Excitement, suspense, and uniqueness are the exceptional characteristics of the movie that would leave the viewer stunned after the person gets done watching the 1970 Sci-Fi ‘Planet of the Apes’. Written by Michael Wilson and Rod Sterling and directed by Franklin J. Schnaffer, it is based on the novel ‘Monkey Planet’ by Pierre Boulle.
The movie begins with four astronauts traveling in space and there is a sudden crash landing while the astronauts nap in their cube like sleeping places. They are shown to crash in an unknown sea. As they leave their ship and approach land, none of the astronauts are sure of their location. Taylor played by Charlton Heston leads the group of three astronauts. The only female astronaut dies in the space ship due to some leakage in her cube which lowers the group to three including Taylor himself. The planet is shown to be very similar to Earth. After walking for few minutes, the astronauts notice life forms such as plants. There is thunder and lightning. As the story progresses, the astronauts discover primitive humans eating from trees. They are shown to be wandering in large numbers and are uncivilized. The crew hears the sound of horses and suddenly there are horses ridden by apes that come in the picture. The apes have automatic weapons and are shown to be shooting at the primitive humans.
Taylor and his crew soon realize that apes rule the planet while the humans, feeding on the farms of the apes are treated like animals. The apes hunt on humans and make them prisoners. Taylor and his crewmembers are taken as prisoners too. The story progresses as the Astronauts find themselves in a strange environment where humans are mute and apes talk, where humans are semi-naked and apes are the one with clothing. They use mid-nineteenth century technology such as cameras and guns and are familiar with advanced medical techniques such as brain surgery.
Taylor, played by Charlton Heston, is the crew leader of the three astronauts. He plays the lead role in the movie, as other characters are made irrelevant through various circumstances throughout the movie. He surprises the apes by talking and being the only human who has the ability to talk. He has a difficult task of defending himself from being surgery performed on him as the ape society is run by fundamentalist religion and rigid laws that Taylor’s existence contradicts. It is a challenge for Charlton Heston and he responds by giving possibly one of his greatest performances on the big screen. He is witty and humorous and does his job well. His role required emotions at times and was full of frustration. Charlton Heston did not have problem in dealing with that at all, in fact he could not have performed the job better. He is shown to be more confident and courageous than the other astronauts which is why he gets the main focus and the lead role in the movie.
Charlton Heston has supporting actors and actresses that makes the movie a treat to watch. Nova played by Linda Harrison was a quality performance. Though the character felt like a waste as she was left mute throughout the movie, her performance was excellent. There could have been no flaw in the performance. Taylor has only two ape supporters who try to save his life – Dr. Zira and Dr. Cornelieus played by Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall respectively. They used the right words and dialogues whenever needed and their proper show of emotions gave the movie a realistic look. The apes Dr. Maximus and Dr. Honorius who contradicted Taylor played by Woodrow Parfrey and James Daly(I) respectively, perform their parts well. At some places their hate for Taylor surpasses the limit, but that washes out with the plot of the movie.
The movie was unique and like all movies, it was a mixture of pros and cons. There has not been a movie made perfect yet and if there were, it would not be a movie. Planet of the Apes has its good and bad parts. The idea of the movie is pretty simple – to show what life would be like if things were to work up side down i.e. if humans replaced the apes and vice versa. The apes are shown to be like men, in attitude and their beliefs. The costumes are next to realistic and one could not expect something better than what was being presented. The emotions on the characters faces are very ape-like. On the other hand, the zooming of the camera and exceptional sound effects gave the movie life and kept the viewers eyes glued to the screen.
However the movie lacked material in some places, which would not make sense to a viewer if he had to think about it. To start with, we were to be talking about the ape civilization. There was no civilization shown at all but the movie remained to the point of where Taylor and the two sides of the apes were the only things that mattered. Schnaffer does not do a good job in portraying the daily life of the apes. If they were shown to be taking the place of humans, it was necessary to show the similarity between their civilizations. An example can be taken when we see apes riding horses. Horse is the only animal shown in the movie. The movie needed more symbols of civilization such as horses in order to make it a little more realistic as far as the civilization was concerned. The apes are shown to be performing advanced brain surgeries on humans. If the apes were this advanced, they must be having advance tools and gadgets. But they were shown to be living in stone-age houses made of rocks. The humans are shown to be bathed with high-pressure water. But it does not show where the pressure is generated from if they did not have electricity. They were shown to be having cameras and cigars. Last but not the least, to prove the smartness of humans, a doll several thousand years old is shown to be crying. This was virtually impossible. (Not enough Space to write more .. but the movie is a Must See for all Sci-Fi lovers :)