Compared with "Rise of the Apes" in 2011, I think the 1968 version of "Planet of the Apes" is much more exciting. There are many unexpected contents and highlights in the film, the biggest of which is that the positions of humans and apes are interchanged, and the latter is wisdom. The creature also has its own ape bible, "God created the ape in his own image". Of course there may be preconceptions here: I watched the film on video tape back in college. Although I was a little disappointed with "Rise of the Apes", thanks to it, it reminded me and wanted to revisit this old film, and at the same time knew that this 1968 version was actually the first of a five-part series (produced in 1968-1973). One, and recently, I was lucky enough to find this five-part series.
The second part immediately follows the upper part. The ape army prepares to attack the "restricted area" - the last settlement and fortress of the surviving intelligent human beings... The fortress was finally broken, the human detonated nuclear weapons, and the world perished. The most interesting thing in this film is a group of apes who advocate peace, holding demonstrations to prevent the army from moving forward, but unfortunately they are unsuccessful; and the most shocking thing is the group of surviving intelligent people, whose faces are terrifying (according to the stories in the latter parts, people There was a nuclear war with apes.), and spiritually worshipped a super-large nuclear weapon, worshipped it, and sang hymns.
The latter three follow the rise of the ape tribe in flashbacks, explaining the ins and outs of the first two. The first half of the plot is similar to the 2011 version of "Rise of the Apes", and the ape head is also called Caesar. Compared with the first two films, the last three films, which were made in the 1970s, have few bright spots and bland stories. They are just ape-like versions of "Exodus". However, it is actually difficult to make up stories that are both bizarre and self-justifying. We may only sigh that human imagination is limited after all. The 2011 version is also just the story of drug trials that are commonplace in science fiction films. It is said that the director will also make a sequel, which I am not optimistic about. Moreover, this story is more suitable for presentation in flashbacks, which is easy to produce surprising effects.
This five-part series should belong to the kind of "negative utopias", that is, the fantasy of the future fate of mankind will be very tragic, and eventually lead to depravity and destruction. "Utopia" works always predict how bright and beautiful the future of mankind is. From the 16th to the 19th century, there are still quite a few such works; in the 20th century (which was once criticized as an extreme century), the bloody and cruel reality made this kind of positive Prophecies and fantasies appear empty and out of place, and as a result, such works are dying and almost extinct. On the contrary, "dystopian" works are flourishing. Such works can generally be roughly divided into two types: the first type is closely related to reality, and even part of the plot is actually not fantasy, but history and reality; the second type is known for its rich and surprising imagination , somewhat far from reality. The former often makes people feel truly fearful and worried, such as the famous anti-totalitarian novel "1984", and "I Am Legend" broadcast by CCTV not long ago, and "Resident Evil" broadcast by Oriental Film and Television Channel; People admire and marvel at the extraordinary imagination of the original creator, and at the same time find it very interesting and exciting, like "2012".
The first "Planet of the Apes" is undoubtedly the second. I think that even if human beings face a catastrophe like "2012" or "Resident Evil" in the future, they will fall and even die, and it is impossible for apes to gain the wisdom of human beings and rise or evolve into intelligent creatures. Although I am not very convinced by prehistoric legends such as God creating the world in seven days, I firmly believe that the message sent by our Bibles is that God created man in his own image. I only admire the original creator's daring to write, provide us with an interesting legend, and make fun of human self by the way; this is a bit like some horror suspense films, the probability of events happening is close to zero, but it is exciting, play a game Take a heartbeat.
The only thing that scares me in the whole film is the mutants in the second part. Humans throwing nuclear bombs at each other is enough to produce such disgusting and pitiful mutants without the intervention of apes. The film was released during the Cold War. The threat of nuclear war was real back then, far from being comparable to today's post-Cold War era. People who came to watch the film at that time would have a strong sense of reality. In this sense, the second part can be classified as the first type, which is quite cautionary.
Perhaps we should remember and give special thanks to Pierre Boulle, the almost unknown French novelist in China, who created this imaginative story for us. However, except for the first one, the next four are not his credit, but the creation of Hollywood screenwriters, who just borrowed the names of the characters he first created.
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