Review: Planet of the Apes (2001)

More often that not, a true classic emerges from somewhere unexpected. 1968’s Planet of the Apes, based on an obscure and frankly kind of bizarre French novel, was something that could’ve easily turned into schlock, but ended up a surprisingly smart scifi piece about fundamentalism, the pain of truth behind a myth, and what drives dogma. The 2001 version was one that was brewed for years, but…actually did turn into schlock. So let’s see just how!

Since around the late eighties, a remake of the 60s film—which had been followed up by a parade of increasingly lower-budget sequels that have since been forgotten and largely displaced by the 2010s-onward Serkis films—had been bandied about. We had a proposal from James Cameron and Schwarzenegger, involving time travel, and something that tried to be more of a direct sequel to the original, all of it tossed around as executives tried to find that sweet spot of marketability and budget. Exactly what word salad ended up in the script itself seemed entirely secondary. 

Enter Tim Burton—who resurrected Batman in cinema around ’89, with something that involved actual style, and had people talking about it. Of course, actual artistic vision doesn’t always gel with merchandise sales graphs, and Burton was punted off when his followup film involved too much of mutant Danny DeVito for McDonalds to feel comfortable with. Still, Burton was able to coast on this for a while, doing things he actually cared about like Ed Wood in-between working on reboot projects for Hollywood, like an unfortunate Superman film that went nowhere. Now that one’s a rabbit hole I encourage you wholeheartedly to dive right into, hoo boy. 

Anyway, they gave him one more project that actually did go to filming, with this one…except of course the studio was hellbent on a certain release date, rushing production. You know, times like this, while my feelings on Burton’s films can be somewhat love-hate, I’m frankly impressed he kept up his career despite the level of sheer Everest-sized shit he had to contend with around this time. One can truly judge a man by what he endures.

All of the above remains relevant for what we actually get on screen. Maaaahk Waaahlberg plays our lead astronaut, on a deep space station carrying a massive amount of lab apes for…some reason. Mark is in fact so attached to one of these chimps…for some reason…that he disobeys orders to follow it in a space capsule chase through a time vortex, thus ending up on the titular planet, where, of course, apes rule over humans. 

Marky Mark realizes too late they are actually writing the script with their faces.

Now, in the original film, the humans were truly de-evolved, so we had actual questions of what truly gives a species right over another—we emphasize by default with the former, of course, but the apes are the truly intelligent ones, so who really has a moral edge? Here, the humans are still sapient, but just choose not to talk to the apes…for some reason. Very quickly, Maahk is of course captured, to be sent to a city where we will get introduced to Tim Roth as the admittedly enjoyably hammy General Thade, giving it his all through thick makeup.

And in fairness—it is genuinely very well done makeup. In terms of pure mise-en-scene, it’s not all that bad, and you know what, I even like Danny Elfman’s soundtrack here too, going all in on a percussive primal sound that’s actually pretty memorable. Well, the makeup is let down a bit by them trying too hard to make Helena Carter recognizable because of course, making her character look a little creepy as a side-effect. 

Well, it's not the Cats movie at least...? 

Beyond that, it’s a script that feels like it was made up as it went along, even though on the technical level, everything else has some effort put into it. Roth’s fun, but I challenge you to remember anything else, aside from Michael Clarke Duncan of course. It all culminates in a battle in the desert, where we find the truth behind the society on this world…where it raises considerably more questions than answers, and not in a good way. But wait! We’re not done with the script just winging it yet! After a battle is resolved by an ordinary chimp arriving in a spaceship (it, er, only makes slightly more sense in context), Maaark chases Roth through time and space, giving us our memorable ending where he arrives in a Washington DC where the Lincoln Memorial is now dedicated to Aperaham Lincoln, and that’s it! 

So Burton, very obviously just done with all this by now, leaves the audience invited to have their brains parachute out of their skulls. That itself is an artistic statement unto itself, and we’re left with a testament to Hollywood committee. Again, there are individual elements here with passion behind them—but crucially no cohesion. It’s not as completely unwatchable as some made out, but stick with the post-2011 entires frankly.