We admit it. We are a fan of the sometimes brilliant, sometimes cheesy 1970’s movie series The Planet of the Apes. If you’ve been living on another planet and don’t know what it’s all about, it’s a circular time travel story about how apes came to power and turned humans to slaves. The allegory, of course, is that we humans did, in some ways, the same to apes.
Tim Burton took a stab at a remake in 2001 to mixed reviews. The ending attempted to set of a mirror scenario in which Mark Whalberg time travels to an earth that is now run by ape. It seemed the series would continue in the vein of the seventies series exploring role reversal of apes being the superior species.
While Burton’s approach didn’t quite pan out, a new vision is being presented in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Centered on a drug that seemingly cures Alzheimer’s, the movie tells the story of how the discovered drug’s side effects cause increased intelligence in apes who, naturally, don’t like the fact they’re held in captivity.
No idea how good or bad the movie will be but there are a few “viral” video floating around which are attached to the Twentieth Century Fox film. One, called Chimp with Machette, takes a look at a group of apes who were supposedly trained by Idi Amin in the seventies and discovered years later. Another, called Chimp with AK-47 shows us just what can happen when we give an ape a gun.
