Best Planet Of The Apes sequel?

Which sequel to the 1967 sci-fi classic is your favourite?

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes:
Astronaut Brent is sent to find the missing Taylor and finds himself in the same predicament as his predecessor. This time, though, there is new danger in the form of atomic bomb worshipping mutants...

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes:
Three chimps (Cornelius, Zira and Milo) from the future arrive on Earth in 1973. They are at first welcomed but when one of them is discovered to be pregnant, the authorities change their attitude...

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes
Caesar, the surviving ape from the previous movie has now grown into a performing circus chimp. Arriving in the big city, he finds that his fellow primates are being used as slaves by mankind. Incensed, he organises revolution...

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes
Caesar, the child of Cornelius and Zira is now presiding over a post apocalyptic community where apes and humans live in tense co-existence. However, there are dangers in the form of rebellious gorillas and a group of battle hungry mutants...

You forgot to include this episode:

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I've got the whole Planet of the Apes collection on DVD including the TV show, the animated series, and Tim Burton's remake. It's hard to pick which sequel is the best. I'll go with Beneath because Charlton Heston makes an appearance in that one, even though the whole second half was bizarre with the doomsday weapon and the weird people living underground. my next pick would be Battle. And no one can forget Planet of the Apes: The Musical!

If you want to see the original Simpsons Planet of the Apes: The Musical, it's available here:
http://www.theforbidden-zone.com/tv/simpsons.shtml

Goonie said:

You forgot to include this episode:

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I didn't forget, sir!

I omitted it on purpose. Makes the choice more difficult.


And, yes, The Simpsons 'Apes' spoof is hilarious.

The Apes series died with Zira for me when she died at the at the end from "Escape". Which, is my favourite.

Big "Apes" fan here. I voted "Escape" as the best (but my favourite is "Beneath").
The T.V. series is very enjoyable, too, but contains nowhere near the depth of the films.

Beneath, for sure. Totally bizarre, totally unique, totally awesome.

It's funny, when I was a kid I watched the original first, and then skipped the second(Beneath) and saw the third one(Escape).

I dug Escape when I watched it. It was odd that it tried to be a light-hearted comedy instead of a scifi adventure, but it was still good. There's a scene where Zira explains that they escaped via the astronaut's spaceship and saw the world being burned to a nuclear crisp as they flew into outer space. I thought to myself "whoa...that sounds awesome. I have GOT to see the second one!"

I had images in my mind of a tense escape sequence. Cornelius and Zira racing against the clock to repair Charleton Heston's spaceship and fly out just before the nuclear shockwaves zap them.

Then I finally see the second one and find out that, while it was very good--Cornelius and Zira have pretty much no part in the story, the austronaut's spaceships are all under water or damaged beyond repair, and that their escape is never even close to being explained. The whole "Escape from..." explanation was a stupid retconning copout. I was outraged. They never got out of the cockadoodie planet!

Then I saw the last one, with the russians and the racism analogies and the "modern" apes who all of a sudden learned english even though in the previous movie only one ape could talk. By this point, my love for the series was lost. The whole movie seemed low budget and corny. Message boards didn't exist at the time that I saw it, but if they did I would have been posting hundreds of messages per day talking about how stupid it was.

I never saw the TV series. Was it any good? What the heck was it about?

CasualJeff said:

I never saw the TV series. Was it any good? What the heck was it about?

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It was about two astronauts (Surprise, surprise) who crash land and have to survive while being hunted down by Urko, the Gorilla, and his troops. Roddy McDowall returned, this time playing Galen, the friendly chimp.

It reminds me as kind of a futuristic version of The Fugitive.

Looks like its neck'n'neck for "Beneath" and "Escape"...

Goonie said:

I've got the whole Planet of the Apes collection on DVD including the TV show, the animated series, and Tim Burton's remake

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Same here! I also have vintage featurettes, rare trailers, TV commercials, the MEGO toy commercials, documentaries and
the full Edward G. Robinson screentest. If you love "Apes", you must get the extended version of "Battle"! (Japanese laserdisc)
I watched the animated series as a kid but appreciate it much more now. Even though the animation is almost non-existant,
the stories were well-done for Saturday morning fare. Yeah, I'm crazy about the franchise. I've got books & comics, too.

Goonie, you didn't spring for the huge boxed set with the crazy, Cornelius bust, did you? I waited awhile and bought
the cartoon series seperately.

Goonie said:

If you want to see the original Simpsons Planet of the Apes: The Musical, it's available here:
http://www.theforbidden-zone.com/tv/simpsons.shtml

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All the Simpsons "Apes" references are hilarious and this is the best. Have you seen Chuck Heston on Saturday Night Live
where the whole cast & audience are apes? AWESOME! (Don't know if it's on YouTube but, if not, I should put it up.)

herr gruber said:

It reminds me as kind of a futuristic version of The Fugitive.

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Some episodes are great sci-fi tales, especially the ones in the "forbidden cities".
Considering 10 of them were repackaged as TV movies in 1981, you could add these to the list:

Back to the Planet of the Apes
Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes
Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes
Life, Liberty and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes
Farewell to the Planet of the Apes

Lastly, here's a tip of the hat to James Franciscus (Brent from "Beneath" & Tuck Kirby from "Valley of Gwangi").
He was a dude. I remember when he died & I was sad.

CONQUEST, because it was on TV the other day and therefore the only one I really remember at the moment.

Also, congratulations on making me want to watch them all in some kind of ape-crazy movie marathon.

I just bought the boxset a few days ago for $9. Ahhh, must love giftcards...


Anyway, I haven't seen the sequels since I was a kid... I'll vote in a week or so or whenever it is I finish the boxset.

I've gone with Escape From the Planet of the Apes simply because it's the other one scored by Jerry Goldsmith. The man was awesome, and is now much missed.

Stoo said:

Goonie, you didn't spring for the huge boxed set with the crazy, Cornelius bust, did you? I waited awhile and bought
the cartoon series seperately.

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No, I got them all seperately before the big set came out. I also got the 2-disc Tim Burton remake.

My god, Beneath was an absolute travesty....

I shall continue hesitantly into the series...

|ZiR| said:

Also, congratulations on making me want to watch them all in some kind of ape-crazy movie marathon.

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Go for it. I've done that before (and even once in chronological order with "Beneath" last).

Crack that whip said:

I've gone with Escape From the Planet of the Apes simply because it's the other one scored by Jerry Goldsmith. The man was awesome, and is now much missed.

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The music is amazing in that one. Very memorable score. I figured out the groovy, opening theme on guitar and it's fun to play electric.

Resident Alien said:

My god, Beneath was an absolute travesty....

I shall continue hesitantly into the series...

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Then I'm afraid there's not much hope. Apart from "Escape", it's all downhill. That said, I'm interested to hear your opinion on "Conquest"
since it was quite violent for it's time. The social commentary in those 2 is prevelant and fresh whereas in "Beneath" & "Battle" there's nothing really new.

Yeah, Escape was decent. Certainly better than Beneath. I'll get through the rest of the series soon.

I was a huge fan of Planet of the Apes when I was 12, and discovered and watched the sequels and some episodes of the TV show a little while later. I found them all to be pretty awful and hugely disappointing. The production values of the TV show were embarrassing.

So I can't really vote in this poll. Some of the films were not as bad as the others, but I can't really single any one out for the honor of being the "best", though I suppose it was nice to see Chuck Heston back in "Beneath" -- if only briefly.

I'm also a big "Apes" fan, and felt that "Beneath" was definitely the best sequel. The idea of mutated, telepathic crazy people living in the bowels of what used to be NYC and being invaded by the apes was very original, and a good follow-up to the original POTA. It was also great that this film took place almost immediately after the original, so, continuity-wise, everything really fit together.
I remember watching this film as a kid on TV, and actually being scared.
I would even have to say that "Beneath" is close to being as good as the original "Planet".

After "Beneath", the other three films were well-done. But, I felt "Escape", though enjoyable, was marred by the logistical and technical impossibilities of the three Ape scientists being able to:

- Find (when did Taylor tell them where it was?) and retrieve (how?) the spaceship after it had sunk into a very deep lake.

- Get the spaceship to work (assuming it still had enough fuel, of course), even after it had been sunk underwater for at least two weeks to a month.

- Figure out how to power up and launch this advanced spaceship, even though the most advanced technology they had seen was probably along the lines of pre-Industrial Revolution Earth.

- Supposedly doing all of this in the 3-5 days? after the time Brent and Nova briefly stayed with them in Ape City.

Unseen Cut Of "CONQUEST" At The Alamo & On Blu-Ray!

FANTASTIC news for "Apes" fans!

http://blog.fantasticfest.com/2008/09/fantastic-fest-to-screen-original-uncut.html

Test audiences in 1972 were shocked by the film's violence and call for revolution, so much so that the film was cut by over 9 minutes for fears of earning an R rating from the MPAA. For over 35 years this version of CONQUEST languished in the Fox vault, unseen by human (or ape) eyes, and now, the original, uncut version will be receiving its world premiere at this year's edition of Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the U.S., running from September 18 - 25, 2008 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX.

This one-time only screening will be free and open to the general public on Saturday, September 20, at 12pm. Following this, Fox Home Entertainment will make this version available exclusively in the PLANET OF THE APES 40 Year Evolution Blu-Ray Collection available in stores on November 4th. The Fantastic Fest CONQUEST screening will be in 1080p HD, making this the first public high def screening of any of the APES films, and will preceded by Fox DVD giveaways and previews. Come witness the birth of the PLANET OF THE APES like you've never seen before - before anyone else does!

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I also received this news from a friend who is an "Apes" fan and cinephile:
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For new the Indy Jones film, it was a mixed bag for me. There were some great moments, felt too much of several scripts
patched together. I like the skull parts but the excess and bad use of CGI ruined part of the fun. The original 3 used mechanical
effects but they were plausible in reality, but this one they stretched it too much with the CGI. It was to fun see him in the hat.

I was in NY last weekend for the Charlton Heston Festival. www.filmlinc.com
They were showing 10 of his films in 35mm, many of them new prints or pristine copies. They showed Pota and Beneath POTA.
For Beneath, it was new print struck last year, played only once!!! It was such a gorgeous and sharp print. You see detail like
never before such was the material on Zaius outfit, the dirt on the set and you can tell when it is a matte painting.
The make up was sharp!!

The Hestons were there. I approached Mrs. Heston and said I was from Canada and...(snip). She was so impressed that she
asked her assistant to send a photo of Chuck! Of all the celebrities I met this year, she was the most impressive. She was
nice enough to have her picture taken with me.

Also Phil is screening his IB Tech 35mm print of Khartoum on Sept 24!!
Did you visit the mountain in la Suisse where they shot OHMSS?

Did you know that new POTA Blu Ray dvd set contains the original CUT of Conquest, with a bleaker ending and more graphic version!!
It is exclusive to the Blu Ray set which runs $100pl

This is really a question of which was the least awful. And to that, I'd have to say Escape. It caused me the least pain, certainly.

I wonder if anyone will come forward and make a sequel to Tim Burton's remake.