Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is the third sequel to the 1968 science fiction film Planet of the Apes. It continues the exploration of the fictional future history of mankind set out in the previous film, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and considered to be the most violent of the Ape sequels. The film is directed by J. Lee Thompson.
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Cast
- Roddy McDowall......Milo/Caesar
- Don Murray............Gov. Breck
- Hari Rhodes............MacDonald
- Ricardo Montalban...Armando
Plot summary
Building upon the description given by Cornelius and Zira before the Presidential committee in the previous film, a terrible disease has killed off the world's cats and dogs, leaving humans with no animals to keep as pets, except apes. In time, humans notice the Apes capacity to learn and adapt, thus they are taught to perform menial household tasks. By the year 1991, human society has become a sterile and more oppressive culture, with Apes enslaved by humans.
Armando (played by Ricardo Montalbán) and his Ape Milo, visit Central City where Armando details how the Apes became enslaved. He also warns the young Chimpanzee to be careful in the city, should anyone find out he is the offspring of the two intelligent Apes from the future, it would lead to their deaths. As they walk through the streets of the city and are disgusted by witnessing the Apes cleaning streets and delivering packages, witnessing the atrocities done to the Apes when they don't comply. Seeing an Ape beaten and drugged, Milo shouts “Lousy human bastard!” Armando quickly tries to take responsibility by explaining to security that it was he that shouted. As the crowd around them get agitated, Milo runs away, followed by Armando.
Hiding in a stairway, Armando says that he will go to the authorities and try to smooth things over by bluffing his way out of the trouble they're in, explaining that his Ape had escaped. In the meantime, Milo must hide among his own kind, among the Apes that are being trained for slavery. He goes through the violent conditioning process and is sold to Governor Breck. Breck, knowing only the Ape's assigned number, uses an old family method to give him a name: taking out a dictionary, he allows the ape to flip through it, thereby naming himself. Milo's finger comes to rest on "Caesar". So christened, Caesar is then put to work by Breck's subordinate MacDonald, a descendant of slaves himself, making him sympathetic towards the Apes.
Meanwhile, Armando is being interrogated by the authorities who believe his circus Ape may be the offspring of the two evolved Apes from the future. Putting him in a machine that forces people to tell the truth, rather than being forced to reveal the truth, Armando throws himself out of a window, resulting in his death. Seeing the death of his father figure, the only human he loved, Caesar loses faith in human kindness and begins to plot an Ape rebellion.
Caesar secretly teaches the other Apes the art of combat, as well as having them gather weapons such as knives, guns, flame throwers and grenades. However, at this time, Breck discovers that the manifest of the vessel that delivered Caesar lists no chimpanzees aboard. Suspecting that Caesar may be the Ape that the authorities have been looking for, Breck brings Caesar in and connects him to a torture machine, forcing Caesar to speak. Once he does, Breck has the machine turned to full power killing Caesar, or so they think. MacDonald had tampered with the machine, secretly allowing the ape to live and return to the rebellion.
Caesar leads an Ape revolt on Central City against their human keepers. The Apes riot against the human forces and emerge victorious. Caesar has Breck marched out, planning to execute him. MacDonald appeals to Caesar's humanity to show mercy on his former persecutor. Caesar doesn't listen, and, in a rage, details how from this point on, Apes everywhere will repeat what has happened in Central City, dominating the Earth after the downfall of human civilization, and instructing Apes to enslave the humans that are left. Caesar immediately rethinks his position and orders the Apes to put down their weapons. "If it is man's destiny to be dominated, then it is God's will that he be dominated with compassion and understanding," says Caesar. The humans' slavery of the apes comes to an end, and the world has seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes.
Paradox
The movie implies that all the talking apes of the future are descendants of Caesar, from whom they inherited the ability for speech. However, this is a temporal paradox, as Caesar is himself the child of two of the talking apes of the future, thus making the genetic trait of speech in apes infinitely old. Specifically, the existence of Caesar creates a predestination paradox.
The movie could also be seen to imply that the uprising of the Apes, whilst nearly simultaneously gaining the power of speech, could have happened regardless of whether Caesar existed in this time period. In the film's climax, a Gorilla, who Caesar calls Aldo, is seen beating Breck. Aldo is the name of the Gorilla whom Cornelius believed was the first Ape to speak against his master.
It has also been speculated that Conquest, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes may take place in an alternate timeline from the first two films, that Cornelius and Zira's journey to the past and the events of Escape from the Planet of the Apes may have changed the future but this theory is left intentionally ambiguous.
Trivia
- Paul Dehn, who took over the Apes series as screenwriter, has said that the Ape insurrection was based on the Watts riots.
- The movie has said to have opened to a mainly African-American audience, who at times drowned out dialog with cheering phrases like "right on." At the end, the majority of the crowd cheered and applauded, all on the side of the Apes.
- Another test audience reacted badly to the grim ending, so a second one was commissioned, containing a new, slightly more hopeful speech delivered by Caesar.
- The riot scenes were filmed at Century City, Los Angeles, California. This development had just been completed and businesses had not yet moved in.
External links
- IMDB entry for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
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