Planet of the apes

We have planned to go and see 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' some time next month (yes I know it is already out) so of course some homework needed to be done. I have seen all five Apes movies before round about ten years ago, so I had mostly forgotten the happenings. On top of that, one of my friends that lives next door had never ever seen them (and he is also coming along to see the new one) so we have been slowly watching through. So far we have only seen the first two.

They are both basic in plot, and are quite over acted. They sort of remind me of the old Star Trek series which was made around about the same time. Both have Charlton Heston staring, although he is only in the second one at the very beginning and at the very end.

First one is about a guy (Heston) on a space mission of some sort. They land on a planet, travel around quite a bit, come across talking apes, get captured, escape, yadda yadda. And at the end he realises he is on Earth in the future as he sees the statue of liberty sticking out of the sand on the beach. He then gets off his horse and has another one of his mental breakdowns. Those where the best bits, his over acting and going mental my favorite line being "IT'S A MADHOUSE IN HERE!!!!! A MAAAADDD HOUSE!!!!!" while some "damn dirty ape" sprays him with a hose pipe.

The second one, another astronaut crash lands meets Heston's woman (she has flash backs of him vanishing into a cliff), meets the apes, escapes with Heston's woman, finds remains of NewYork's train network (realising of course he was on earth), finds some weird telepath guys that worship a dooms day device, and they have Heston held captive. The apes go to war with the weird guys, Heston's cave woman gets shot, the other guy gets shot, Heston gets shot and as he is dying presses the detonation button for the doomsday device. Earth is destroyed according to the text displayed at the end of the movie.

But wait, there are three more! what the heck.... We will watch those at some point but not the Tim Burton remake. Not terrible by all means, but it was a bit of a flopedodah in moor ways than one.