Celluloid Heroes

Man was born of the ape. There’s still an ape curled up inside of every man; the beast that must be whipped into submission.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes asks its audience to swallow a number of premises, any one of which ought to make the most flexible mind choke. Even if you dismiss the fact that the film completely ignores the timeline established in the previous film, you still have to get past some real logical doozies.

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That’s what I’m afraid of. Later. Later we’ll do something about pollution. Later we’ll do something about the population explosion. Later we’ll do something about nuclear war. We think we’ve got all the time in the world. But how much time has the world got?

The ending of Beneath the Planet of the Apes seemed to preclude any sequels and, despite the financial success of the first two films, the budget for a third movie had been slashed. The producers of this film series had to think creatively. The result, while far from the equal of the 1968 original, stands head and shoulders above any of the other sequels, re-introducing the concept of character development and semi-intelligent writing back into the series. Sure, the audience is asked to accept a premise that, when you follow the logic of the first two films, is staggeringly ridiculous, but once you get past that, the story moves along relatively well.

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