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Memo to Tim Burton: Bow your head
by Craig Roush
A Kinnopio film writer
Like many classic films, Planet of the Apes was a standout in its day but has since lost some of its luster, so that now, more than thirty years later, it's largely degenerated to the status of a cheesy 1960s B-movie in the minds of many modern cineasts. Its B-movie status is a myth, but like any movie made before the present decade its production value is severely lacking, and that's presumably the reason for this Tim Burton-directed remake. Still, despite the advances in moviemaking since 1968, this latest version of the film is anything but inspiring -- its production is still quite lacking, and that's hardly the best way to craft a solid remake.
Perhaps half the film is shot on a Hollywood soundstage -- those scenes that take place in the city of the apes -- and it's quite obvious that these are constructed sets rather than actual location shoots. It's surprising that Burton and crew couldn't fashion a more realistic setting for the bulk of the first two acts, because the costume design and makeup are simply outstanding. The disparity in the production is more than a little unsettling.
Besides which, the garish, false shadows and cramped camera angles that the constructed sets produce aren't conducive to the atmosphere that Burton needs to create for this remake. They really aren't conducive to anything, and that's disappointing because the scenes in the ape city lay out groundwork for the film's plot.
The story begins in the year 2029, on board a US Air Force space station in the outer reaches of the solar system, and Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) and crew are on hand when a strange anomaly causes the brief power outage on the station. Immediately investigating, Davidson discovers it's a space-time vortex, and when his spacecraft enters the anomaly, he's immediately rocketed to a different part of the universe far into the future -- to a planet dominated by an advanced race of apes who have enslaved the humans. The apes themselves are split between a militant, oppressive faction, led by General Thade (Tim Roth) and his right-hand man (er, ape) Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan); and a more liberal faction, led by Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), the daughter of a respected member of the ape senate. All of this changes, though, when Davidson leads Ari and a small party of human slaves, including the beautiful Daena (Estella Warren) and her father Karubi (Kris Kristofferson), to escape the city and flee into the surrounding desert, where the final confrontation between the humans and apes will take place.
Despite the lacking production (which isn't so lacking once the film leaves the ape city -- the jungles and desert of this fictional planet are aptly chosen for their respective scenes), the story is at once engaging and also poorly paced. The opening segments, in which Davidson and crew discover the space-time anomaly, and in which our hero arrives at the title location, are all exciting and even a little thrilling. But the story plods through its middle reaches in the ape city, because the back-story to the friction between the apes isn't really pertinent -- it has no bearing on the movie's final outcome. Although the thinly-veiled commentary on human racism through the apes' use of slaves is still present, it's neither the movie's main focus nor critical to its solution.
Things begin to pick up again as Leo and crew flee the city, and indeed, their flight provides some of the film's most rousing moments. Although Wahlberg plays Davidson rather unremarkably (although he's truly not a remarkable character as written), Tim Roth is deliciously, splendidly evil as the chief villain, General Thade, and Michael Clarke Duncan's turn as Thade's right-hand man, while not nearly so evil, is still quite brutish and fun to watch. (Indeed, all of the actors who play the apes, wonderfully costumed and made up, have deftly mastered all of the simian nuances that add so much to this movie.) The confrontation between all of these characters is greatly anticipated, and as the film builds up to the closing moments of the third act, the suspense is palpable.
Unfortunately, the film's denouement, or at least a denouement with some sort of punch, is completely absent, and it could be argued that this unsuccessful ending is the film's most disappointing component. It's unclear what screenwriters William Broyles Jr. (Apollo 13, Cast Away), Lawrence Konner (Mighty Joe Young), and Mark Rosenthal (the same) were thinking, because the ending is circumstantial, contrived, and completely nonsensical -- it deflates any tension developed in the previous two hours and forces audiences to question the worth of the movie as a whole. It's certainly not classic science fiction and, for a film of Planet of the Apes' stature, it may not even do justice to the original.
As a whole, the film is slightly disappointing, because it promised so much and yet delivered so little. It's further disappointing because of Tim Burton's involvement -- he's made a career of taking dramas like this and inflecting a darkly engaging twist to them. But remakes (or re-imaginations, as Burton claimed this to be, since several of this film's concepts, including the setting and characters, differ so substantially from the original) are always dicey prospects, and like most, this one turned out to be worse for wear.
Craig Roush, 2001
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