (would this have been "Forbidden Zone Prime" or the Derek Zane ongoing? I know Moench was planning both when the series was abruptly cancelled).

[MWGallaher]

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (film adaptation) Part II: "The Doomsday Spawn" by Moench and Alcala. [...] Moench makes the daring call to tweak the story to align with his own "Quest for the Planet of the Apes" story from two issues back, having Governor Breck survive and remain the leader of the surviving mutated humans in the city.

As I recall it, in a later letter column Marvel explains that the differences between their adaptation of "Battle" and the film are due to Moench using an early draft of the script as his source. I considered that a big bonus back in the days when the audience was never privy to such things. Especially since I never much cared for the final film as produced. The adaptation does suffer from rotating art teams drawn from some of the best (Alcala) and, well, not-so-best of the Filipino artists.

[shaxper]

As I recall it, in a later letter column Marvel explains that the differences between their adaptation of "Battle" and the film are due to Moench using an early draft of the script as his source.

I remember their having said that for the initial adaptation, but I'm not so sure this time around. If you read the Power Records adaptation (which was almost definitely based on an early draft of the script) it reads nothing like this, and Breck is not present.

[custodes]

Boy I can not remember any of the details because, it has been years and I never reread them but, I had a huge pile of Marvel/Curtis B&W Planet of The Apes mags and the stories were fantastic. Better than your average comic at the time. Continuity and good supporting characters.

[inferno]

So, apparently BOOM Comics hasn't been able to follow-through with their plans to reprint "Terror on POTA." Rights issues, I gather...

[shaxper]

So, apparently BOOM Comics hasn't been able to follow-through with their plans to reprint "Terror on POTA." Rights issues, I gather...

That's incredibly disappointing. It's a fantastic series that deserves wider acclaim.

I had wondered, though, how in the world they were going to get the rights to reprint an original series written under Marvel's work-for-hire. Having the rights to POTA wouldn't automatically include that.