PLANET OF THE APES prequel gets a director, exasperated sighs from fans
PLANET OF THE APES prequel gets a director, exasperated sighs from fans
Mar 15
There hasn’t been a good Planet Of The Apes film for at least forty years. Sure, the second one was okay, between Linda Harrison and some Golden Age sci-fi trappings, but the ones without Charlton Heston didn’t elicit more than a yawn from audience, and the Tim Burton reboot was jaw-droppingly, mind-bogglingly, cringe-inducingly awful in every conceivable way (except for the remarkable special effects, of course) — and the less said about the animated and live-action TV shows, the better. So here we are again, reading about a cult sci-fi film from days gone by being unceremoniously ripped into the twenty-first century by creativity-bereft studio execs. The Thing, Dune, Predators, Tron Legacy – the procession of worthless reboots goes on and on.
So apparently there’s been a script ready for this Apes prequel for quite some time. A fellow called Scott Frank, who wrote the sublime social sci-fi / noir / thriller Minority Report wrote a script called Caesar, which deals with scientists genetically augmenting an ape (specifically, a chimpanzee) to make it “more human”. Frank is quick to trump his script as “hard” sci-fi, the likes of which hasn’t been seen on screen since something like Children Of Men or Contact, but this is at odds with the “genetically augmenting an ape” part of the synopsis — there are a good number of practical and ethical issues that keep scientsits from this kind of research in reality, so we’ll take the “hard” sci-fi claim with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, he promises to bring back some of the classic themes and messages explored in the original classic film, a good sign if ever there was one. Forty years later people are still laughing “you blew it up, you maniacs!” or “get your paws off me, you damn dirty ape” and neglecting to discuss the important issues of holistic morality and the treatment of non-human animals brought up in the original. Planet Of The Apes put humans in the position of animals and asked “are language and civilisation prerequesites for emotion?” and in so doing invited viewers to question their own treatment of our relatively non-communicative animal neighbours. If Scott Frank can wrap socially vital issues like this up in a quotable, engaging narrative then maybe this Caesar business isn’t so bad after all.
The director recently attached to Caeasar is some bloke called Rupert Wyatt, who directed a film called The Escapist which, I must admit, I’d never heard of till I googled Wyatt’s name. It got mixed-to-positive reviews from the critics, but it was Wyatt’s debut, so he’s got plenty of room to grow. Minority Report dealt with heady issues of fate, crime, punishment and free will (in addition to being a first-rate thriller / noir), so if Scott Frank has pumped similar thoughtfulness into Caesar, Wyatt may be able to put a worthwhile Apes prequel onto the screen for us after all. If not, we can all get up and start singing “Oh my god, I was wrong / it was Earth, all along / Yes you’ve finally made a monkey out of me …”
