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| Planet of the Apes |
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| The actual explanation of the ending
[1] 2 |
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| POSTED Saturday, August 11, 2001 11:43:24 PM |
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This whole message is a "spoiler". If you haven't seen the movie, you goddam well shouldn't be here.
Now, I'll take it upon myself to put everyone out of their misery. I have the official explanation of their ending, and it's not too hard to realise if anyone would actually bother taking into account facts which happen in the movie, rather than conjecturing to their hearts' content.
Firstly, you can travel back in time through the time-warp (against any known science fact). That has to be taken as an accepted premise. Marky leaves the Oberon and arrives back at Earth at exactly the same time so he had to travel back in time at some point.
Now, did he go back in time then forward, or forward then back? Well, for some reason everyone seems to ignore the damn year in the spaceship! If one paid attention, he went forward in time (the year got higher) and then back in time at the end.
The time-warping dust-cloud thing is irregular. That has to be taken as another basic premise. The chimp leaves before him but arrives after. Although it's only a matter of days, it's enough to tell us it's irregular - and this means something.
Now for a crucial point. If anyone paid attention, the statue of Thade is EXACTLY like the statue of Lincoln, the memorial is the same, Washington monument is the same. If the apes have simply evolved from ages ago, there's no way these things would be EXACTLY the same. (Unless you consider the ending an artistic expression and don't want to look for a storyline that actually explains everything) The apes must have conquered Earth in fairly recent history.
That begs the question, how? How could they have enough technology to conquer humankind (and believe it or not, one laser gun is not enough for Thade to conquer humankind who has about a million ordinary guns) - and how could they travel to Earth when they were seemingly unadvanced.
Now firstly it's not Earth. It is a different planet, unlike the original. Marky would recognise Earth if it was Earth. Helena wouldn't keep quite when Marky said, "I come from another planet called Earth." Even if it was, it doesn't make much difference to the true storyline which depends on TIME. Lots of people suggest Thade used the pod (which only whoi knew about) to travel to Earth. Unfortunately one ape cannot destroy humanity. They would have had to launch a huge mother of a ship like the Oberon but that was disintegrated and out of fuel.
So, here's the real brainy part, the apes evolve technology in the next, say, hundred or even thousand years. Thade is remembered as he who saved the apes from the evil humans' rebellion. The apes evolve nuclear technology and spaceships (not too hard given the clues from the originals), fly through the timewarp, get transported back to post-civil war time (before the humans have nuclear technology) and wipe them out. They then replace the cool monuments, which are cool and which they want to keep, with say Thade their legendary ancestor (and Jefferson is probably replaced by Semos).
Now, how does Thade escape? Well, firstly he doesn't need to for the plot to make sense. His 2IC is evil enough to take over once Marky has left, revoke his promise, slaughter the humans and carry on. The apes don't like the humans. Just cause Marky found favour with a few apes, the ape society still hates humans and would gladly kill them. They would never want to live in harmony with them.
This makes much more sense because then evil Attar doesn't have a sudden sentimental change of heart - he just plays off Marky's innocence and desire to rush off quickly.
Or Attar, or even the Orangutan slavetrade dealer, uses Semos' (whether dead or alive) hand to open the glass door. Attar escapes and drives the quest to not only rid the planet of the apes of humans, but to chase the human that escaped because he knows what they're capable of because of his father's speech.
That's the main storyline. Because I've been writing so long I've lost track of where I am, so if I've left anything out, forgot to mention something which may SEEM like a plothole, let me know and I'll explain it. Believe me, my explanation makes perfect sense. And it only took me a sleepless night after the movie to work out.
It's a cool movie.
I'm hoping there'll be a sequel - possibly Back to the Future style, as many people have suggested, where Marky goes back through the timewarp to change history on the other planet and prevent the apes colonising Earth - hey, he may even take some weapons this time.
By the way, you can't honestly tell me that you were surprised when the statue of Lincoln turned out to be an ape - the style was so similar to the original Liberty ending, I mean what did you expect, for him to just see old Abe sitting there? What would be the point?
Chicken's nice.
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| REPLIED Sunday , August 12, 2001 10:57:04 AM |
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| REPLIED Sunday , August 12, 2001 12:38:40 PM |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 13, 2001 01:37:50 AM |
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FACT: Due to the exactness of the Lincoln memorial, Washington DC, the Apes conquered Earth late 20th century. Because it can't have been Earth all along (like some people suggest) because then everything wouldn't be EXACTLY the same, they must have travelled to Earth through the time-warp.
FACT: Earth that Marky arrives in is completely overrun by apes. Therefore lots of apes must have arrived. Not only that but they must have had the technology to wipe out humankind.
This is where my explanation makes so much sense. The apes evolved back on their planet for hundreds, thousands, hey even millions if you want to go extreme, of years. They then would have had the technology to (a) travel, (b) travel IN NUMBER, not just one Thade in a pod, and (c) wipe out humanity.
I did not suggest Thade escapes. I prefer to think he didn't but just let someone know about the pod. This could have helped development of the apes' understanding. But it is an UNESSENTIAL part of my explanation. Give the apes a hundred million years to evolve and they're gonna be able to wipe out 1900 mankind. Given the apes (a) travel in space, (b) travel in large number (since they populate Earth), and (c) completely wipe out man - this is the only explanation. They must evolve this all.
Thanks for the reply "qudink". Please tell me what you're unhappy with in my explanation. I actually have tried to base it on fact.
As for Evil, you're just an *******. If you don't like the movie, why the hell are you hanging around posts about it??
Chicken's nice. |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 13, 2001 11:31:58 AM |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 13, 2001 04:02:24 PM |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 13, 2001 11:17:42 PM |
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Thanks for the replies guys.
Qudink:
I totally agree with you that any explanation is conjectural because Burton didn't provide one. My basic premise is actually trying to explain it, whereas obviously you want to just analyse the movie as it is - and that's OK, it's just a different attitude to mine.
As someone who loves writing books and thinking about and inventing storylines for books and movies, my natural instinct is to not only invent a (hopefully plausible) explanation for the ending, but also to think of a potential screenplay for the sequel (which I'm about halfway on - unfortunately I have ideas for several possible sequels, and can't decide which to choose).
In terms of story integrity, I find it much more likely that Attar betrayed Marky rather than Thade his friend and the rest of apekind (who are not at the battle and still want blood). Again I agree there's no proof for it, but if I were designing the sequel there's no question Attar would still be an evil ape. People (or apes) don't just change from evil to sentimental that quickly.
I certainly don't know what Burton was thinking, because he has officially told everyone that he didn't look for an ending that made perfect sense, he just went for the coolest one that would shock everyone.
I still appreciate your input. Thanks for the comments.
P.S. You do have a point about the whole Thade thing. My main motivation for including the possibility of that is that the general public seem to be obsessed with the idea that Thade escaped and went to Earth himself. I prefer the idea of him dying there - even though one does have to wonder why Burton left him in the enclosure still alive? Surely it means something. Then again I think he just left his options open as much as possible.
Yes, chicken's nice. |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 13, 2001 11:19:39 PM |
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This theory is in fact the correct one. I oughta know I was there! J/K
The reason I think it's the correct one, is that I came up with almost the exact same theory on my own, which I posted on Yahoo last night, and tonight is the first time I've been to this forum. Seeing someone else spell it out in almost exactly the same way absolutely confirms it for me, especially since I know you came up with it on your own since yours was posted before mine. And even more than the fact that two different people have come up with the same theory independently, another thing that convinces me is the clock. The one hole in the theory, or so I thought, was that the clock was going forward. I shrugged this off as a computer malfunction meant to throw us a curve. But if what you're saying is true and the clock first went forward, then back... I can't see how anyone could find fault with this theory. The ending was not a sham. It was meant to keep us guessing. I hope a sequel is made, so that we will have satisfaction of seeing our realizations about the meaning of the ending of this movie confirmed.
Anyone who's interested can read my revised version of this theory on my board:
http://pub75.ezboard.com/
ftheplanetoftheapesfrm3.s
howMessage?topicID=13.top
ic
Right after I posted this revised version of the theory I originally posted on Yahoo, I was alerted to this forum by one of the mods there, and came to re-post it here, but found to my astonishment that someone had already thought of it.
The only good human is a dead human. |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 02:48:22 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 05:39:40 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 08:14:47 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 10:00:09 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 10:49:51 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 04:57:23 PM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 14, 2001 09:53:59 PM |
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| REPLIED Wednesday, August 15, 2001 12:35:29 AM |
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| REPLIED Friday , August 17, 2001 08:55:28 AM |
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Here4s my opinion about the end of the film.
The main message of the first film was an advise to human beings. No more wars, no more guns, unless you want to destroy your world. And thats exactly the final scene of the film. Lets suppose that Tim Burton have tried to give us the same message, but with a lot of more originality.
All the story is passed on earth, besides almost everyone believes on the contrary.
Lets make the time when the film starts as being
time 0. After a electromagnetic storm (timewarp) the first pod, Leos Pod, went to the future. In this future, lets named time 2 (2.000 years after time 0), almost all the human beings were dead (probably because of nuclear war, as the first film suggests). The problem is that the space station crashed a lot of years before Leos pod, but still in the future, in time 1 (lets suppose 1.000 years before time 2). At this time, time 1, there were small groups of human beings, dispersed, underdeveloped compare with human beings of time 0. The smart monkeys took control of the station, as we could see, and, after years of evolution (they were genetic mutants), they were able to control the whole planet. Look that this explain why there were human beings at the planet, horses, oxygen, ....And this explain the gun that Thade4s father had. The gun was not a laser gun, but a machine gun, like the guns we have today. The gun was one of the many proves that the planet was indeed our planet, the earth.
After the whole history, Leo leaves the earth in time 2 and goes, not to the past, but to the future, in time 3 (perhaps 1.500 years after time 2). And thats Tim Burton4s surprise. The monkeys had built their world as a mirror of our world. Remember that they could have books that demonstrated how was the earth before the great cataclysm, and that explain the General Thade4s face in place of Lincoln4s face.
But imagine that they didnt have the books. The idea, in my view, is that evolutionary monkeys could achieve the same degree of development as human beings. Its a kind of parody of the director. And this parody is the key to understand the message. Forget about technology for space travel, invasion and conquer of earth....its not a plausible idea. Although Tim Burton decides to change a lot of things from the first movie, the core idea, the message its unchangeable. If man keeps to carry on the actual behavior against other me and against nature, there will be no future to live. And to demonstrate this belief, both the first and the new film use the monkeys, in different ways, just as a figure.
Gabriel RV
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| REPLIED Friday , August 17, 2001 10:19:26 AM |
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| REPLIED Friday , August 17, 2001 07:30:10 PM |
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Imaginative premise Caesar.
A few sticking points, however.
1) Horses. Where did they come from? We know the apes came from the ship. But there were no horses on the ship.
2) Humans are natives. They've got to be, because Semos killed the ones on the ship. Plus, the humans far outnumber the apes. Because they were already there. But isn't it strange to have human natives of another planet? Especially when we realize the apes are NOT natives.
3) The apes are too evolved and have been there too long for the big ship to have gotten there 500 years ago. It must have traveled to the past. Thousands of years or more. But Leo went to the future? Doesn't sound right. Better explanation is Leo went into the past, and the ship's chronometer is messed up. Perhaps the ship's chronometer only recognized that he was moving through time. It assumed the movement was forwards and measured accordingly, but in reality Leo was going backwards. Also, perhaps due to relativity, I think the chronometer was way off. Two moons? That's interesting (I honestly don't recall it). Was it clear the moons were around earth? Since we know the storm was after Saturn, which has plenty of moons to spare. Perhaps there was some sort of localized distortion and it just seemed like there were two moons. Or there were, but only because of this anomaly, and one of the moons later disappears as the anomaly moves away from Earth.
We already know Leo is a pretty brash guy who doesn't think through all the consequences. He was probably too busy trying not to crash when he got on the planet, and he was so eager to get away that he didn't bother to look back and see what he was moving away from |
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| REPLIED Friday , August 17, 2001 08:12:02 PM |
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| REPLIED Friday , August 17, 2001 08:54:43 PM |
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Yes, my theory also has plot holes. There may not be an explanation that covers all the plot holes. Unlike the Sixth Sense, which wrapped everything up neatly, this movie ends with you wondering what the heck happened. I was attempting to make some sense of it, to the extent that it is possible.
Sure, the ship's chronometer ought to mean something, but what? How does the ship's chronometer "know" how far forward in time he is going? It can't. The fact is though, the big ship had to have gone back in time. So a reasonable explanation is that the ship's chronometer isn't measuring movement towards the future but the past. Only 500 years? Obviously not.
How far back in time they go must have something to do with the mass of the ship. The big ship goes the farthest back by a long shot. Leo's and the monkey's pods are separated only by a relatively short time period -- the difference between Leo and the monkey's mass. Assuming the monkey is lighter reinforces the idea that they are travelling through the past, as logically, it would arrive last. The order of arrival could also be correlated with the order of departure, if you assume the first to depart is the last to arrive, but the time spans between arrivals argues for a mass based assumption. The big ship is a LOT bigger than a pod, so it arrives a lot earlier, while the difference between Leo and the monkey's pods' mass are fairly insignificant.
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| REPLIED Saturday, August 18, 2001 05:56:21 AM |
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I usually don't like trashing on people's ideas. If an idea is well-founded, even if I disagree with it, I will give it credit. But unfortunately Gabriel RV and "cimics" (huh?) directly oppose existing facts in the movie. I don't know why I take offence but I do, so I'll painfully point them out.
Gabriel RV:
Firstly, one cannot try to explain the plot of a movie in 2001 by basing it on a theme which one assumes must be the same as the theme of a markedly different movie in the 1960's which happened to bear the same name. Tim Burton certainly would not have copied the theme because he likes being original and different. Also, if you've actually seen the 2001 version, how can you possibly claim it's the same theme! Where is the theme of man destroying himself through nuclear technology??
Reasons why the planet is not Earth:
1) Marky doesn't recognise it from his pod as he's approaching it at the beginning
2) It has two moons. It's far more rational to assume that this means it's not Earth than to assume the one is an illusion which must have been put in by Tim Burton to confuse us.
3) Ari doesn't even flinch when Marky says "I come from a planet called Earth"
4) When Marky is just about to leave the planet, the pod locates the co-ordinates of Earth and flies him to Earth. If the planet he was on was Earth, then the co-ordinates of Earth would be where he was (which they weren't) and the pod wouldn't fly to Earth by leaving the planet Earth!
5) Tim Burton has said "Unlike the original, this planet of the apes is another planet." The twist at the end is not that it was Earth, but that it has somehow affected Earth anyway.
Also, the dust cloud is irregular, erratic. The strange attempts by people to systematise it (according to mass, reverse time order, etc.) assume it is a single time-warp obeying some rule, rather than the fact that it is an irregular dust cloud consisting of different time-warps, therefore you can hit different ones.
Also, why distrust the clock in the pod? Directors put stuff in to help you keep track of what's going on. The question is not whether a time clock is scientifically possible, it's whether Tim Burton wants us to know that Leo is going forward. It's stupid to "explain" a movie by directly contradicting stuff in it.
Problems with the theory that the apes simply evolved into the society Leo returns to:
1) See problems 1-5 above because it is not Earth
2) The statue is EXACTLY the same, Washington Monument is EXACTLY the same, etc. It would not be if the apes had simply evolved in a similar style to Earth
3) Qudink has pointedly reminded us that the apes have distinctly human technology, e.g. Fords, cameras - if it was their own technology surely the cameras would fit their eyes, they would have cars suited to apes driving them, etc.
cimics:
My viewpoint is less imaginative than forced by what I see as concrete issues raised by the ending.
1) See the post about the horses. Where the horses came from is not a problem with my viewpoint, but a problem with the movie in general. Galen has quite a satisfactory solution anyway.
2) The humans are not natives. Remember the control screen of Oberon tells us that the planet was uninhabited when it arrived. They wouldn't have said that if it had frikkin native humans. Obviously Semos didn't kill all the humans (you just assume that unnecessarily). He kept some as slaves (or some escaped, whatever), which was working quite well for the society because they had a constant source of slaves. Sounds like you're arguing the "it's Earth" idea - see points 1 to 5 above.
3) The Oberon did travel to the past. Duh! Leo travelled to the future. The dust cloud is irregular. You can't assume his clock was wrong, because that's just changing the facts to suit a point of view rather than using the facts to come up with a plausible point of view.
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I'm sorry to be so harsh on these cases, but if we want to get anywhere, we have to work with facts in the movie rather than try to contradict them and then defend our reasons for contradicting them.
Get it out of your system once and for all any desire for the planet to be Earth. It's a different movie, not the original. Come up with new ideas! Don't relate them to things 40 years ago!
Chicken's nice |
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| REPLIED Saturday, August 18, 2001 10:18:07 AM |
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| REPLIED Sunday , August 19, 2001 07:00:28 PM |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 20, 2001 08:45:37 AM |
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| REPLIED Monday , August 20, 2001 10:00:33 AM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 21, 2001 01:26:52 PM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 21, 2001 04:44:48 PM |
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| REPLIED Tuesday, August 21, 2001 07:14:53 PM |
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| REPLIED Wednesday, August 22, 2001 10:48:09 PM |
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| REPLIED Thursday, August 23, 2001 04:26:17 AM |
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Good to see someone's been doing some thinking.
It definitely doesn't matter whether Marky goes forward or back or whatever, BUT it is important to notice that he arrives back to Earth at a similar time he left (about 2100).
I agree the statue of Thade poses a problem. I haven't come up with a TOTALLY perfect explanation of the following two "contradictions" that bother me:
1) The likeness of the statue as you say, and even more say for me the statement that he "saved Earth for all apekind" suggest Thade returned to Earth himself
2) a) How the f*** could he escape? The more I think about it, the more I think he can't. No-one else can open that perspex, not the dead chimp (which some people have suggested) because only humans could access it.
b) If Thade went to Earth, how could he destroy the whole of mankind? Even if he had amazing technology (which he didn't), the outnumbering is just far too great. The apes on Earth are just too dumb to be of any help to him, so he would practically have to single-handedly wipe out mankind who are armed with guns, etc.
The horses are a bit of a sidepoint. Even though they are hard to explain, they don't affect any potential storyline. Galen's explanation, to do with the genetic research taking place on the ship (i.e. maybe they had horse embryos there), is quite good I think.
I do quite like conjecture when it's not baseless:
"Why did Thade kill those other apes at the ship?"
Good question. I've wondered that myself. It could just be a thematic (rather than plot) device to demonstrate that he's evil. That was my first impression when I saw the scene. Perhaps he fears that those two (or other people they may tell) will dig up the ship before him, and he wants total control.
"Is it at all possible that Thade had some sort of foreknowledge of these pods? Is it at all possible that the highly prophecised return of Semos(?) had already happened and Thade was the first or only to encounter him?"
If the chimp had already arrived, why would he arrive again? Remember he was trained to locate the co-ordinates for Earth, and that's exactly what he did when he arrived. Wouldn't he have done that the firsty time.
Thade's "foreknowledge" is I think a reaction from you to the fact that he doesn't seem very surprised by any of it. My view of things is that his wise father (Heston) knew most of the truth. He knew the Oberon was originally searching for Marky, so he surely knew that once the Oberon had crashed and the apes populated the planet, humans would come looking for the Oberon. So he probably expected at some point a return from outer-space humans, and perhaps expressed this to Thade.
"Is it at all possible that Thade could have used one of these other two pods to visit our Earth before the final sequence of the movie even happened?"
The problem I have with this is that the time-travel element seems to be uncontrolled. Based on what we are told in the movie, it is against the spirit of it to allow Thade to travel to Earth and travel back to the exact point he left (even though it pretty much happens to Marky). Perhaps it explains the fact that he seemingly can't escape - but it makes it even less likely for him to be able to conquer Earth (going back by himself with no weapons).
There are some nice ideas in your thinking, granted it is highly conjectural. Still, thought is good.
"Logic tempers the brain; art the spirit."
Chicken's nice |
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Evil - if its such a stupid movie then why do you waste so much of your time reading posts about a movie you don`t like!
I know I prefer to spend my time reading about things I am interested in / enjoy!!
