Project Moonbase 1953

Ready for Primate Time: A Review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes

By Gary Westfahl

Lest anyone suspect that I am a hopeless curmudgeon, ardently devoted to classic science fiction films and persistently disdainful of their contemporary equivalents, let me first acknowledge that Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes invites consideration as the very best of the Apes films, artfully conveying and updating the bitterly misanthropic message that reverberates through Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel and its big-screen and small-screen offspring: that human beings are unworthy rulers of their planet, properly destined to be supplanted by their more virtuous simian cousins. True, it might be said that I am damning with faint praise, since few people have had kind things to say about any Apes films other than the first Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston (1968); but since so many remakes, sequels, and reboots have so conspicuously fallen short of the films that inspired them, as documented at this website and elsewhere, one must celebrate that rare film that is demonstrably better than all of its predecessors.

While criticisms of the damned human race are always central to the story, of course, each age will have its own opinions regarding the particular traits that will bring about humanity’s comeuppance. For Boulle, still influenced by 1950s fears that scientific progress and automation would sap our energy and sense of initiative, it was their laziness that allowed the humans on a distant planet to be overthrown by their ape servants.Michael Wilson and the movie script by Rod Serling 1968 built on another common concern after the war, the scientific and careless of our innate aggression would lead mankind to destroy itself in a global nuclear war. In movies ape fourth and fifth, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle of the Planet of the Apes (1973), writer Paul Dehn relied on attitudes inspired by the civil rights movement to suggest that mistreatment of people of other races could lead to their disappearance. And perhaps the best way to castigate Tim Burton’s vacuous and misguided Planet of the Apes reboot (2001) is to note that, in its story, one can’t really be sure precisely what human foibles are being emphasized to justify our coming subjugation to the apes; it just sort of happens, and hey, isn’t it cool to see Charlton Heston playing an ape with a gun, and an ape statue in the Lincoln Memorial?

Say; Hello Spaceman: Project Moonbase (1953)

Steve Prideaux would like you to think of him as a writer, an artist and a struggling guitar player. While he has received remuneration for at least one of these activities, and the future looks promising for another, it would be in your own interests to seek an alternative source of musical entertainment. He’s also recently become quite taken with the idea of referring to himself in the third person.

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