Planet of the Apes (1968 movie)
Planet of the Apes is an American science fiction movie released in 1968 and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It was based on the novel La planète des singes written by Pierre Boulle and released in 1963. The movie stars Charlton Heston and features Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, and Linda Harrison. It was released by 20th Century Fox.
Plot
The film's story is about an astronaut crew who leave Earth on a deep space mission and crash land on a supposedly alien planet in the 40th century. Only three out of the four crew members survive the crash and the survivors find the world to be home to a society of apes; including chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. These apes have the intelligence of human beings as well as the ability to speak and walk upright like humans. Humans in this society are treated like slaves and live in the wilderness without the ability to speak. At the end of the movie, one of the crew members finds the Statue of Liberty and realizes that they were on Earth all along.
Reception and influence
Planet of the Apes was a box office success, meaning it earned a good amount of money and got highly favourable reviews from critics. The movie was given praise for exploring ideas such as class differences, religion, slavery, racism, and nuclear technology. It was followed by four sequels: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). A live action television show was shown in 1974 and an animated television show called Return to the Planet of the Apes came out in 1975. The animated cartoon The Fairly Oddparents episode Abra-Catastrophe has a segment where humans are slave cavemen and the apes are their overlords.
In 2001, a remake of the movie was made directed by Tim Burton and starred Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, and Tim Roth. In August 2011, the series was rebooted with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This was followed in 2014 with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes with two more sequels released in 2017 and 2024, respectively: War for the Planet of the Apes and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.