Planet of the Apes/Trivia

The 1968 film

• All-Star Cast
• Cash Cow Franchise: One decade before Star Wars it was raking on money from sequels and merchandise.
• Enforced Method Acting: Charlton Heston's voice during his famous "get your dirty paws off me" speech was made more realistic by the fact Heston was quite ill during the filming of the scene.
• He Also Did: The first film's script was written by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling.
• Throw It In:
  • Taylor's final rant at the end was thought up and written down by Charlton Heston on the day of shooting that scene. It adds much more power to that Wham Shot, even after repeat viewings.
  • The shot of the three judges doing the "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" pose wasn't meant to be in the movie, it was just the three actors goofing around between takes and they decided to put it in the film.
• Trope Namer:
  • Ape Shall Never Kill Ape
  • Earth All Along
• What Could Have Been:
  • Zaius was originally going to be played by Edward G Robinson, but his ill health did not mix well with the heavy makeup, and the part had to go to Maurice Evans.
  • Also, Linda Harrison played Zira in early makeup test footage, but was later cast as the human Nova.
  • The early scripts for the movie had a closer resemblance to Pierre Boulle's novel, but budget constraints forced the change to the primitive ape society of the film.
  • Pierre Boule wrote a sequel draft called 'Planet Of The Men', which can be seen at Hunter's POTA Archive website (just Google it). It involves Nova and Taylor having a son named Sirius, who eventually leads a human uprising. The apes lose their intelligence and are back to being animals by the end. The last scene has Zaius doing tricks in a cage in a circus.
• What Might Have Been: Scenes were scripted and filmed revealing, near the end, that Nova was pregnant with Taylor's child. The scenes were cut out of the final print, as it was felt that they changed the focus of the ending, leaving the door open to a sequel Heston didn't want (but got anyway).

• Interestingly, there was a sort of segregation behind the scenes during filming; the chimpanzee actors ate with other chimps, gorillas with gorillas, and orangutans with orangutans.
• Once, some of the gorilla actors rode from the makeup area to the set in a convertible with the top down, wearing their full gorilla makeup, wigging out some observers on the way.
• The Statue Of Liberty scene was based on a scene from an earlier sci-fi story.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes

• Executive Meddling: Charlton Heston didn't want the original film to succumb to Sequelitis, so he instead rewrote the ending to be the final destruction of the Earth (thus making any possibility of a sequel impossible).
  • It didn't work.
• Hey, It's That Voice: Paul Frees gives the Insignificant Little Blue Planet speech at the end.
• The Other Darrin: Roddy McDowall wasn't available, so David Watson plays Cornelius this time out.
  • McDowall still appears in the Stock Footage from the first film that opens the film, though.
• Prop Recycling: some sets were from Hello Dolly!.
• What Could Have Been: Taylor was supposed to be the main character. But since Heston didn't want to be in a sequel, the script was rewritten to feature Brent. Also, Taylor, Nova, and Brent were meant to survive and help establish peaceful relations between the humans and the surviving apes.

Escape From The Planet of the Apes

• Hey, It's That Guy!: Mister Roark now manages a circus.
  • Victor Newman as Dr. Hasslein.

Conquest Of The Planet of the Apes

• Executive Meddling: The original ending had the apes slaughtering all the human characters (even MacDonald, who was one of the good guys) after Ceasar announces that, once humanity had nearly wiped itself out in an inevitable nuclear war, apes would step in and take over, subjugating whoever was left. Studio objections led to a partially re-shot ending, where (following a Little No from Lisa), Caesar reconsiders and instead says that, while the apes would still take over, they'd treat humans with some measure of compassion.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Who knew Khan was such a nice guy?