I've been thinking a lot about this. The funny thing is, the way Rod Serling changed the ending to make the whole story on Earth of the future is brilliant because it explains the use of English, as well as breathable air, drinkable water, 1G gravity, and even the existence of life. In the original book, everything happens on an actual "planet of the apes" somewhere in the distant cosmos. It's a deliberately absurdist satire of humankind, kinda like Orwell's "Animal Farm". The story works as a satire with minimal explanations because it's supposed to be absurd. But the movie takes a serious dramatic tone which immediately presents a problem to any true scientists & skeptics out there: a planet of apes speaking English? are you f'n kiddin me??

I agree that Taylor, as well as the audience, should've flipped out at the notion of aliens speaking English and acting even remotely human. But I guess comic books and adventure serials like Flash Gordon had beaten the absurd into the norm, and Hollywood found itself a convenient way to dodge the elephant in the room. "Aliens speak English, now can we move on!"

It's because of Rod Serling's excellent rewrite that we get not only the greatest gotcha in movie history, but suddenly everything in the movie is scientifically possible. Even the idea of "time travel" follows Einstein's proposal that an astronaut travelling at a great velocity would experience time "slower" and return to an Earth many years in the future. All we have to accept is that apes develop the power of speech and advanced mental abilities within 3000 years--but that's retcon-explained perfectly in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, where advanced apes return to the past and seed the planet, making the whole loop possible. Logically, this story is airtight. Possibly the first truly believable scifi movie? (which was within weeks followed by the second, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but then we went back to aliens talking English as the standard. Thanks, George Lucas. 😐)

EXCEPT, like you said, Taylor should've been blown away by all this stuff. He's an astronaut & scientist, so he should've totally flipped his wig and spent half the movie saying "WTF??"

@rooprect said:

I've been thinking a lot about this. The funny thing is, the way Rod Serling changed the ending to make the whole story on Earth of the future is brilliant because it explains the use of English, as well as breathable air, drinkable water, 1G gravity, and even the existence of life. In the original book, everything happens on an actual "planet of the apes" somewhere in the distant cosmos. It's a deliberately absurdist satire of humankind, kinda like Orwell's "Animal Farm". The story works as a satire with minimal explanations because it's supposed to be absurd. But the movie takes a serious dramatic tone which immediately presents a problem to any true scientists & skeptics out there: a planet of apes speaking English? are you f'n kiddin me??

I agree that Taylor, as well as the audience, should've flipped out at the notion of aliens speaking English and acting even remotely human. But I guess comic books and adventure serials like Flash Gordon had beaten the absurd into the norm, and Hollywood found itself a convenient way to dodge the elephant in the room. "Aliens speak English, now can we move on!"

It's because of Rod Serling's excellent rewrite that we get not only the greatest gotcha in movie history, but suddenly everything in the movie is scientifically possible. Even the idea of "time travel" follows Einstein's proposal that an astronaut travelling at a great velocity would experience time "slower" and return to an Earth many years in the future. All we have to accept is that apes develop the power of speech and advanced mental abilities within 3000 years--but that's retcon-explained perfectly in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, where advanced apes return to the past and seed the planet, making the whole loop possible. Logically, this story is airtight. Possibly the first truly believable scifi movie? (which was within weeks followed by the second, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but then we went back to aliens talking English as the standard. Thanks, George Lucas. 😐)

Time dilation resulting in 'time travel to the future' as a one way trip is possible, but returning to the present or travelling to the past is more complicated and all the tweaking of fundamental physics have not solved that yet, although the theories are fascinating and a useful source for SF stories.

So, Cornelius and Zira travelling to the past created a 'Bootstrap Paradox'.

Note:

The book is straightforward and I'd like to see a more faithful adaptation with two planets.

@wonder2wonder said:

The book is straightforward and I'd like to see a more faithful adaptation with two planets.

In the spirit of the book, it would almost have to be a comedy which the 3rd movie Escape sorta did. The part about Cornelius wearing a suit with gloves on his feet was straight out of the book I believe. I bet Paul Veerhoven could do it justice. He's the master of scifi satire (Robocop, Starship Troopers) injecting just enough dark humor to give a wink at the audience but without disrupting the seriousness of the drama and overall message.

Although I tried to block it out of my memory, I think Tim Burton's 2001 Apes gave us the 2-planet explanation... although it seemed a bit thinly explained. And in its effort to deliver a Rod Serlingian gotcha (the last scene), I feel like it kinda muddled things.

About time travel to the past, you're right that's the leap of logic we have to take. The movie (Escape) implies that the blast of the planet going kaboom had so much force that it propelled them fast enough, or somehow warped the fabric of time, to deposit them in the past. I'm willing to go along with it, but maybe that's because I was primed by Star Trek TOS ("Naked Time" 1966) as well as Star Trek IV ("The One With The Whales" 1986) using that explanation, more or less. In "Naked Time" it was an antimatter explosion that propelled the Enterprise so fast that it sent them back in time, and in "Whales" it was the Enterprise slingshotting around the sun so fast that it did it again. Scifi writers took Einstein's link between time & velocity and spun it around. May not be scientifically kosher, but since the whole concept is theoretical I guess there's a lotta wiggle room. At least the writers chose magnitudes of velocity that were inconceivable, rather than.... uh.... 88 mph in a Delorean ;)

@rooprect said:

@wonder2wonder said:

The book is straightforward and I'd like to see a more faithful adaptation with two planets.

In the spirit of the book, it would almost have to be a comedy which the 3rd movie Escape sorta did. The part about Cornelius wearing a suit with gloves on his feet was straight out of the book I believe. I bet Paul Veerhoven could do it justice. He's the master of scifi satire (Robocop, Starship Troopers) injecting just enough dark humor to give a wink at the audience but without disrupting the seriousness of the drama and overall message.

Although I tried to block it out of my memory, I think Tim Burton's 2001 Apes gave us the 2-planet explanation... although it seemed a bit thinly explained. And in its effort to deliver a Rod Serlingian gotcha (the last scene), I feel like it kinda muddled things.

About Pierre Boulle's book and the "Planet of the Apes (2001)".

** SPOILERS **

** SPOILERS **

Pierre Boulle's "La Planète des singes (1963)" and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes (2001)" do share some similarities, like the existence of two planets and the plot mostly occurring on the alien one, but in Tim Burton's version, Earth is still the origin of the intelligent apes on the second planet Ashlar. Everyone speaks English there because their ancestors are from the space station Oberon. At the end, it is implied that Thade travels to Earth's past and leads the apes there to conquer the planet. The problem with this kind of time travel plot is: where did Thade come from after he changed the future of Earth and thereby prevented the existence of Oberon, which would crash on Ashlar with everyone on board? Another bootstrap paradox, or did Thade arrive on Earth after the Oberon crash, or should you consider an alternate timeline?

In the book, Soror had a humanoid civilisation that stagnated and, over the course of thousands of years, devolved, while apes continued evolving to take over the planet. They had their own Simian language. When Ulysse returned to his Earth, centuries later since he left, he discovered that apes rule there too.

The final shocking surprise of the book also made me reflect and consider the following:

What if I, as a human, found an ancient manuscript and, after deciphering it, read about a planet where humans rule over the apes? Nothing particularly interesting, I suppose, until it is revealed that the author is an ape.

Tim Burton made the ending too complicated for many viewers. Time travel, due to time dilation, is simple to understand, and only forward to the future. Come to think of it, we all travel to the future, but not at a pace approaching the speed of light.

@wonder2wonder said:

@rooprect said:

@wonder2wonder said:

The book is straightforward and I'd like to see a more faithful adaptation with two planets.

In the spirit of the book, it would almost have to be a comedy which the 3rd movie Escape sorta did. The part about Cornelius wearing a suit with gloves on his feet was straight out of the book I believe. I bet Paul Veerhoven could do it justice. He's the master of scifi satire (Robocop, Starship Troopers) injecting just enough dark humor to give a wink at the audience but without disrupting the seriousness of the drama and overall message.

Although I tried to block it out of my memory, I think Tim Burton's 2001 Apes gave us the 2-planet explanation... although it seemed a bit thinly explained. And in its effort to deliver a Rod Serlingian gotcha (the last scene), I feel like it kinda muddled things.

About Pierre Boulle's book and the "Planet of the Apes (2001)".

** SPOILERS **

** SPOILERS **

Pierre Boulle's "La Planète des singes (1963)" and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes (2001)" do share some similarities, like the existence of two planets and the plot mostly occurring on the alien one, but in Tim Burton's version, Earth is still the origin of the intelligent apes on the second planet Ashlar. Everyone speaks English there because their ancestors are from the space station Oberon. At the end, it is implied that Thade travels to Earth's past and leads the apes there to conquer the planet. The problem with this kind of time travel plot is: where did Thade come from after he changed the future of Earth and thereby prevented the existence of Oberon, which would crash on Ashlar with everyone on board? Another bootstrap paradox, or did Thade arrive on Earth after the Oberon crash, or should you consider an alternate timeline?

In the book, Soror had a humanoid civilisation that stagnated and, over the course of thousands of years, devolved, while apes continued evolving to take over the planet. They had their own Simian language. When Ulysse returned to his Earth, centuries later since he left, he discovered that apes rule there too.

The final shocking surprise of the book also made me reflect and consider the following:

What if I, as a human, found an ancient manuscript and, after deciphering it, read about a planet where humans rule over the apes? Nothing particularly interesting, I suppose, until it is revealed that the author is an ape.

Tim Burton made the ending too complicated for many viewers. Time travel, due to time dilation, is simple to understand, and only forward to the future. Come to think of it, we all travel to the future, but not at a pace approaching the speed of light.

So what did Tim Burton's suggest happened Davidson when he tried to return to Earth? The same thing that happened to Ulysees In Boulle's book which is to suggest that Apes eventually become intelligent and take over? For some reason I remember Burton's film suggesting that Davidson had in fact fell into an alternate universe where apes developed on Earth and shared our Earth's history except done with apes as shown in the scene where he crash lands in D.C. by the ape Lincoln memorial.