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Planet of the Apes ending

Cerdito

Ok, I've just finished the original Planet of the Apes book, written by Pierre Boulle in 1963. The funny thing is, the ending.....

....is more or less the same as the modern remake of the film!! The main dude in it, Ulysse manages to escape the planet and flys back to earth. He lands in Paris (original novel was written in French after all) and is greeted by monkeys.

Can anyone explain what the deal with this is? (by that I mean the ending of the modern film and/or the book). Or is it just supposed to be one of these things that makes you 'think'. It's meltin' me brain :rolleyes:

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Saruman

I never read the book but i thought the ending of the original film was fantastic but the remake was crap! It did not make any sense to me at all unless it was an alternate reality or something.. time travel can not be an issue for obvious reasons, or if it is then its a big mistake on the book/movie's part

bombidol

that ending was used in one of the original movies if i remember correct, i bought the dvd box set but i havent gotten around to watching em all again

Cerdito

Hmmm....

I suppose I'll just have to make my own mind up!

Other interesting things from the book:

- Yer man sleeps with the cavegirl (Nova in the book) and gets her up the pole, wahay!

- He trys to score Zira, the she-monkey who helps him out (she rebuffs him, citing the fact he's "too ugly":D )

- The tale is told from the viewpoint of two space travellers who find the tale in a bottle floating in space (no, really). At the end of the book....SURPRISE! they turn out to be monkeys

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Saruman
I never read the book but i thought the ending of the original film was fantastic but the remake was crap! It did not make any sense to me at all unless it was an alternate reality or something.. time travel can not be an issue for obvious reasons, or if it is then its a big mistake on the book/movie's part

note: I enjoyed the remake, and had no problems with the ending of the remake whatsoever

I think most people prefer the ending of the original to the remake because it provided people with an amount of 'closure'. People see the statue, hear "You blew it up", and this leads people by the hand to the conclusion that this was, in fact, "earth all along". Yes, yes.. wonderful, good show and all that.

The remake did not provide any such 'closure'. The film's ending is so open that it invites people to leave the cinema with no conclusive understanding of what just happened. To Joe Cinemagoer, this is nothing short of betrayal on the part of the director. Where is the bite-sized easy-to-digest, step-by-step explaination of what the ending means? Most people, rather than actually go ahead and enjoy the openness of the ending, bitch and moan about how these loose ends are just a greedy attempt by the film studio to leave room for a sequel. THESE LOOSE ENDS MUST BE TIED UP!

No - screw that. The remake ending was a ballsy move by Tim Burton. It's just a shame he got bitten in the ass, by assuming people were sick of tired, contrived explainations of movie endings.

Venom

The remake ending was a ballsy move by Tim Burton. It's just a shame he got bitten in the ass, by assuming people were sick of tired, contrived explainations of movie endings.

I disagree.Tim Burton just used a messed up ending that makes no sense just to get people talking about the movie.Real cheep tactic im my opinion.In any interview he has given about the remake of planet of the apes,when asked what the fúck the ending was supposed to mean,mr burton just waffels away meaningless and tends to change the subject as quicky as possable.This to my mind,just proves my point that the director dosent even have a clue to what the ending is and is nothing more than a gimick.

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Venom
I disagree.Tim Burton just used a messed up ending that makes no sense just to get people talking about the movie.Real cheep tactic im my opinion.In any interview he has given about the remake of planet of the apes,when asked what the fúck the ending was supposed to mean,mr burton just waffels away meaningless and tends to change the subject as quicky as possable.This to my mind,just proves my point that the director dosent even have a clue to what the ending is and is nothing more than a gimick.

Question (and I'm trying to be as inoffensive as possible):
Did you read the rest of my post?
Actually - did you read the bit that you quoted?

First of all - as Cerdito said at the start of this thread, the remake ending is much closer to the ending of the novel on which the films were based. This proves he didn't just pull an ending out of his ass, 'just to get people talking'. There was a deliberate thought process for it, which brings me to point two..

The thought process behind it was to provide people with an open ending, no closure at all, thus leaving it up to each person to provide their own sense of 'closure', by giving them the opportunity to provide their own ending. I think this was a gross miscalculation, because, as I said, people turned on him for 'betraying' them. They would prefer a step-by-step diagram explaining the ending, than being forced to go home, and think about what they saw (or - god forbid - talk to other people about their[/b] interpretations of what they just saw).

Finally - if he had gone to such lengths to deliberately leave the ending open (and his commentary on the dvd is along the lines of: I much prefer when there's no fixed explaination to a movie ending), why on earth would he then go and lay it out for people in interviews? He would be shooting himself in the foot, right?

Tim Burton is not an idiot. Nor is he merely a studio puppet - he is one of the few directors whose vision studios implicitly trust. I do not believe he created this ending for any reason other than to provide people with the opportunity to come up with their own explainations for the ending.

Draco

Balls. The ending had a real "tacked on" feel to it. If it had ended before he landed it would have been fine. But jesus, the apes building a society that looked exactly like our current one, down to having their own Abe Lincon type memorial? that's just a big pile of smelly poo. I don't mind films that make you think afterwards, but I do mind when they just pull an ending out of their ar$e that makes no sense in relation with the rest of the movie. Tim Burton has been going down hill in my estimation for the last few years and the muck that he threw up on the screen for Planet of the Apes is just another nail in his coffin.

If he wanted an open ending, he need not have had the astronaut land on earth. Him flying into the wormhole thing would have been sufficent.

Venom

Im a big fan of all of Tim Burtons movies.I really like the style he brings to a movie.But PotA remake is just a really poor film imho due to the tacky ending he bolted on to it.

I dont buy the whole "I dont like conventional movies endings" bit as all his pet project movies do have cool final endings.

The majority of people who have seen the remake have all slated the ending and all have the same viewpoint on it.It's not even a case of some like it and some dont.

I also dont see how he can claim any relevance to the book considering he stated so many times the plot of the remake was a story onto its self and bore no reference to any privious story's based on the PotA idea.

I dont dislike the remake's ending as it was weird and hard to understand,I dislike it as it makes no sense what's so ever and seemed just to be a load of pretencious tripe that was just tacked on to get people talking about it.

Saruman

Originally posted by Draco
Balls. The ending had a real "tacked on" feel to it. If it had ended before he landed it would have been fine. But jesus, the apes building a society that looked exactly like our current one, down to having their own Abe Lincon type memorial? that's just a big pile of smelly poo.

Thats what i meant by the time travel thing being implausable.. even had they gone back in time to before humans where as powerfule they could not have made the society down to the police car crest the same as ours... If every damn ape came in force and tried to take over a planet of over 6 billion humans with thousands of years of more advanced technology behind them then it would be the shortest invasion in history... the only POSSIBLE thing is this... The apes are all we saw BUT they are only an integral part of society. Humans still dominate but the apes left their planet and arrived on earth before he did and are now integrated into the culture so little would have changed... But thats even unlikely as it does not explain the statue!

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Venom
Im a big fan of all of Tim Burtons movies.I really like the style he brings to a movie.But PotA remake is just a really poor film imho due to the tacky ending he bolted on to it.

Tacky?
'unexplainable', certainly - but 'tacky'? Where is this description coming from?

Originally posted by Venom
I dont buy the whole "I dont like conventional movies endings" bit as all his pet project movies do have cool final endings.

His words (paraphrased), not mine.

Originally posted by Venom
The majority of people who have seen the remake have all slated the ending and all have the same viewpoint on it.It's not even a case of some like it and some dont.

This is entirely subjective. The majority of my friends, and the people I work with are science/physics dorks. They had absolutely no problem with the ending.

Originally posted by Venom
I also dont see how he can claim any relevance to the book considering he stated so many times the plot of the remake was a story onto its self and bore no reference to any privious story's based on the PotA idea.

He said himself it was a re-imagining. This is not the same as taking the basic idea, and throwing the rest in the bin. Burton was free to (and did) take bits and pieces from the previous PotA movies (although mostly sticking to the first two), and the book. For more examples of this, just listen to Charlton Heston's lines in the remake.

Originally posted by Venom
I dont dislike the remake's ending as it was weird and hard to understand,I dislike it as it makes no sense what's so ever and seemed just to be a load of pretencious tripe that was just tacked on to get people talking about it.

The above sentence is so close to contradiction, it almost hurts
How different are 'made no sense' and 'hard to understand'?
How different are 'weird' and 'pretentious'?
These are the same things, just from a different point of view.

As I've said - he left the ending open, and left people with a whole bunch of unanswered questions. Most people hate leaving the cinema with unanswered questions, and no real sense of finality, so they instantly labelled it 'pretentious', or 'sequel fodder'. There are explanations for the ending - except noone can say which explanation is the right one. Frustrating, isn't it?

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Saruman
even had they gone back in time to before humans where as powerfule they could not have made the society down to the police car crest the same as ours ... But thats even unlikely as it does not explain the statue!

Two words (and then I'll explain): Incas. Egyptians.

These are two cultures that had no contact... whatsoever. Yet both built large pyramids. Hell, even their art was fairly similar. Yet (and I'll repeat), they had no contact... whatsoever.

You haven't heard of parallel evolution?

note: I am not saying this is the explanation, nor is it my theory on the ending, I am just pointing out that there are myriad possibilities that you probably haven't even touched on yet.

Noone wants my take on the ending?

Lex_Diamonds

Original POTA: good ending.

Re-Imagining(*cringe*): crap ending that most people including me thought was non-sensical and in no way clever.

Venom

The above sentence is so close to contradiction, it almost hurts

Let me break down the big hard words so you can understand it more easly.

I dont dislike the remake's ending as it was weird and hard to understand - THIS IS NOT WHY I DISLIKED THE ENDING OF THE FILM.

I disliked it as it makes no sense what's so ever and seemed just to be a load of pretencious tripe that was just tacked on to get people talking about it. - THIS IS WHY I DISLIKED THE ENDING OF THE FILM.

I didnt like the ending of the movie because it made no sense compaired to the rest of the movie.The story up to that point followed a certain plot and had a logic to it,but the ending had no relation to the plot.It was like the ending from a different movie with the same characters.The tacky bolted on ending just to get the "talk about this mediocre movie" effect is just lame coming from a director like Tim Burton.

How different are 'made no sense' and 'hard to understand'?

They are completly different.

One is gibberish and the other is reasionable logic that might require some serious thinking to fully understand,but if you perserve you will become enlightened.

How different are 'weird' and 'pretentious'?

www.dictionary.com - seek you answers here.

Most people hate leaving the cinema with unanswered questions, and no real sense of finality, so they instantly labelled it 'pretentious', or 'sequel fodder'.

Most people have gotten used to big name movies being left open for the sequal and its not a big shock to them anymore.The majority of viewers of this movie labeled it pretentious because it is,due to the reasions outlined in nearly every post in this tread.

There are explanations for the ending - except noone can say which explanation is the right one. Frustrating, isn't it?

No its not frustrating.Its just really lame and tacky when the director of the film cant explain the ending of a movie that he bloody well directed.

But the real expanasion of the fúcked up ending is in fact quite easy to understand.When the movie was finished and after the viewing by the movie company,they realised they had been handed a duff movie to promote.These people just understand profit and the situation they were in probley scared them.So they deceided to bolt on a totaly tacky and wacky ending to leave the generial movie going public,along with the film critic's,bewildered and thinking "wtf was that about".This would generate alot more interested in such a mediacore and interest = profit.

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Venom
Let me break down the big hard words so you can understand it more easly.

I can't resist this one:
How about instead of breaking down the big hard words, you start by spelling the smaller ones correctly? That would be a great, thanks.

petty, I know, sorry

Originally posted by Venom
I didnt like the ending of the movie because it made no sense compaired to the rest of the movie.The story up to that point followed a certain plot and had a logic to it,but the ending had no relation to the plot.It was like the ending from a different movie with the same characters.

A film about a guy crashing down on a planet, where talking monkeys were the dominant species of a planet, but with an ending of a guy crashing down on a planet where talking monkeys were the dominant species of a planet didn't make sense?

Think carefully before you reply.

Originally posted by Venom
One is gibberish and the other is reasionable logic that might require some serious thinking to fully understand,but if you perserve you will become enlightened.

We're now on a crash-course into semantics.
The difference between 'made no sense' and 'hard to understand' is incredibly small. Let me put it into simple terms: when I started doing algebra, it made no sense to me. Then, I got my head around it, and it was simply 'hard to understand' (then 'hard', then 'easy'). Do you see what I'm getting at? They are two sides of the same coin. Remember when I said "These are the same things, just from a different point of view"? That was to avoid this very argument.

www.dictionary.com - seek you answers here.
See above for differences between what some people call 'pretentious' and others call 'weird'

(by the way - you even spelled pretentious wrong .. time to start taking some of your own advice, huh?)

Originally posted by Venom
No its not frustrating.Its just really lame and tacky when the director of the film cant explain the ending of a movie that he bloody well directed.

This sounds very much like you're saying Tim Burton hadn't got a clue how his own film ended. Like the ending was a complete accident - he woke up one morning to find an entire ending scripted, storyboarded, designed, shot, and printed, and said "uh.. what's this all about?".

Come on.

You said before that you're a 'fan of Tim Burton's movies'. So you must credit him with some kind of intelligence. Intelligence enough to have a vision of a movie, and follow through with this vision, from start to end.

Originally posted by Venom
But the real expanasion of the fúcked up ending is in fact quite easy to understand.When the movie was finished and after the viewing by the movie company,they realised they had been handed a duff movie to promote.These people just understand profit and the situation they were in probley scared them.So they deceided to bolt on a totaly tacky and wacky ending to leave the generial movie going public,along with the film critic's,bewildered and thinking "wtf was that about".This would generate alot more interested in such a mediacore and interest = profit.

A couple of things regarding what you're saying here.

Directors are usually very forthcoming when studios interfere with their 'artistic vision', and will promptly let as many people know as need to know that the movie credited to them is not, in fact, the movie they directed. Tim Burton has said no such thing - so.. sense or no sense.. this is what he wanted people to see.

You are right - studios are motivated by profit (I wouldn't go so far as to say "greed"), and yes, interest does equal profit, in most cases, but in this case, the interest has been negative. As you've been saying all along, the unwashed masses went to the movie, came out not understanding what went on, and immediated pulled out the "Tha' was bleedin' shoihe" card... boom - negative interest. Studios are not stupid.. they know when to get people talking about a movie, just to generate interest. This movie already had Tim Burton. It already had the Planet of the Apes license. It did not need a tacked-on ending just to get people talking about it.

Have you given the ending much thought? If so - what is your explanation of the ending? (indulge me - let's run with the assumption that there is an explanation, and it wasn't just nonsense) Actually.. I'm interested to find out what everyone's explanation of the ending was.

pauldeehan

The remake would have been a much better film if it had ended with him flying away, the ending where he returned to Earth just sucked.

I don't have a problem with complex plots or anything, I like to be challenged by a film, but the remake's ending is not challenging, just nonsensical.

Draco

Originally posted by ObeyGiant
The majority of my friends, and the people I work with are science/physics dorks. They had absolutely no problem with the ending.

As are mine. and they all had major problems with it. Yes you could argue parallel evolution, but to have things like the uniform, cars, and statues the same is just streching it far to much.

And re-imaging my ar$e. It was a re-make. Calling it a re-imaging is just trying to dress up mutton as lamb.

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Draco
As are mine. and they all had major problems with it.

As the first part of that quote (the bit that you 'left out') said: "This is entirely subjective". I was highlighting the fact that not everyone had a problem with the ending. It just depends where you approach it from.

Originally posted by Draco
Yes you could argue parallel evolution, but to have things like the uniform, cars, and statues the same is just streching it far to much.

And I quote myself. Again.
"note: I am not saying this is the explanation, nor is it my theory on the ending, I am just pointing out that there are myriad possibilities that you probably haven't even touched on yet."

A quick translation of this quote: "Possible. Not likely. Have you actually thought about it before labelling it nonsense?"

Lemming

here's my theory on the ending of the film.

The electrical storm, as we see, throws you through time. They end up on another planet.

At the end of the film he travels back through the electrical storm under the assumption that it will throw him back through time to where he was originally, which it "does".

Except the planet has apes in place of humans, otherwise identical.

Therefore the electrical storm is not only a gate through time, but a gate through dimensions, parallel or otherwise.

Draco

Originally posted by ObeyGiant
A quick translation of this quote: "Possible. Not likely. Have you actually thought about it before labelling it nonsense?"

Yes I did think about it and I labeled it a badly structure and cop out ending. Parrallel evolution is all well and good, but it's still a muck ending.

Cerdito

wow, got a bigger response to this than I expected....I must say I like Lemmings take on the ending.

Some food for thought though, in the book (not to keep bringing it up!) the planet of the Apes was in the Betelgeuse system...when he went back to earth he didn't go through any wormhole or electrical storm

Somehow I think it would have been better if "it was ALL a dream"

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by Draco
Yes I did think about it and I labeled it a badly structure and cop out ending.

Before labelling it this, what were your thoughts on a possible explanation? Going by what you just said, it seems as if you skipped the 'crazy' explanations, and went straight to labelling it 'bad structure and cop out ending'.

Originally posted by Draco
Parrallel evolution is all well and good, but it's still a muck ending.

Please, to save both your time and mine, read what I'm saying.
To save you some effort, I'll even summarise:
"Possible"
"Not Likely"
"Not saying this is the explanation"
"not my theory"
"myriad possibilities"
"probably not touched on".

Post again, without first reading what I'm saying, and I'll rip your arms off.

artvandelay

The odd thing about the remake ending is that the apes seemed to have to same history as us . The Washington mormoiral, there and the police cars and the guns . Might it be that the Apes travled back and just changed the Lincon Mormorial and stole all the technolgy. In the future the Apes were still pretty stupied only had spears and nets. The humans also talking probaly because they did'nt think the audience could'nt relate to none speaking characters and they wouldnt be able to follow the story line.

Anyway the ending makes no sense which seems to be the trend lately, the orignal ending gets changed to something the Producers by prefer. How many new film have u seen where it starts off good and gets ruined by a bad ending ?

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by artvandelay
The odd thing about the remake ending is that the apes seemed to have to same history as us . The Washington mormoiral, there and the police cars and the guns . Might it be that the Apes travled back and just changed the Lincon Mormorial and stole all the technolgy. In the future the Apes were still pretty stupied only had spears and nets.

On the planet where Leo crashes down, the apes have a working senate and trade system. Other things of note are child apes playing basketball, and an ape with an organ grinder (and pet dwarf). Oh, and there's also the pretty significant fact that they spoke English.

Just because they only had spears and nets doesn't mean that they were stupid. One of the major clues given to us in the film is the fact that the apes on board the space station (the ones the talking apes of the film were descended from) were genetically modified - their genes had been combined with those of a human, to give them more human-like behaviour. This could mean that these Apes were on the same evolutionary path as us (Think parallel evolution on crystal meth).

Another thing worth noting is the fact that the planet is not Earth. Throughout the film, we are shown two moons, and when Leo takes off from the planet, we see a completely different solar system.

These are clues. Paying attention to these clears up the apparent 'lack of sense'.

Originally posted by artvandelay
Anyway the ending makes no sense which seems to be the trend lately, the orignal ending gets changed to something the Producers by prefer. How many new film have u seen where it starts off good and gets ruined by a bad ending ?

Not recently, but the ones that spring to mind are Army of Darkness and Halloween 6. Both of these were ruined by the studio, who ignored the Director's feeling on how these films should be done, and released lacklustre cuts of these films instead.