By
Adam Pugh
Arizona Summer Wildcat
Grade: B-
Remakes don't usually make the word "originality" come to mind.
Tim Burton's "reimagining" of Pierre Boulle's novel "Planet of the Apes," however, is full of new ideas and way better effects than any of the previous film adaptions, including the 1968 classic. Finally, a director has taken an original story line and not messed it up. Instead Burton takes the idea and made a new plot and setting for the characters - add a few tons of make-up and special effects and you will have a movie that blows you out of your seat.
The story is by now familiar - Mark Wahlberg's Leo, after losing touch with his mother ship, crash lands on an unknown planet - a planet filled with apes. And in an evolutionary twist, here apes are king and humans are nothing but animals to be caged. Marky Mark, of all people, has the daunting task of freeing them from their bondage.
The dialogue is pretty much Walhberg saying "Hey, the monkeys talk!" which is funny, but you would think by now he would have seen the five previous "Ape" movies.
So while Walhberg goes through the typical action-hero motions, Burton's more ape-ish characters are classic and unforgettable. Michael Clarke Duncan's size and growling voice made his primate creation especially noteworthy. Tim Roth's performance, as the general of the hairy army truly stands out in the film, enhanced by a really awkward swagger and bad attitude.
Not to diminish the actors' efforts, the stunts and special effects are the true stars of this movie, as each ape is credibly and realistically brought to life. And this is perhaps the most controversial aspect of this update - that is, after the interspecies love scene between primate Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) and Wahlberg was left on the editing room floor.
The Charlton Heston original was released during one of the most violent chapters in the civil rights movement and during a time when the very real threat of a nuclear holocaust saw schoolchildren hiding under their desks. Thus the film's themes of racist oppression and end-of-the-world portents - iconicized by the memorable Statue of Liberty ruins at the film's end, a sign of liberty's failure in the face of a technological progress and a divisive society - struck a resonant chord with audiences.
The Burton remake hardly hits home like the original. Yes, it's entertaining and will rake in millions at the box office, but no one can argue that Burton - normally such a respectable and talented filmmaker - has made a serious film. Even his failed efforts to parallel the original's shell-shocking ending with one of his own cannot redeem this film from its summer-movie strappings.
