Planet of the Apes (2001)
Directed by Tim Burton
After a spectacular crash-landing on an uncharted planet, brash astronaut Leo Davidson finds himself trapped in a savage world where talking apes dominate the human race. Desperate to find a way home, Leo must evade the invincible gorilla army led by Ruthless General Thade.
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24 films that influenced Planet of the Apes
What critics say influenced Planet of the Apes
Despite employing the most hallowed, and yet derided, visual icon in science fiction: that of the Statue of Liberty in the midst of a post-apocalyptic desert landscape, Planet of the Apes remains a modern science fiction classic.
And though an Alien gag is priceless, recapturing a little of the dada sensibility that gives Brooks' early work its immediacy * , it, like references to the "Star Trek" transporter and the money shot of Planet of the Apes , presumes to lump Star Wars in with hard(er) sci-fi, which seems a rather philistine thing to do.
Star Wars is the easy-target framework, but some of the best bits are throwaway riffs on other sci-fi classics like Alien and Planet of the Apes .
The main premise of the film (both its plot and characters) is mostly influenced by George Lucas’s sci-fi trilogy “Star Wars,” but Brooks borrows from the likes of nearly every popular sci-fi franchise, including “Star Trek,” “Aliens,” “Planet of the Apes,” and even the not-so-science-fiction tale “The Wizard of Oz.” Brooks includes a good collection of quality gags throughout, but it’s Moranis’ crowd-pleasing re-creation of Darth Vader that ultimately wins in the film’s internal battle for absolute absurdity.
Description: The phenomenal success of the 1970 Beneath the Planet of the Apes spawned this sequel in which simian scientists Cornelius and Zira (Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter, reprising their roles from the first Planet of the Apes movie) travel backward in time, setting the stage for the ape supremacy of the first two films.
Flipping the apes-as-slaves motif of "Conquest of" and "Battle for the Planet of the Apes," Burton's film proposes an ape-run planet in which humans are not just enslaved but, in Thade's view, dangerous enough to warrant total extinction.
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And here's Tim Roth as Thade, a warrior general ape (James Gregory as Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes).
This first sequel to Planet of the Apes isn't bad, but already shows the way the original conception was to degenerate into routine comic strip adventure.
Even the ape costumes are unbelievable—nothing like the ones in the Planet of the Apes series, that obviously have humans wearing them.
Though it's not quite his best work (that remains Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), Big Fish does mark Tim Burton's most accomplished and (for lack of a better word) grown-up movie to date.
The plastic accomplishments of his films, starting with 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, have always been their signature achievements, and at least twice, in 1990's Edward Scissorhands and 1994's Ed Wood, Burton's sympathy for earnest, unassimilated dreamer-types nourished his visual imagination with some palatable emotion.
Burton ("Batman") has given up none of his kinship with the dark, alienated and subversive, which has always kept him in tune with male adolescents -- and other adventurous spirits.
Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, etc.), accepted the project on condition that the studio agree to use real actors.
Grimmer than the Brothers Grimm put together, Burton is the creator of increasingly bleak and unhappy fairy tales like "Batman," "Batman Returns" and "Sleepy Hollow."
Sometimes it seems that all it takes to fall in love with a Tim Burton movie, from the poetically tattered "Sleepy Hollow" to either of his brooding "Batman" movies, is to give yourself over to the look of it.
As with his earlier films, including Batman, Pee Wee�s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, and Mars Attacks, you can tell that Burton�s not just in it for a paycheck.
As a composer for film and television, however, his best work remains the theme to The Simpsons and the scores to the first two Batman movies (directed by Burton), with the rest largely sounding alike.
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Watching the new trailers for Tim Burton's upcoming Planet of the Apes , Icouldn't help noticing the lack of Johnny Depp.
Director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands) still holds a firm place in the pantheon of Great Directors, thanks to his previous eight films, even the worst of which contained a personal touch and a hint of thought or vision.
Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, etc.), accepted the project on condition that the studio agree to use real actors.
As with his earlier films, including Batman, Pee Wee�s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, and Mars Attacks, you can tell that Burton�s not just in it for a paycheck.
I have colleagues who are great Burton fans, and they bemoan the fact that he keeps taking "money gigs" like Planet of the Apes, and await the time that he will return to telling his "own" stories like Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands.
In any case, as in most of Tim Burton's movies (except "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood", his two masterpieces), storytelling and character development are secondary to splendid production design and moody, stylish direction.
Roth is an even more memorable thug here than he was in the differently "alien" universe of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You , gnashing teeth, striding around with baboonishly coiled force, letting the various chips on his shoulders forever get the better of him.