Planet of the Apes Series Is One

¶ … Planet of the apes series is one of the most successful series in American cinematic history. Product of the anti-Vietnam War sentiment, open racial tension, the War on Poverty, fear of nuclear war and lingering Cold War anti-USSR passions, the first 5 films in the series were also based on knowledge of and research about apes up to and including the 1960's and 1970's. Rise of the planet of the apes was released 38 years later and placed its emphasis squarely on apes as a valuable subject rather than a symbol.

Development of the Planet of the Apes Series up to and Including Rise of the Planet of the Apes in Historical Context

Planet of the Apes

Planet of the apes (Schaffner, 1968), is the first in the film series. In the film, 4 astronauts travel to and crash on a strange planet. Prior to the crash, Stewart, the white female crew member, has died in her sleep because her life support system was damaged. The remaining crew members, Taylor, Landon and Dodge, are all males: Taylor is the white flight commander; Landon is also white; Dodge is black. Shortly after crash landing, these three crewmen encounter mute, primitive humans. Almost immediately, all the humans are attacked by Gorillas, who are riding horses, wearing uniforms, and using rifles and nets against the humans. Dodge is shot and apparently killed, Taylor is shot in the throat and captured, and Landon is captured. The three astronauts are separated during the melee and from that point, much of the movie is seen through Taylor's eyes, as he experiences the brutality of the apes, the curiosity of the ape scientists, and frustration at his inability to speak. Eventually, Dodge is stuffed and put on display, Landon is lobotomized and Taylor regains his ability to speak in a climactic moment in which he yells at one of his captures, "Take your hands off me, you damned dirty ape!" Upon realizing that Taylor can speak, an ape psychologist named Zira and an ape archeologist named Cornelius become exceptionally protective of Taylor. The administrator, Dr. Zaius, wishes to have Taylor castrated, as Dr. Zaius believes that humans are a threat to ape civilization. However, Zira and Cornelius help Taylor and his chosen mute mate, Nova, escape into the Forbidden Zone. The Forbidden Zone, a desert area that the apes' Sacred Scrolls forbid any ape to enter, reveals a human doll from the distant past. The fact that the doll says "Mama" supports Taylor's claim that his ability to speak is not an aberration; however, Dr. Zaius destroys the doll, believing that the revelation of a normally speaking human race undermines the Sacred Scrolls and the foundations of the ape race. Eventually, Taylor and Nova are grudgingly allowed to leave, riding a horse further into the Forbidden Zone until they discover a Statue of Liberty, buried chest-deep in the sand. At this point, Taylor realizes that his spaceship has crash back into earth far into the future and that the human race destroyed itself at some point in the distant past (Greene, 1999, pp. 21-2).

The film is based on the English translation of a 1963 novel called La planete des singes (Monkey Planet) by the French novelist, Pierre Boulle (Greene, 1999, p. 2). A social satire, Boulle's book was adapted by American screenwriters Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, who either brought out or infused dominant American themes of that time period into the screenplay. That period in American history was marked by distinct anti-Vietnam War sentiment, open racial tension, the War on Poverty, fear of nuclear war and lingering Cold War anti-USSR passions (Greene, 1999, p. 8). Furthermore, research into the ability of apes to use sign language was started in the 1960's (Hart, 2012). Though this research did not begin until the mid-Twentieth Century, it had a strong historical foundation: the idea of chimpanzees successfully learning human language was first suggested in 1747 in L'Homme machine (Man a Machine), by Julien Offra de La Mettrie, a French physician and philosopher (European Graduate School, 2012); in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species explained "physical continuity from the simplest animals to humans," including the common ancestry, similar anatomy and genomes between apes and humans (Hart, 2012); experiments in teaching apes to speak human language were unsuccessfully made in the 1900's and 1930's (Hart, 2012); by 1925, at least one scientific article suggested that sign language rather than spoken language might be successfully used for apes (Hart, 2012); commencing in the 1960's, scientists taught signs from American Sign Language to a chimpanzee named Washoe, a gorilla named Koko and an orangutan named Chantek (Hart, 2012); also commencing in the 1960's, scientists taught a chimpanzee named Sarah to use plastic symbols representing words and a chimpanzee named Lana to use lexigrams on an early version of the computer keyboard (Hart, 2012). Clearly, the scientific community was long interested in the humanlike abilities of apes, including the ability to learn human language.

Seeking to create an entertaining, commercially successful and controversial movie, Wilson and Serling melded the late 1960's state-of-the-art knowledge about ape's abilities with the historical period's controversial topics into a screenplay. That successful screenplay decried: conventional war by showing the apes army's brutality; nuclear war by showing the Statue of Liberty's buried aftermath of ultimate human war; racial tensions by pitting dominant apes (representing blacks) against subservient and self-defeated humans (representing whites); and the brutal treatment and distrust that were reportedly the hallmarks of our Cold War by showing the administrative apes' abiding distrust, cruel treatment and backward thought toward humans. The result was a blockbuster hit, reportedly budgeted for $5,800,000, grossing $32,600,000 in theater receipts and $15,000,000 in rentals for the United States alone (Internet Movie Data Base, 2012).