I didn't really grasp the story - hey, it was the grocery store, not school. I'm not sure how I missed it, but I do recall looking through magazines in the grocery store (precursors to Starlog or Fangoria or some such things) and seeing lots of still photos. Strangely, it was many years later that I saw the third film, Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Perhaps Heston's best performance in the film is that last scene. The Statue of Liberty scene was of course impactful to anyone who's ever seen it but the devastation wrought and the time required to bury her waist-deep in earth didn't settle in until many years after. It wasn't until viewing all five films in the franchise day-after-day on an after-school "Apes Week" movie festival that I picked up on the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" gag during Taylor's trial and of the impact of the nuclear war. Looking back on the first film today, it's really the score that makes it so impactful - the weird music while Taylor and company are traversing the desert, the horn upon first view of the gorilla atop steed, the rapid-fire pace when Taylor ran throughout Ape City, ending up in the "natural history museum".Īs a kid, there were many elements of the morality play that went over my head. As Taylor (Charlton Heston) and crew made their way to the forest, I at first thought they'd ended up on a planet of primitive humans - until the apes burst on the scene. The concept of time travel wasn't so new to me, as I'd gleaned a little information about such things from an issue of Justice League of America I'd owned - it was a JLA/JSA crossover, so inter-dimensional travel and such didn't seem strange. But in the first film, originally released theatrically in 1968, there is no science used to solve any of the conflicts/problems in the plot. Sure, it deals with time travel, fall-out from a nuclear disaster (which I assume bred the mutations in the apes and the de-evolution of human beings), and then later genetic proselytizing by Caesar (maybe? But then that wouldn't explain how, only one generation later, all of the apes can talk and are running the world in Battle for the Planet of the Apes). In fact, I'd argue that the film versions of the Planet of the Apes franchise are not traditional science fiction at all. But what I'd seen on TV was nothing like this book - Apes driving cars? Nah. What a disappointment! Now, this was long before I knew anything about such things as "based on the novel", etc. It featured a cover reminiscent of scenes from the film by the same name, so I asked my mom to check it out for me. Wanting to soak up all things Ape at this point, I came across the original Pierre Boulle novel at the public library. I had several of the Apes Mego action figures and playsets, bubble gum cards, coloring books, etc.
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