It's actually Friday night, y'all, so.... #wenchwatches #conquestOfThePlanetOfTheApes
This film proves to be rather different than previous Apes films we've watched lately. From my understanding, there's no time travel in this one at all.
Nor do we have any of the characters from the first or second films.
We *do* have Montalban, however, reprising his role as the circus leader Amado. Bless you, sir. This film needs the class.
We also have Milo, or as we will come to know him...Caesar.
The fantastic future of 1991.
Good news: The US has collapsed in this film.
Bad news: ...into several fascist police city states.
The movie is trying to explain things, and it barely feels natural with the exposition. After a "space-borne virus" makes dogs and cats extinct, we domesticated apes. First as pets, then as slaves.
This future sucks. We could have Doggirls and a catboys, but nnooooooo...
It is horrifyingly refreshing for the film to no longer pull any punches. The ape "training facility" is all to plausible awfulness. Physical violence, electric shocks, pharmaceuticals...
Caesar is sold off in an auction, a modern slave market.
It's no surprise highest ranking cops look like SS.
Well. No punches pulled indeed. The governor in this is a racist asshole, even moreso than Hasslein was in Escape. MacDonald (Hari Rhodes), the only black character so far, alludes to this historical slavery of the US.
The governor, played by Don Murry, brushes it off. Of course.
Welp, there goes Montalban. He turned himself into the police to hide "Milo". He's forced to sign a confession and deposition under a lie detector. Wanting to protect Milo, he hurls himself out a window to conceal the truth.
Meanwhile, "Milo" is assigned to the Governor's command post of all things, and is given the chance to name himself from a book. While the governor assumes our protagonist cannot read, we know better.
And there we finally get the name we later know him by: Caesar.
The death of Amadeo (Montalban), prompts Caesar to action, organizing acts of disobedience from the other Apes. In a nice bit of montage work. The acts are small at first, but allows Caesar to train other apes....in weaponry.
I keep falling into summarizing here with this review, and that's one of the big problems with this film:
It's trying to tell an absolutely massive story with no budget an 90 minutes of runtime. The setup which lead to this future already felt contrived, but the rebellion of the apes feels too small and rushed. It's easy to imagine while watching this what prompted the 2011 reboot.
I've only see the first of the reboot films. While it was interesting, reading the plot summaries of the rest of them...doesn't inspire confidence.
The other problem with this film is that it's writing is...not great.
All the interesting stuff happened in the first and part of the second act. The third act is mostly the ape uprising. While it isn't terrible per se, the lack of scope and budget painfully shows. The result feels more TV movie than probably intended.
And just as I post that, Caesar gives perhaps the best speech of the entire film, prompted by MacDonald.
And it *would* have been a powerful, dark, moment.
If it weren't for our old nemesis...STUDIO INTERFERENCE.
Yes, the most common ending of Conquest soft-balls Caesar's coup at he end, "We who are not human, can afford to be humane."
Governor asshole survives, and it's suggested that Caesar and the apes will wait for humankind to destroy itself. While it's not a bad speech, but it doesn't entirely work. It feels it cheapens the very real oppression and anger the Apes rightfully feel. It's tailor made to bring comfort to a white audience.
So, screw that. Let's watch the original ending instead.
In the original ending, Caesar's speech ends with no reservations. No appeal to kindness, and no putting down of weapons. And no, asshole governor does not survive.
It's a *damn* darker ending, and honestly, the better one. The soft-balling felt contrived, where as this feels wholly appropriate given the first act. The final images of Caesar would be chilling only if you were numb to the horrors we saw at he beginning of the film.
And therein might be why the ending was changed. The original does not exonerate or give mercy to white people in the film's metaphor. It puts us on report, as it should.
@socketwench - Seeing all the added bodies and blood in the original ending genuinely felt good to see given the first two thirds of the movie. And while I felt Governor Breck was a bit two-dimesional as a villain, his final fate in the original ending felt rightfully earned.
