KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Andy's Review

[Paul MacLean]

^^ This really drives home how much I hate the way CGI has replaced every type of practical effect.

There's a place for CGI -- and there are times it is the best option -- but costumed apes, with articulated masks, look infinitely superior to CGI animations (which still look completely fake to me).

This was over 40 years ago and it still looks better than any CGI ape...

[AndyDursin]

Thanks for that MJ. According to this interesting article from Den of Geek, James Cameron was onboard the movie, producing it by that point, and showed that Stan Winston test to Peter Hyams --

It was absolute perfection; I couldn’t believe that Stan actually cracked it. I even asked Stan about how he managed to pull it off but he wouldn’t tell me- I just remember thinking it was absolutely stunning work and it was a real shame that fans never got to see Stan’s vision for these apes come to life.”

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-un ... the-1990s/

Cameron wanted to make a direct PLANET OF THE APES '68 sequel with new astronauts landing and Heston even part of the cast as Taylor, but Fox obviously had some lousy executives making poor choices around this time (read the article lol)

I remember a post I made on this topic years back too:

https://www.andyfilm.com/mboard/viewtop ... old#p52839

Either way, it's truly amazing how Schwarzenegger passed on both that Fox PLANET OF THE APES and Ridley Scott's I AM LEGEND, only to go off and make the likes of END OF DAYS and JINGLE ALL THE WAY instead. I'm not sure anyone made more inexplicable career choices than Arnie back in the 90s.

^^ This really drives home how much I hate the way CGI has replaced every type of practical effect.

There's a place for CGI -- and there are times it is the best option -- but costumed apes, with articulated masks, look infinitely superior to CGI animations (which still look completely fake to me).

This was over 40 years ago and it still looks better than any CGI ape...

It certainly does.

What's also remarkable is I recently rewatched the first 2 of the newer APES with Theo -- and wow, the CGI in RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is just lousy. Maybe because I only saw it on-screen and never rewatched it at home for more than a few minutes, I didn't see how mediocre the digital work was in that movie -- either that, or in the space of 15 years, it's aged badly too.

Either way, practical effects would've held up far better...

All these other APES concepts that didn't get made are heartbreaking to read because these new Fox/DIsney APES are really not very ambitious. I sat through the 2nd film last week, DAWN, and while it's pretty good, so much of the interesting elements like the Apes learning to communicate, etc. happened off-camera between RISE and that film -- what's left is a pretty standard formula movie of humans distrusting the apes and vice versa, and it plays out again in WAR in nearly the same fashion. The stakes are low, the drama offers no surprises...it's just too bad because at least those other crazy concepts were trying.

I'll say it again -- they need to just make a damn APES movie already where they all talk and the society is present. Send new astronauts in so the audience has human identification. Have them fight the mutants underground (aren't zombies all the rage? I mean, come on, how they have not tapped into that yet!).

Instead they give us the painfully overlong KINGDOM which was so CGI it was like a cartoon and where we get one...single...Ape running things and talking like Cookie Monster. It's a franchise that needs a reset but has a lot of commercial potential even with it being stuck in neutral for an extended while.

[Eric Paddon]

Cameron wanted to make a direct PLANET OF THE APES '68 sequel with new astronauts landing and Heston even part of the cast as Taylor, but Fox obviously had some lousy executives making poor choices around this time (read the article lol)

I am not a big fan of Cameron's, but THAT would have been a terrific idea because it would have addressed the issue of whether or not the first film series ended things in a perpetual loop of events or whether the world Taylor "returned" to in the future was different. Certainly Cameron could have gotten Heston to do it given "True Lies".