Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

 

Genre: Sci-fi/ Action

Time: 1h 35mins

Director:  J. Lee Thompson

Quick Summary: In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.

This is not perfect, but this is darker and stranger than the others. It's much more violent. Action scenes are absolutely brutal in this (and I watched the rated one). Its carnage is sometimes full of bullet hells and explosions.

Something I do love is that it strives to make a social statement and does a decent job. Parallels are drawn between the apes’ struggle against slavery to humans and the struggle for the civil rights of black people. There's this one monologue which is so captivating and terrifying at the same time, fire is burning everywhere and an ape uprising is about to let loose. All the ethical and philosophical parts of this film are really what makes it interesting to watch.

The middle part is where this film lost me though as honestly it was dull and a bit silly. There would be moments when Ceaser (the only talking monkey) would stare at other monkeys, and then suddenly the monkeys would be extremely disruptive or steal things. No words were spoken at all and these monkeys had never seen him before. So it was pretty bizarre to watch them be stared down in a strange little montage.

Unfortunately, I think this does suffer from having a much lower budget than the others, but it works with what it's got. It isn't bad by all means, just a little weak in places but it does well with forwarding the story. Which is why it's a shame about how long the set-up is. The whole film is practically the set with the last 30 being the uprising, I can't say it builds it up too well. One thing I can say it predicted how the 90s would look realistically.

5/10

"Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch and conspire and plot and plan for the inevitable day of Man's downfall - the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind"

"Ape Management... is in the hands of the apes."