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I was really excited to see the new Planet of the Apes. Really. I was. I hadn’t seen the original version, but I’d heard so much about it that I was intrigued.
But I should have just skipped the remake and rented the original.
The plot was complicated – and confusing – but I’ll try to simplify and summarize it. Mark Wahlberg (who I still think of as Marky Mark) plays Captain Leo Davidson, a crewmember on a space station. His job is to train monkeys to fly test missions in pods. When one of his monkeys disappears into a storm, Leo takes off to retrieve him – but he’s hit by the storm, too, and soon finds himself crashing into an unfamiliar planet.
Leo is found and caged by an ape slave trader – and he soon discovers that the apes are in control. On this planet, humans are nothing but slaves.
Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), the daughter of a prominent senator, takes interest in Leo, so she buys him and takes him to her home. When he and two other house humans escape, she finds them and decides to help Leo on his journey to find the rest of his crew – whom he’s convinced have come for him. Together, Leo, Ari, and a few others set out for Calima – the apes’ holy ruins – closely followed by Thade (Tim Roth), the general of the ape army.
It’s obvious that Planet of the Apes is a Tim Burton movie. It’s overflowing with his signature style. The effects are great – but the movie’s just plain overdone and confusing. (Not to mention the fact that, as one of my friends pointed out, all of the apes look like members of the Jackson family.) The storyline is a mess, and the ending is even more of a mess – and when it was all over, the first words out of my mouth were, “What the heck just happened?” And though I’ve heard it makes more sense if you’ve seen the original, it’s just plain confusing on its own.
So if you want to watch a movie with cool effects and a bunch of monkeys that strangely resemble Michael, Tito, LaToya, and the gang, go ahead and check this one out. But it might be best to mute your TV – because paying attention to the plot will only make your head hurt.
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