Planet of the Apes/Headscratchers

• In Beneath the Planet of the Apes Taylor blows the whole planet up, due at least in part to the apes and the mutated men. But he's only seen a small portion of the planet! How does he know the rest of the world is like the area around what used to be New York City? (Bear in mind I'm bugged by the film; the original book establishes very well that the entire world is a planet of apes, not just a small area.)
  • He was dying. It was his last act of defiance to Dr. Zaius.
    • • Charlton Heston has said that Taylor was merely reaching for Zaius and his dying hand fell on the trigger by coincidence. It's supposed to be ambiguous, but given Taylor apparent death wish following Nova's death, it can seem like he did it on purpose. Either way, the filmmakers' message that an endless cycle of war will lead to mankind's destruction is proven right whether we deliberately wipe ourselves out or do so inadvertently.
  • Also remember, Nova had just been killed by an ape, so what's the point?
  • Remember, The Wild Bunch had just come out the previous year. Ending the movie with a Badass but ultimately pointless bloodbath was a recurring theme during that period in film.
  • How did Taylor and Brent know the bomb would destroy the world? It is clear they left Earth in the 1970's, a time when humanity clearly did not have the technology to build bombs that could destroy a whole planet, and as such would not recognize a bomb that could.
    • The bomb would still wipe out an important part of humanity's remnants, as well as the local ape civilization. As it's implied that the world is already seriously messed up from previous wars, this definitely insures It Got Worse.
• 2001 version. Seriously, what the hell was up with the ending? So Earth is inhabited by apes now? Huh? Why is there a Monkey Ape Lincoln?
  • See the WMG for User:Mac Phisto's explanation.
  • They're counterparts. I wonder what Ape Lincoln did; Did he free an ape race from another?
    • The website claims that Thade simply went back in time using the other pod and started an ape revolution on Earth, freeing them from humans. That, of course, would cause the Grandfather Paradox. If humans never build the Oberon, then it never crashes on the other planet, and Thade's ancestor Simos never establishes an ape society.
      • It would not create a Grandfather Paradox. Leo returned to Earth on October 26, 2155, while he left Saturn's orbit in the year 2029. The ape revolution could have happened in those 128 years.
• The original: How did humans lose their ability to speak?
  • • Presumably they're never taught how to speak. They just punished if they speak so most probably never even try, if they can comprehend that. If a human doesn't gain access to certain things, like speech, before a certain age that part of their brain gets "blocked" off.
    • That might work for captive-bred humans that are punished for vocalizing as children, although even those ought to learn to understand others' speech by listening to their ape masters talk. It certainly wouldn't explain why humans living free in the wild would be unable to rediscover language.

• The remake: Umm... if humans outnumber apes, can talk, and have opposable thumbs... why are the apes in charge again?
  • They're Apes. Strong, easily angered, sapient apes. Humans appeared to have lost their knowledge for weapons a long time ago, leaving them vulnerable.
  • Do they really outnumber the apes? The prequel comics mention that most of the Oberon crew was killed in the crash. The survivors were forced to defend themselves against intelligent Big Creepy-Crawlies, so they enhanced the apes. That didn't turn out well.
  • But why do the apes treat humans like animals? In the original movie it made sense, since humans had ape-like intelligence, but in the remake they are sentient beings, they can talk and think and so on. If they consider the humans inferior, they can just make them inferior-class citizens. Enslaving them makes sense; treating them like non-sentient beings doesn't.
• This is certainly a headscratcher for me: as we all know the events of the first two movies take place in post apocalyptic New York, however, Escape From the Planet of the Apes takes place in Los Angeles and it appears that Conquest... and Battle... take place in the remains of a Southern California city as well, possibly future Los Angeles. The implication in Battle... is the ape village being constructed will eventually become Ape City from the first two movies. How is this possible, considering New York and Los Angeles are 3,000 miles apart?
  • On that note, how did the topography of the [former] NYC area change to look like Southern California cliffs? C'mon, an atomic bomb can't do that, no matter how much you worship it.
  • Conquest was filmed in LA, but the location legend at the beginning of the movie only says that it takes place in "North America". Since Armando is the head of a travelling circus, it isn't too far-fetched to assume that they are in New York or in some nearby city.
• How would a single talking chimp with no concept of modern technology set up an ape revolution, considering this would require genetically-engineered apes, which we only saw on the Oberon. The originals actually make it clear that apes are everywhere thanks to all the other pets dying out. The remake doesn't mention anything like that.
  • Moreover, why would a future space mission bring a bunch of apes along in the first place? Even if they're genetically-engineered to be smarter, there's nothing they can do that a robotic drone couldn't, and the latter wouldn't be a drain on the Oberon's life-support facilities. The only reason apes were ever sent into space in the first place was to confirm that anthropoid brains would still function in space; once they knew it was safe enough for humans, orbital bio-research switched to smaller organisms that were lightweight, harmless, and easy to maintain.
• As there didn't seem to be any sentient gibbons or siamangs running around in this franchise, shouldn't it be called Planet of the Great Apes?
• Apes make terrible pets: dangerous, destructive, unmanageable and expensive. Yet the original films had them as replacements for dogs and cats. Does that mean that rabbits, ferrets, parakeets, hamsters, and all the other animals that were vastly more suited to be pets also died out? Bloody selective plague, if so, considering that horses and humans both survived.
  • The only explanation that might have explained this, and I stress *might*, is if the movie would have suggested the apes in Conquest... had been genetically altered to be a slave race as opposed to just being normal apes that had been trained. This too would have explained why all the apes were now humanoid in appearence.
• In Planet of the Apes, it's made pretty clear that knowledge of the past prior to the Lawgiver has been suppressed. So how does Cornelius know about the story of Aldo saying "no" to his human masters in Escape?
  • Because it's stated somewhere that as an archaeologist, Cornelius had access to scrolls that were kept from the rest of the population.