Any plans for Burton to make a sequel to Planet of the Apes? (1 Viewer)

[MatthewLouwrens]

Thanks for the link. As a casual fan of the series (watched the films a couple of times some years ago), I'd always just believed that it established a circular pattern, so it's interesting to learn that that is not what happened - it sounds like there are some strong arguments for that case. I'll have to revisit the films in that light.

 

[Rhett_Y]

I did not like the Tim Burton version of POTA at all. I love the orginals and I am hoping that this new one, if it comes to life will be along those lines.

 

[Brandon Conway]

That Genesis: Apes idea actually sounds really good.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

You know, I didn't like the idea of this GENESIS: APES script at first, but after reading a little more of the pitch, it actually doesn't seem like a bad idea.

From the article (and my comments below it):

"Tim Burton killed Planet of the Apes. His film, while technically profitable, left moviegoers with such a bad taste in their mouths that Fox never bothered revisiting it in a sequel. The franchise, which had seemed poised for rebirth, lay dead for years.

But right now, in the halls of Fox, there is another new version of Planet of the Apes that has been kicking around for the last year. It's not a sequel to the Burton film, and it's not another remake of the original. To the general audience it's a prequel to Planet of the Apes, but for the initiated it's something totally different.

It's a remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

Yup. It's the story of Caesar, the ape who said no, the first ape with speech who started the events that led to a world where monkeys were on top and humans were dumb beasts.

Things are different in this script, written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, which is called Genesis: Apes. Fans will know that Caesar in Conquest is the result of a massive temporal paradox - his parents escaped to 1973 from a far future Earth. Further, Conquest takes place in a dystopian 'future' - 1991 - while Genesis: Apes is set in the modern day.

In this version Caesar is the result of a genetic scientist fooling around with the nature of things. When the baby monkey exhibits intelligence and the ability to talk, he takes the cuddly thing home to his wife, who is unable to bear children. Things go surprisingly well for a number of years until Caesar grows up and sees mommy getting attacked. The dutiful son steps in and accidentally kills the attacker.

Here's where it takes off. In a scene paralleling Charlton Heston in the cage in the original Planet of the Apes, Caesar ends up in custody at an Ape Conservatory where he and the other apes are abused mercilessly. Caesar finds himself a primate without a world - he's as smart as humans but will never be one of them (and is in fact tortured by them) and he's initially rejected by his monkey brethren.

You're on Caesar's side, understanding where this poor outcast is coming from. But then the script gets really ballsy and, just like in Conquest, Caesar begins a campaign to unite the apes and overthrow human society. And his plan isn't a Martin Luther King Jr series of marches, speeches and sit ins - Caesar and his apes take to the streets violently.

Again, it's like Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which brilliantly modeled its ape riot scenes on the Watts Riots that had happened just a few years before. But Conquest was set in a future where America was ruled by a fascist society. Genesis: Apes is set today, in this world. The regime that Caesar overthew in Conquest was made up of bad guys. The Caesar of Genesis: Apes is coming after you.

Maybe this is why the script has been languishing all this time. You just can't have your hero working to tear down our modern society. It's too radical! Plus, Fox remains notoriously unfriendly to good genre ideas.

Still, imagine if the film had come out this year. It's the 40th anniversary of Planet of the Apes and The Dark Knight proved that mainstream audiences are ready for something edgy and challenging. The country is polarized politically in a way that would almost guarantee this film major media coverage and controversy, which would sell tickets. You could probably have liberals and conservatives, whites and minorities completely outraged by this movie.

And it's the perfect way to get the franchise back up and running. Everybody knows that the Planet of the Apes used to be Earth. Everybody knows that the mute humans are our distant descendants. Everybody knows the Statue of Liberty is buried in the sand. So just skip all that - get to something new. That was one of the major problems with the Burton version, that it tried to recapture the shock of the original, the most spoiled movie of all time. But Genesis: Apes lets us get back into this world of apes and do what the four sequels to the original did - craft great science fiction parables that had gut puncher endings. Only Planet of the Apes had a 'twist' ending; all of the others just had 'Holy shit!' finales.

It's likely that Genesis: Apes will sit on a shelf forever and ever, but here's hoping that somebody at Fox is paying attention and realizes that even Mark Wahlberg can't keep this franchise down forever."


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At first I did not like the idea. In a way I still don't... I'm tired of this "remake" philosophy.... personally I would prefer a movie that stands alone as an APES film for newbies who've never seen one before, but yet could still manage to work as a "sixth" movie occurring right after the events of BATTLE...

But you know what? The more I think about it, this danged idea could fly. Just reboot the entire franchise, let there be two different series. If a proposed film as above was well done and proved successful, then in a way it could be the start of a brand new franchise all together... the new series could begin here in the present day (more or less) with a CONQUEST-like scenario to act as an origin, but then as the sequels emerge, we have a new PLANET OF THE APES timeline all set in the future, with God knows what else thrown in. No relation to the original movie series at all... maybe this could work. Fox has always been confused as to how to recharge this profitable franchise... this may be a possibility...

 

[seanOhara]

The original series was horrible about continuity -- in the original film, it's clear that Taylor's expedition doesn't expect to see Earth again for several hundred years, but in Beneath NASA sent out a rescue mission; Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Milo find, repair, and learn to fly the spaceship in the time between their appearance in Beneath and the destruction of the Earth, and Cornelius' explanation of how apes overthrew man is radically different from what's shown in Conquest. So if they change things around and say, "This is the original timeline" it's no big deal.

Personally, a big-budget version of Conquest, complete with the radical politics, sounds awesome.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

With regard to your CONQUEST reference -- the idea is that, once Zira and Cornelius returned to Earth and gave birth to Caesar in 1973 (ESCAPE), now everything will develop much differently than the way Zira and Cornelius first explained it. Caesar's presence and revolt in 1991 takes things on a different course, and the apes will evolve faster. The first time around it was an ape named Aldo who said "No" and turned the tables and it probably occurred around 2500 AD; this time it will be Cornelius' own son leading the charge in 1991. And it's a new course which does not necessarily wind up concluding into the events of PLANET OF THE APES. Because the series ends appropriately (IMO) with the prologue of BATTLE, where ape and human children are at least attempting to avoid such a future from happening again like we saw in PLANET.

As for the "rescue mission" for Taylor, I believe the concern for rescue was that the ship went off its intended trajectory.

Yes, the turnabout in the chimps fixing and activating Taylor's ship was indeed pretty unrealistically quick -- I guess that Dr. Milo is one hell of a genius!

 

[DavidPla]

But isn't that the biggest continuity error of all? In the first movie we learn that apes think of humans as beasts with no history of intelligence at all. (well, except for Dr. Zaius) They are completely and utterly shocked that Taylor can utter a single word.
Yet in Escape, Cornelius says they were taught when they were young that this ape named Aldo overthrew the humans by saying the first word "No." But we were lead to believe that apes were always taught that they were the one and only dominant species

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Yep, I'd have to agree with you that the knowledge and history that Cornelius has in ESCAPE is indeed a huge continuity error. It's THE biggest.

Fans of the Apes films have tried to make pieces fit, though - sometimes having to strain credibility. The way some fans rationalize it (and which works for me) is that, after the conclusion of PLANET and in the months that followed, Dr. Zaius came clean with Zira and Cornelius and told them the actual secret history of the Apes (Zaius and perhaps a few conservative orangutans were the only ones who knew the truth, and this is what was being hidden from the masses for centuries - they didn't want the other apes to know Man had a civilization and originally controlled the world). In BENEATH, when Zaius is getting ready to face war in the Forbidden Zone, he instructs Cornelius and Zira that, should anything happen to him, the future of their civilization may be theirs to preserve or destroy. So ultimately, Cornelius became aware of this.

In ESCAPE Cornelius also confuses things further by saying that the overtaking of the humans "was a historic day commemorated by my species and fully documented in the Sacred Scrolls"!!!!! The only way to work around this blunder is to either figure that Cornelius was exaggerating, or else perhaps these original passages from the Sacred Scrolls were ommitted and supressed for years, until Dr. Zaius entrusted Cornelius with the facts later. Maybe the only apes who "commemorated" this as a historic event were groups of conservative orangutans like Zaius, who chose to celebrate in private, away from the knowledge of the rest of the ape populace.

Yes, it's really stretching things. But it doesn't work any other way.
Still -- whatever caused the PLANET OF THE APES to occur, it's true that once Caesar is born in 1973, things progress differently than they did originally.