Hello and welcome to Camp Kaiju Monster Movie Podcast. We're your hosts, Vincent Hannum
and Matt Levine. And we're talking about all our favorite monster movies, The Good, the
Bad and the Downright Campy and asking if they stand the test of time. Traditional Kaiju creature
features, space invaders, the supernatural and everything in between. All strange beasts. Welcome
here. Camp Kaiju is sponsored by Zach Linder and the Zach Pack powered by Coldwell Banker Realty,
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Links in the show description.
It's disgusting the way we treat humans. What the hell did they get like this? What other way would
they be? If they see you on the street they kill you on sight. You stay here you are dead.
Where the hell are you from? United States Air Force. I'm going back. Some humans have escaped.
Is there another way out of the city? I can show you the way. They travel with eggs. Declare martial
law. We underestimate this human. What the hell are they? Your story is spreading through the villages.
They all want to see this human who defies the apes. It's over there's no help coming.
Can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
There has to be. The words are Charlton Heston's. Get out of last signal. The word that we've learned
is. The world he finds out in the galaxy will challenge every idea you've ever had of
civilization. A planet where man is the lowest order of living things and the superior beings are
apes. They build the cities, make the laws, the gods, and control the guns that hunt or
rape the lowly terrified humans who run wild in the jungles, are caged in the prisons and stuffed
in the museums. 20th century box transforms the motion picture screen into planet of the apes.
Here bulls finest novel since bridge on the river wire. A world gone insane. An upside down
civilization and could not be real yesterday. The world of madness and terror. Man has no understanding.
He can be taught a few simple tricks. Nothing more.
You did it. You cut up his brain. You bloody babbles.
It's a man. It's a man.
Matt, how the hell are you? I'm doing all right. How are you?
I'm good. So in my office, there's the door, the back door to the outside and I have a back porch.
We keep the door open. But tonight I keep hearing scratching against the door.
Now, logically, I know it's probably a squirrel that's just in the porch. Or maybe it's a fiend
without a face. Yeah. Well, they have like a very distinct squelching noise. So I feel like if it
was a fiend, you would probably know. That's true. I'm like, like you see this in a horror movie. I'm
so tempted to just open the door to see what it is. But every horror movie has told me,
don't open the door. Yeah, don't do it. You got to like nail some boards up against the window.
That's what you should do. Just be aware of flying brains. That's all I can say.
Yeah, it's actually a little, a little jarring, but I'll get used to it.
But wow, weird. I mean, it's either a fiend or like a super intelligent ape, one of the two.
Or maybe just a regular chimpanzee, Parakles, Mark Wahlberg's friend.
I'm hoping for that. That seems less menacing. Either way, it's probably not ideal.
Yeah. Okay, so we got a fun episode tonight, everybody. We're going to talk about Planet
of the Apes. This was my excuse to talk about the franchise as a whole, but we are going to
focus on Tim Burton's 2001 reimagining. It's not exactly a remake. It's not exactly a reboot. It's
kind of somewhere in between, for better or for worse. So I'm interested to talk about it,
hear your thoughts, Matt, and anyone else who wants to share.
Yeah, for sure. I have to admit, before watching, well, I had seen the Tim Burton Planet of the
Apes before, but like this franchise is a huge blind spot for me. I have seen some of the original
series on TV. I haven't seen any of the original movies in their entirety. And I tried watching
Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 2011, I think. I'm like 75% of the way through that,
but I wasn't able to finish it before this recording. So I'm still really like unintelligent
when it comes to this franchise and maybe just in general, but particularly with this franchise. So
I apologize for that. No, I think that's going to be a great perspective that you bring, right? So
we can like, I have a, you know, our is our opinions shaped by our familiarity with the
franchise as a whole. I don't know. Before we get into that, we'll get into some nuts and bolts.
Thanks for hanging out, friends. Please rate and review wherever you listen to Camp Kaiju.
You can send us listener comments at campkaiju.gmail.com, our Facebook, our Instagram,
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telling us about your favorite monster movies and memories. Please check out our website,
campkaijupodcast.com for more reviews and special content.
And a big Patreon shout out to Jason, Chris, Sean, our anonymous patron and Peggy.
All right. I have some things on here. Oh, okay. So for this, this month in Monster Movie History.
Uh, well, the one that I'll bring up is Chopping Mall, which I watched,
maybe a couple of years ago. I was certainly intrigued by the title. It's a great title,
Chopping Mall with a C. Um, and the movie lives up to that title. It's very stupid. Uh, it's very,
and I mean that in kind of a complimentary way, like it kind of knows it's dumb and it leans into
that. Um, it's like a late eighties, a lot of very memorable campy lines on that one. So yeah,
Chopping Mall is great. Highly recommend that. Couldn't agree more. Chopping Mall has my heart.
It's killer cyborgs. Some teens get, uh, stuck in a shopping mall overnight and the new security
guards happen to be robots. And of course they short circuit and go on a, on a killing spree.
So it's, it's pretty great tech horror. For sure. Yeah. And like a distinctly late eighties way,
there's a lot of like gratuitous sex and nudity with the teenage cast or supposedly teenage. They
were probably like in their early thirties, but, um, yeah, it's a fun movie. Yep. And it's
celebrating its 38th anniversary this month. Amazing. Yeah. I wanted to shout out Ed Wood,
which was released in September 94, another Tim Burton film, arguably one of his best. Um,
so I think that's just a great movie to shout out for this episode.
Totally agree. I love that. Would, um, that probably is my favorite Tim Burton movie.
I don't want to be a hater. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that Tim Burton is among my favorites,
but like his early movies are generally pretty great. A lot of fun ones, like distinct style,
but Ed Wood is probably my favorite. Honestly, up until the two thousands with Planet of the Apes,
uh, I, I just, I really dig his, his style and his, his know-how of how to, how to shoot one of these
genre pictures that he knows the notes to play and he has a nice sense of humor, but as we'll get
into it, Planet of the Apes deviates from what his usual taste was up until that point.
Yeah, for sure. Um, Sleepy Hollow in the late nineties is certainly one of his last,
or one of his, you know, it's debatable in my opinion. That's one of his last very strong,
really great movies. I love Sleepy Hollow. Um, but yeah, well, we'll, we'll get into more,
more of that later. I did just want to very briefly mention another movie that came out in 1977 in
September, Eraserhead, which is my favorite David Lynch movie still his first feature and still his
best. Uh, I love a lot of David Lynch movies, of course, but, uh, one of the best debuts in American
cinema history, I would say Eraserhead. And see that's a blind spot for me. I got it. It's a
classic, right? It's a must see. I got to watch it. It is very weird. I mean, of course, if you've
seen a David Lynch movie, very surreal, very dreamlike, but still very moving. I like a lot of
themes of just like fatherhood and the anxiety around that, which, you know, perhaps you could
relate to. Um, okay. Yeah. Eraserhead highly recommended. Awesome. Um, well, some, a couple
of new and upcoming releases. I just got to say getting into the Halloween season, Salem's Lot
is being released on Macs. Now, if you're not in the know, uh, Salem's Lot was shot a few years ago.
It's a new adaptation of the Stephen King novel, but it had been held on ice by one of the
brothers for years. Um, and there was a lot of worry that Warner Brothers was never going to
release this movie, um, because they would have saved money as a tax write off had they just kept
it. Um, even Stephen King was like, where's, where's this movie? Fortunately, uh, for movie
lovers, it is being released. So I think that's great. Why just like the, the ethics of like
holding on to a movie for, for financial reasons and not sharing it with the world, like so much
hard work went into that. Why would you not share it? Yeah, absolutely. And even if like you, you
know, if the studio is worried, it's going to lose money or maybe get negative reviews or whatever.
Like, like who cares? Some people are going to love it. Like everybody has different opinions,
just like let it out into the world and see what happens, you know? Yeah. So yeah, I think that's a
win for movie lovers. For sure. Um, uh, yeah, I never read the book. I'm excited for that though.
Same. All right. Coming up on Camp Kaiju next time we're going back to the nineties with the
relic. This was your pick, Matt. Yeah, I haven't seen it since it first came out, which I think
was 96. So I would have been 12 years old. I remember loving it when I was that young. And
then I, I've seen like bits and pieces on TV since then, and it looks really cool. Like it looks very
entertaining, kind of scary at times and like sort of a predictive predictable way. Um, so yeah, it
blasts from the past from, you know, 30 years ago or so, uh, excited to watch. Nice. And then that'll
be followed by 1941's the Wolfman from Universal Studios starring Lon Chaney Jr. That's my pick.
Uh, it's one of my beloved monster movies and, uh, I haven't seen it in a while, so it was due for a
rewatch. Yeah, it's a classic and I've been loving the sort of like 1990s slash early 2000s kick that
we've been on, but it'll be good to go back to some like, you know, actual horror film history.
It'll be good. Yeah. We have featured a lot of movies, maybe from our youth. Yeah, I'm okay with
that, but you're right. We can have some variety. Yeah. I think we're going for like a nostalgia
aspect recently, but let's, let's go even more into the nostalgia and deeper into the past. Yeah.
They broke into the mall for the wildest all night party of their lives.
Dead meat, but you're never alone in the chopping mall.
What's that? Robot life.
We're shopping costs you an arm and a leg.
Tim Burton, director of Batman, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands,
now takes you to a completely different world, the true story of a Hollywood legend, Ed Wood.
And action!
He made movies like no one else.
You wanna keep moving?
You've got to get through that door.
Ah, that was perfect.
Perfect?
Did you know anything about film production?
Well, I like to think so.
He had an eye for talent.
I met Bela Lugosi.
Well, I thought he was dead.
This is the most uncomfortable coffin I've ever been in.
No, it's very much alive.
You flying saucer?
He had a passion for storytelling.
Get me transvestites.
I need transvestites.
You're flashy.
They want that.
Okay.
But they want professionalism so Nick Suninelli without losing naivete.
What kind of a movie is this?
It's science fiction.
A heartbreaking romance.
Brave robbers from outer space.
Brave robbers from what?
And he had a secret he couldn't hide.
I like to dress in women's clothing.
Panties, sweaters, pumps.
It's just something I do.
You don't like sex with girls?
No, I love sex with girls.
Wearing their clothes makes me feel closer to them.
How can you act so casual when you're dressed like that?
All right, everybody. Let's finish this picture.
Touchstone Pictures presents Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker,
Patricia Arquette and Bill Murray.
In the true story
Wanna give me a hand?
Keep rolling.
of an unforgettable filmmaker
We're making another movie.
I got the Church of Beverly Hills to put up the cash.
How do you get all your friends to get baptized?
Just so you can make a monster movie.
and his legacy that will live forever.
How do you turn this off?
Shake his legs around. Looks like he's killing him.
This is the one.
Japanese, I command you.
This is the one I'll be remembered for.
Ed Wood, a Tim Burton film.
Really? Worst film you ever saw?
Well, my next one will be better.
Hello.
What's your personal history with Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes?
Well, that's another one that I saw when I first came out.
So I was like 17 at the time.
And like I mentioned before, I had never seen the original Planet of the Apes series.
So I was coming into the story pretty fresh.
You know, I think when I first saw it, I thought it was fine.
Like not not great, not terrible.
I was a little surprised by the very bad reviews that are mostly bad reviews.
That I got when I first came out.
I thought it was entertaining enough.
You know, again, that's that's kind of all of my history with it.
This has never been a franchise that I've like absolutely loved or like felt the need to explore.
But kind of belatedly, now I want to.
And like I would like to get into the like more recent series,
like the reboot that started in 2011.
But yeah, the Tim Burton one is kind of an anomaly.
Like, you know, like you mentioned before, it's not a reboot.
It's not a sequel.
It's kind of a spinoff, I guess.
But yeah, just that one viewing like 22 years ago, 23 years ago was my only experience with it.
When you saw it in the theater, were you you were a teenager?
Yeah.
Were you when you saw movies back then, were you discernible?
Did you have an eye yet to be like, that's a good movie.
That's a bad movie.
I would like to believe that I did.
I don't I don't think I had all the like terminology of like what kind of angle that is.
Or like what kind of edit that is or like the kinds of film stock they use or like anything like that.
You know, and I didn't really know very I didn't know all that much about film history.
But like I started loving movies and like middle school and seeing as much as I could.
Like, you know, I was going through the AFI list of like the best 100 movies back in middle school.
So I had seen like Citizen Kane and Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington and classics like that.
So I knew a little bit about film history, but like, you know, not enough to sound intelligent or whatever.
So I think I kind of at that time just had like a gut feeling if a movie was good or bad,
but I couldn't really put like an explanation behind that opinion, you know.
Yeah, I was probably the same way.
Like, you know, in the late 90s, I remember biking to our neighborhood movie theater in West Bend, Wisconsin and seeing Batman and Robin,
which most people hated, but I thought it was really fun and I kind of want to return to it.
The only reason I bring that up is because like, you know,
I heard that it was bad from everybody, but I like, you know, 16 year old me was like,
I don't know what you're talking about. This is great.
Like, it looks cool.
It's Batman. There are villains like I was all into it, you know.
I get that.
That probably does not present me as like a film lover to be trusted or like somebody who knows what they're talking about with movies.
But at least back then I loved it.
I felt great.
You don't have to defend your credentials on this show.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Okay, let's get into some of the cast and crew of Planet of the Apes.
The director is Tim Burton, as we talked about his his previous film to this was 1999 Sleepy Hollow, which I agree with you, Matt.
I think is a gothic feast.
Like I just I love that movie and the visuals and the dark tones.
So drastically different aesthetic from from Planet of the Apes.
Danny Elfman's doing the music.
Longtime Burton partner Rick Baker is doing the makeup cinematography by Philippe Russo and the producer is Richard D.
Zanuck, who I believe greenlit the original Planet of the Apes in 1968.
So it's kind of an emotional project for him.
Yeah, it was a full circle moment for him.
And I know Zanuck because he also produced he co-produced Jaws.
So that's like a name because I always had the Jaws poster on my wall growing up and I memorized all the credits and I was like, oh, there's Zanuck.
I know you.
Yeah.
And I believe the son of Darrell F.
Zanuck, right?
Who's like royalty in Hollywood history.
So of course.
Yep.
Going going back to the early days like yeah, Darrell Zanuck.
I think since the silent era in the 20s, I think was a producer for was a 20th Century Fox.
I think so.
So yeah, big name Zanuck for sure.
The whole family.
Do you want to talk about the cast at all?
Yeah, for sure.
So we have Mark Wahlberg as Captain Leo Davidson.
He's the main human protagonist, you know, probably toward like near the height of his stardom, I guess.
At this time, he's still obviously a big star, but I guess Boogie Nights had come out shortly before this movie.
We have Tim Roth as General Thaid buried beneath a lot of makeup, as many of the cast members are, including Helena Bonham Carter as Ari.
She's kind of a liberal minded ape who supports humans and is very much against her fellow apes mistreatment of human characters.
Michael Clarke Duncan as Colonel Attar, Paul Giamatti, a lot of fun in this movie as Limbo and Orangutan, who is kind of a slave trader of humans.
Sorry, my cat is making a lot of noise.
We have Chris Christopherson as Karubi and Estella Warren as Karubi's daughter, Dana.
Those last two characters are both human characters.
Big ensemble cast here.
Oh, I might I might add just real quick that Charlton Heston has a cameo in this movie as well as General Thaid's father.
Yes, that's right.
And he did not want credit on this film.
I don't know why.
Maybe, you know, I don't I don't want to be mean to this film, but maybe Heston was like, I don't need to be associated with this anymore that I already am.
Yeah, especially in comparison with the 1968 movie.
In comparison with the 1968 original, which is a classic in its own right, certainly.
But maybe to be fair, everyone wanted it to be a secret cameo.
Yes, it is. You don't even know it's him.
Really, I didn't know it.
He's old. He's buried in makeup.
Right.
Unless somebody told me I wouldn't have recognized him.
I was kind of looking out for him.
I knew that he had a cameo in this movie and he has a line.
There are a couple moments in this movie that obnoxiously call back to the original and Charlton Heston has a line where he's like, damn them, damn them all to hell.
And it's like, oh, yeah, that's him.
You can tell. I think you can tell from that line.
But yeah, yeah.
I mean, like under the makeup, it's hard, hard to know for sure.
Oh, I didn't share my brief history with the film.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I remember seeing it when it came out.
Maybe my family had rented it.
My mom's a big Apes fan.
And I remember the twist ending with Spoiler Alert, the Lincoln Memorial.
So I remember flashes like that.
But I really sat down and watched it for the first time last year when I was on paternal leave.
And I went through a number of the Apes films.
And I'm a completionist.
And I watched the first five of the original series.
Blew me away with their social commentary and their real interpersonal dramas.
Combined with action and sci fi.
It's like, oh, this is such a sweet spot.
And then I got to Burton's film and I was like, okay, that was so different and lacking in so many ways.
Again, I don't want to be mean to this film.
I think it's just right for criticism.
And the new series, I haven't gotten through all of them myself.
In my opinion, they're really heavy in a good way.
They're still really dramatic and they're really long.
And I kind of have to be in the right frame of mind.
Yeah.
Like I said before, I'm only like 75% through the 2011 rise of the Planet of the Apes.
But I know what you mean about being kind of heavy.
It's a sad movie.
There's a lot of mistreatment of the Apes.
There's the John Lithgow character who is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.
Yeah.
A lot of kind of dark, sad, heavy themes for sure.
Right.
Which is actually my personal taste.
I would rather a sci fi film take itself really seriously,
even if it's about apes taking over the world, which is why I think Tim Burton's movie doesn't always land with me.
Maybe he's trying to like have his cake and eat it too.
Trying to be a little campy, trying to be a little funny.
But also, like you're not really digging into the themes that every other eight movie has leaned into.
Yeah, it seems that way.
Although again, I'm not an expert on this series,
but I get the impression that Tim Burton and some other people in the cast and crew were like,
it's Planet of the Apes.
We got to do it. It's so fun.
It's like a classic world or like environment or whatever.
You know, but maybe they didn't really have a clear idea of like the new voice that they would bring to it.
And I think also like the difficult and rushed production schedule severely hampered this film as well.
Yeah, that's a good way to frame it too.
Which we'll talk about soon.
Yeah, well, we can start talking about it now.
What a segue.
Yeah.
So like Vincent mentioned, the first Planet of the Apes series was five films that ran from 1968 to 73.
The first one was based pretty loosely, as far as I know, on the novel by Pierre Boulet.
Development on a new film started in the 1980s.
In 1988, 20th Century Fox commissioned Adam Rifkin.
They contacted Rifkin to write a movie independent of the first series.
Rifkin said his idea was that the Ape Empire had reached its Roman era.
A descendant of Charlton Heston's character named Duke would eventually lead a human slave revolt against the oppressive Romanesque Apes led by General Ezon.
According to Rifkin, it would have been a real sword and sandal spectacular monkey style.
He admitted that Gladiator basically did the same thing without the ape costumes.
It does not sound very good, so maybe it's for the best that that project never totally got off the ground.
I was going to have the exact opposite reaction.
Oh, well, I think that sounds like, I don't know, bring something new to it.
Do something new.
Maybe the ape civilization.
Maybe there I would love to see a Spartacus style.
Sword and sandal epic with apes.
I guess it could have its kind of amusingly campy moments, but I guess I'm not I'm not big into Gladiator movies or like sword and sandal movies.
I don't really like Spartacus all that much.
Gladiator is kind of fun at times, but yeah, you know, I mean,
having that kind of story and ape costumes could be fun, but I don't know how original it would be, you know, but but then that movie never got off the ground anyway, so perhaps we'll never know.
That's great, because there's going to be some other ideas that other directors kick around later on.
And it just makes me think about our mummy episode.
We talked about all the different ideas other directors and writers had for a mummy re-envisioning, and we thought how many of those sounded really cool.
Yeah, there are some other ideas for the Planet of the Apes reboot that I do think sounds kind of cool, which we'll get into in a moment here.
All right, but Gladiators don't do it for you for some reason.
You know, I mean, Spartacus is so long.
It's so just kind of like dull and bland.
It's a Stanley Kubrick movie who's normally great, but he's like fully in like director for hire mode.
Yeah, it just doesn't do it for me.
Even, you know, like the biblical epics like Ben Hur is again, just kind of long and boring.
It has its moments for sure, but it's not my favorite genre.
Yeah.
OK, yeah, I learned that about you.
So I'll keep the sword and sandaled collector set I got for you.
I'll just keep that for myself.
Oh, man.
Well, now I want to explore.
If there's ever any kind of like, you know, Gladiators slash Monster movie crossover.
I mean, you know, sort of to your point, I mean, I would check that out.
I hope so.
All right.
Well, Rick Baker, one of the legends of makeup effects in Hollywood, he's been attached.
He ended up he and Danny Elfman, another noted creator behind the music.
They did do the makeup and the effect for the 2001 version,
but they had originally been attached to it to the project in the 80s.
However, this whole Roman Apes movie with Baker and Elfman did fall through studio executives at Fox.
There were some new ones and they they just couldn't get behind Rifkin's idea.
So the project was abandoned.
The next idea that kind of got off the ground, I think sounds pretty great.
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh had this idea.
They pitched a concept with a Planet of the Apes story set in the Renaissance.
Roddy McDowell was eager to play a part.
The idea was that the Apes were kind of entering their Renaissance kind of like high art sort of phase,
like decadence and everything, but then it falls apart shortly thereafter.
The society does.
I thought that idea sounded pretty cool, but the new studio executives again did not like that idea.
So that didn't happen either.
Nope. And now Oliver Stone comes into the picture as producer in 1993.
He's tasked with bringing this all together.
He gets Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign on to the project in 94.
Wild. I can see it, though.
Why not? Yeah, I would love that movie.
For sure. Yeah.
Oliver Stone hires screenwriter Terry Hayes.
And Hayes comes up with a script about time traveling scientists who go back to the Paleolithic era to prevent the spread of a humanity ending virus.
There they find humans and apes battling for the future of the planet.
So it's like the origins of humankind lay in the Stone Age when there's like this war happening.
Again, studio executives could not get behind this.
They didn't the executive. The executives didn't want something too serious.
And there was a producer, Dylan Sellers.
This is so wild to me.
He insisted that Hayes include a comedic scene with apes playing baseball.
And Hayes hated this idea because that's stupid.
And when Hayes turned in another draft without the baseball scene, he was fired on the spot.
It's such a bad idea.
Why would that be the one thing that you're going to die on the hill for?
It's such a terrible idea.
So again, we have this push and pull between the comedic nature or the campy nature of Planet of the Apes, but also the serious movies that they are at heart.
And Matt, you alluded to this.
This was the frame that you put this in.
It's like people wanted to make an apes movie because they loved Planet of the Apes and like how fun it was without actually understanding the the moral lessons at the heart of this franchise.
Yeah. So that's why you get a dumb idea.
Like, let's just put apes in a baseball field.
Yeah.
I mean, if it was like a whole movie about apes playing baseball, I actually prefer that idea to the apes as gladiators concept.
But probably both of them are not very strong.
I'll admit that.
So this kind of just kept on happening, though.
The project got bounced around to various big names throughout the 90s.
James Cameron, Peter Jackson.
Again, they approached and he again declined.
For this time, he declined.
Chris Columbus, Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay.
Like, you know, kind of long convoluted, torturous production stories are nothing new in Hollywood.
It happens all the time.
But this one especially kind of languished in this like pre-production hell for more than a decade.
It's kind of bouncing around and never really got off the ground until dot dot dot.
Tim Burton finally signed on in February 2000.
Richard Dezanek producing, like we mentioned.
Baker and Altman returned to the project.
Like Vincent said, longtime collaborators of Tim Burton.
And yeah, finally, the project had some momentum.
Filming got underway in late 2000.
Burton insisted on makeup over CGI, and he insisted on having Rick Baker do that.
Or actually, he was torn.
Burton was torn between hiring Baker and Stan Winston, two legends who he had worked with before on on different pictures.
But he went with Baker.
And this is why, because Baker, he is a self-professed fan of not just Planet of the Apes, but like ape movies in general.
In the 40s, there's a great weird tradition of of ape movies, men in ape costumes, you know, scaring women and stuff.
Anyways, Rick Baker, super nerd.
He's always wanted to do an ape movie.
Yeah, I think he had done makeup for some ape movies before.
Like he had worked on the 1976 King Kong and I think Greystroke as well, which I'm pretty sure is a Tarzan movie from like the 80s.
I've never seen that, though.
But he was never totally happy with the way it worked out.
So he thought that this would be a chance to like really perfect his ape makeup effects.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
That the effects, you know, they'd start putting the makeup on actors at two in the morning.
And then the actors would be in makeup until like nine o'clock at night.
And then it would take like an hour to get out of the, you have to come back four hours later.
Like, you know, when when actors have to go through that, I'm like, all right, they can be paid hundreds of millions of dollars.
I'm like, deserved.
Yeah.
But again, I think a lost art.
I mean, like what Andy Serkis does with the stop motion performances and all those actors like that is.
I think that is really impressive in its own way.
So I'm not going to deride that method.
But like Rick Baker's makeup and the original 68 series, that makeup too was was groundbreaking.
And I think it holds up as well.
Yeah, I mean, I can't can't speak to the original series, although I definitely do want to visit that sometime soon.
But even in the 2001 Tim Burton, I think the makeup effects are maybe the best part of the movie.
And I'll you know, I'll talk more about this later.
I feel like this movie is a product of another time of the early 2000s.
It was only about 20 years ago.
But there there are some things I like about this movie because it was like a more
maybe nostalgia is making me say this, but maybe a more innocent time of movie making and movie going in a way.
But I'll talk more about that later.
Well, can't wait.
Yeah.
Interesting factoid about this movie is that Tim Roth, when he learned he as General Thade,
learned that he would be in a scene with Charlton Heston.
He was very upset about that because of politics.
Tim Roth.
Well, Charlton Heston in later life became very well known and outspoken proponent of the National Rifle Association.
And Tim Roth was so against that he was upset to learn that he'd be in a scene with Charlton Heston.
I kind of admire that.
And I also admire that Tim Roth was like, it's a working environment.
He this Charlton Heston plays my father.
Like he kind of went ahead and did it.
I admire the professionalism of that.
And I also admire his political stance.
So that is an interesting tidbit about this movie for sure.
Yeah. As I tell my students, you don't have to like everybody, but you do have to work with them sometimes.
Yeah.
Yeah. You will probably encounter people that you strongly disagree with.
But how do you deal with that?
Yeah. Yeah.
That's a cool.
I was very interested to read that for sure.
So it came out in July 2001 and 20th Century Fox was adamant about that release date.
They had planned on that release.
I think for like several years beforehand, they had this slated as like their big summer 2001.
Not the summer, but July 2001 movie.
And, you know, everything was rushed because of that.
Like the script writing process, the set building process.
All of it was kind of a rush job.
Like the screenwriters were adding new scenes while the film was in production.
So I truly do think that affected the story, the plot, like a lot of different, like the characters, a lot of different elements in the movie.
Anyway, when it was released in July 2001, it was a commercial hit,
but received mixed reviews from critics and audiences who lamented its messy script and its confusing twist ending.
But Rick Baker's Makeup Effects and Danny Elfman's score did receive a lot of acclaim for most critics at the time.
Was there going to be a sequel?
Well, if the movie had done better critically, perhaps there would have been.
But no, there was not.
Tim Burton was quoted as saying he would rather jump out a window than direct a sequel to Climb of the Apes.
You know, for them, it's totally understandable.
Like, I absolutely cannot blame Tim Burton for that.
And, you know, like maybe some of the cast would have come back if Tim Burton had come back.
Like Burton and Helena Bonham Carter started dating right around the time of the making of this movie and they were together for 13 years.
So, you know, I mean, like maybe if they had had if if Burton and wanted to come back,
other people probably would have wanted to come back as well.
But I think there was a mutual disinterest from all parties in this case.
I'm just going to say this, I think as an observation, you know, an observation, I think it's so rare.
That a movie was a financial hit and it did not get a sequel.
I kind of admire whoever made the decision to say, you know what?
Money's not the most important thing.
This was not to the level we wanted it artistically.
So let's let's take a break.
And I'm like that I feel like that's so that is so anti Hollywood.
Yeah, that happened.
Yeah, for sure. And then you have the reboot series that started in 2011, which seems very, very strong.
Like again, I have to watch most of those movies, but I think they did it the right way with that most recent series movies.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right, everybody, we're going to take a quick sponsor break.
Head into Menia's mailbox, talk to Mr.
Peter Laurie and have Naomi on the show.
And then after our break, Matt and I are going to talk about the themes of Planet of the Apes and our individual
breakdowns, the good, the bad and the campy.
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So consider checking it out.
Matt, who do we whose message do we have in the old mailbox today?
We have a message from somebody named macro man Bravo, which is good.
I like that name on Instagram.
He or she, I presume he but who knows says Godzilla versus Megalon is my all time favorite Godzilla movie.
I saw it in the 70s on a double bill with Giant Spider Invasion.
And that was one of the best movie theater days ever.
So much blood with three exclamation points.
Cool.
Yeah, I'm very intrigued by Giant Spider Invasion.
I've never heard of that.
Same.
I have a running list of movies to watch because of this podcast.
It's a wonderful problem to have.
We will never exhaust all of the monster movies out there.
I love it.
Well, thank you macro man Bravo.
We appreciate it.
And for everybody else out there, keep your comments coming.
We're going to read more next time.
Before Karloff and Lugosi stocked the screens, the movies were no less monstrous.
These frightful figures lurked in the expressionistic shadows and danced in the macabre moonlight.
Oh, they laughed.
They cried.
They fooled the sensibilities of honest, decent folk.
For in the age of silent pictures, these gruesome ghouls nonetheless cried out with the savage humanity that took the breath from all who witnessed their devilish delights.
For in the silence, no one can hear you scream.
Yes, I am almost there.
I'm climbing into a new beginning.
From above there was a light and down below I turned to look for an escape from this recording booth.
And I'm climbing up into the light, into freedom, into...
Oh no.
No, what is this?
This is a nightmare.
It is the same recording booth in which I have been imprisoned these many months.
What madness is this?
This never-ending and perpetual booth of doom in which I must review monster movies from the silent era.
Is Conrad Vite controlled by Dr. Caligari so I, Peter Lorium controlled by Matthew and Vincent?
Or only by fulfilling my unholy obligations will they allow me to return peacefully to my grave.
Well, if this is to be my lot in the afterlife, I might as well tell you about the 1920 classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
The film is about a sideshow entertainer named Dr. Caligari who commands total control over a mysterious somnambulist or a sleepwalker.
Dr. Caligari has the somnambulist enact vengeance on any who cross him.
If only I had my own somnambulist.
But I digress.
Finally, at an insane asylum, our story concludes with an ending that must be seen to be believed.
It is all a tale of madness and murder.
And perhaps, perhaps Matthew and Vincent will know how closely this movie will mirror their own fate.
I apologize, ladies and gentlemen.
It is sometimes my emotions get the better of me when I think too hard about what has happened to me since my death all those many years ago.
But where was I? Oh, right, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
It has been called the first true horror film and is the quintessential example of the German Expressionist movement in which the sets, lighting, makeup, and other art designs are designed to illuminate our innermost nightmares.
Indeed, the writers of this movie, Hans Janowitz and Karl Mayer, were veterans of the recently ended First World War, and their movie reflects their distrust of government military figures.
These themes of institutional distrust and the artistic stylings of German Expressionism are used by horror, mystery, and noir filmmakers to this day.
Next time on Silent But Deadly, we will explore another landmark example from the silent era called Metropolis.
Perhaps you have heard of this movie from my long-dead and resting-at-ease colleague Fritz Long.
Perhaps I may numb myself enough to the torture of this podcast to get through my dastardly contract from hell.
Perhaps I may turn a corner yet.
Perhaps my captors may visit me and at least provide me company and conversation.
No, no, Pierre, you are enough, but a man must have human friends.
The Last Supper
In a small Wisconsin town, something was about to happen that would send shockwaves around the world.
This is the sheriff. Get on the emergency unit. I'm down here all by myself.
They're hell-bent on destroying that beast. The crowd's beginning to take over.
Call a National Guard back. Tell them we need some heavy equipment, guns, tanks, anything.
They came by the hundreds, by the thousands, killing and crippling, creeping, crawling creatures, determined to destroy the Earth.
Could anything stop them? Could anything stop the giant spider invasion?
There has never been a film like this before.
Here comes Naomi Osborn, everybody.
Hello.
Hey.
Hi, Naomi.
Hey, how's it going?
Good. How are you?
Good. I'm just trying to get my video to work.
It's been a few weeks since the Mummy.
It has been. I was excited to re-watch Crown of the Apes. I hadn't seen it since it came out.
And it's just one of those so hated movies that I just had to re-watch.
And I'm such a glasses half full type person, but I was just curious to see if it deserved the hate.
And I have to say that I think it does.
I wasn't here for the rest of you guys' conversation.
And I don't like to trash movies, but wow, like I was really surprised that it was as bad as people say, because usually I'm just like, I don't know.
People are really hard on re-imaginings, remakes.
But I don't know.
I just, this one did not do it for me.
Were you somehow listening to the past hour of Matt and I's conversation?
Because we said the exact same things.
We don't want to be mean to this movie.
We acknowledge what it does right, but there's a lot that it misses the mark on.
Totally.
You know, I'm really glad that you guys have the attitude you do, because I know you're not needless haters at all.
And so I just can't believe that it was so, it just misses the mark in so many ways.
And I almost wish I could have heard the rest of your conversation, because I'm curious what you guys thought.
Like, what did it do right?
It was so just weird and boring, but action packed.
I just couldn't, I don't know.
It was just wild stuff.
It was.
Really wild stuff.
So much action yet somehow boring.
I, you know, I think I hate using that word even.
But honestly, this most recent rewatch for me was a bit of a slog because I had just seen it last year and I was like, do I really want to watch this again?
I did this to myself because I chose it for Camp Kaiju.
There are a few things I think are like mildly charming about the movie.
Like, I just think it's kind of interesting that it came out.
I'll talk about this maybe a little bit more in that episode.
But like, it's only about 20 years old, but I feel like it came out in like a totally different era of like movie making and movie watching.
Like 2001, the year that this came out was like a huge box office here.
You had the Mummy Returns, Monsters Inc, Phantom Menace.
Although that was a couple years earlier, I guess.
But like, you know, studios were like rolling in money at this time.
And like this movie did pretty well.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the movie, but I kind of just it's cool to think about an era when like people flocked to movie theaters, which they don't really do anymore.
I think the nostalgia aspect for me makes me like it just a little bit.
I like the use of makeup over CGI.
I think Tim Roth gives like a good terrifying performance, like underneath what must have been like 50 pounds of makeup, you know.
So there are some things I like, but generally I agree with you both that like it's yeah, there are more bad things than good things about this movie for sure.
It's so funny that you mentioned the nostalgia aspect because I was thinking like I almost was wondering like what did Tim Burton how how did nostalgia play into his reimagining of this film?
Because if you look at something like Dark Shadows, which was obviously also probably rooted in nostalgia and kind of him wanting to explore that.
I just wonder like.
You know how much did nostalgia play a role in shaping this?
You know, we'll never know for sure, but for both Burton and the audience and like where did it go wrong?
You know, I feel like we're such a nostalgic generation, you know, Millennials, Gen X and everyone, you know, younger than us because we have access to all this media.
And it's just it's it's fun to kind of feel connected in a weird way that we're all nostalgic for this, but I think it didn't help them in this case.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, we were saying that maybe the people behind this movie were a little blinded by their nostalgia and love for.
You know, the more fun aspects of the original series.
While not actually realizing that those movies are a bit more serious as well.
And it's that it's that.
Can't be in serious tone.
I think that works so well in the original series.
Totally, I felt like this one just didn't know what I wanted to be.
It's like, does it want to be an action movie, a political commentary, sci fi, you know, and it doesn't really nail down a direction.
And in that, it kind of misses all the impact of the original.
I don't know.
I don't know what direction it could have taken more.
I read a quote from him in preparation for this where he was talking about the ending and saying that the quote was I wanted to leave people with something to talk about.
I guess mission accomplished, but not in the same way.
You know, I think it's just so strange that such a visual forward, auteur director like him would make a movie like this.
And I would be like, what if Wes Anderson reimagined Soylent Green or something like that?
Like, how weird would that be?
I don't know. It just blew my mind.
I was very surprised, but I'm glad that it made other, you know, it kicked off.
You know, Planet of the Apes, a series of other movies and some of them have been good since then.
You know, I guess there are some good things about it.
I'm dying to see that Wes Anderson Soylent Green movie.
I want that to happen so much.
Me too. You know that green will be chartreuse.
Yeah, for sure.
Let's make it happen somehow.
Yes, yes, yes.
Naomi, are you a big fan of both the original series and the more recent series of reboot movies?
You kind of alluded to that a little bit.
Yes, I really I especially the first one, this one that this is remaking.
I really love that film.
I was like I didn't know the twist when I saw it somehow.
Like I didn't know that twist.
I guess because just being a kid and I didn't see any pop culture around it or anything.
So I really was surprised and it was thought provoking.
And so that did kick off, you know, enjoying the more recent films.
And I've come to enjoy them very much.
And I think that they say a lot and they they managed to stay somewhat current and resonate with audiences.
What about you guys?
I'm kind of like a newcomer to the series.
I it's a big blind spot for me.
I have seen bits and pieces of the original series on TV,
but I've never seen any of the original series all the way through like any of those movies.
And that's I want to rectify that as soon as possible.
I did try to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 2011 before recording tonight.
I have like half an hour left to go, unfortunately, so I didn't finish it.
But I'm hoping to to educate myself on these movies soon.
I honestly think, like considering any long term franchise, Alien Predator, you name it.
I think, like, overwhelmingly, I think Planet of the Apes is the strongest franchise.
Like they have 10 films now.
And except for Tim Burton's, I think they're all really strong movies.
That's cool to hear, especially since it sounds like you kind of watch them back to back to back.
Or at least somewhat around them, because sometimes when people take those deep dives,
it can be like, you know, they sort of lose their emotional resonance or something.
So that's cool to hear.
I'd like to do a full on deep dive.
I watched them as they've come out and enjoyed them on all levels,
you know, from more of a blockbuster level into a more thought provoking level.
But yeah, that's cool. I never thought about that.
That's quite a claim.
You know, just consistency wise.
It is a lot of film.
Yeah.
And they were pumping them out in the in the 60s and 70s.
Like there was one, a new one every year.
And despite varying budget, you know, budget levels that you can see on the screen,
again, everyone's so invested to just tell a good story.
And it's one overarching story, largely between the first and the fifth.
And I love that consistency.
We have a through line.
We're following the same characters.
We're watching them grow.
It's great.
Have you read the book, Perchant?
No.
No, have I? I'm very curious about that.
What kind of adaptation is that?
I'm very interested because in this one, they even call it out very, very boldly,
you know, adapted from this book.
And I just wonder if it if it's closer to that in any way or if I just wonder, you know.
I wonder. I do, too.
And I love that it's the same novelist who wrote Bridge on the River Kwai.
Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool.
Neither. Wow.
Great movie. It's classic.
At least so the apes come in the last scene and you're like, where did this come from?
You know, would they blow up the bridge?
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Time travel or something or what?
I don't know.
Hey, did you guys catch Beetlejuice 2? Not yet.
I was just wondering. I saw it already.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't want to say anything because I want you guys to go in fresh and have your own opinions about it.
But yeah, I caught it.
It was fun.
Speaking of long term franchise, like it's hard to remember a movie that has longer distance between that and the sequel.
You know, I can't even really think of one.
So yeah.
The original is great.
I'm excited to watch the new one.
Hopefully soon.
Yeah. Yeah.
I was cautiously optimistic, as always.
And I got to say it was better than I thought it would be.
But I'm curious to hear what you guys think of it.
Did you see the new Alien movie?
Yes, I did.
I did see that.
I enjoyed it.
I'm not a big alien nut.
So I feel like a lot of the lore and the Easter eggs were somewhat lost on me, but I did enjoy it.
I thought it was cool and interesting and beautiful and gross and all the cool stuff.
But since I'm not a fanatical alien person, I feel like a lot of it was lost on me or just not.
I didn't enjoy it to the level that a lot of other people did.
How about you?
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the Alien series.
Actually, even the bad ones like Prometheus and like Alien Resurrection.
I kind of enjoy.
I didn't love Romulus all that much.
For me, I felt like there was maybe a little bit too much fan service, you know, like fan call and stuff,
and maybe not enough kind of like reinvention.
Or maybe like we're talking about with Planet of the Apes, like a distinct vision that they brought to it, you know.
But it's still like really entertaining.
It has its very suspenseful moments.
So it's not my favorite of the series, but it was still a fun watch.
Oh, you're the first fan I've heard say something like that.
That's interesting.
The only thing that really bothered me was kind of the youth aspect.
The cast was so youthful.
I don't know.
Just me in my late 30s.
I was like, is this for me?
I don't know.
Yeah, not very interesting.
Like the movie spends so much time on just like several of those characters being like anti cyborg or whatever.
Anti android.
It's like we get it.
I don't know if the movie really needs to spend as much time on that as they do.
But yeah, that was that was kind of an obstacle for me to.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, good.
It's not just me.
Well, should we get into some trivia?
Are you ready to play the trivia that challenge the world?
So here's the question.
Planet of the Apes was nominated for three Razzie Awards, which highlight the worst in cinema.
The film won two worst remake or sequel and were supporting actor awarded to which member of the supporting cast.
So I'll read that again.
Planet of the Apes was nominated for three Razzie Awards, which highlight the worst in cinema.
The film won two worst remake or sequel and were supporting actor awarded to which member of the supporting cast.
That's a good question.
I don't know the answer to that.
It could be anybody.
Yeah.
And I think some of the acting is actually a bright spot in this film.
So this could be a little bit of a stump for some people.
I'll be interested to see what people say.
Yeah.
And just a reminder for those listening, you can submit your answer.
You can comment on your favorite podcatcher.
You can comment on our Instagram.
You can send us an email.
The links to those are in the show description and that will enter you into a drawing.
And if you are chosen, you can win something from our Threadless store.
It could be a t-shirt.
It could be a sticker.
It could be a tote bag.
Who knows?
Check out our Threadless store and see what catches your eye and enter to win.
If you want to be entered twice, you can call the old Kaiju hotline and tell us what you think your answer is.
And that'll put you in the drawing twice.
So yeah, them's the rules.
Check out the show description and we will see if anybody wants to play along.
We'll see you next time for the trivia that challenged the world.
So many easy ways to enter on social media or whatever you're comfortable with.
Love that.
And Naomi, we'll see you back on Camp Kaiju for the Wolfman.
Yeah, I'm excited.
I have never seen the Wolfman, but I've always been curious about it.
It was my dad's favorite Universal Monster.
So I've just always been interested in it, but slightly scared.
So I am interested and excited to watch that film.
That's awesome.
It's one of my favorites.
I grew up with it.
So, I mean, you don't have to like it if you don't.
But I'm excited for you to watch it.
That's OK.
I even like movies when I don't like them.
So it's OK.
I just enjoy the experience.
So I'm excited to watch it.
And I'll bet it'll be special, even if it's not my favorite.
And can I do a quick plug for my own trivia real quick for people who might
want to come to trivia in person the next couple trivia nights?
I don't know when this will air, but the next one will be Monday, October the 7th.
It'll be a horror themed trivia.
So all horror.
I'm going to have a guest co-host.
His name is Andy Sell.
He's a local horror buff and podcaster.
He's going to be great.
He'll be writing half of the questions, which is going to be the format I do going forward.
I want to share different perspectives and different tastes at my movie trivia film friends.
And in November, Monday the 4th, we will be meeting at 730 at Indeed Brewery for a general trivia.
There'll be no theme to it.
So I'm looking forward to that.
And I hope people come out.
If they do, please come say hello.
We're going to have questions from all kinds of movies, all different difficulty levels.
We're sponsored by the Trilon Theater, the Heights Theater.
And it's a really good time.
Hope people come out.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, it's a great time.
Yep.
First Monday of every month.
Anytime you can come.
We'd love to see you.
But if not, I don't like get super busy.
I'll be there for the horror themed trivia on October 7th for sure.
I can't wait.
Oh, awesome.
That'd be great.
I can't wait to see there.
I'll be wearing a costume and stuff, too.
You don't have to.
You can just you know, you can rock your favorite horror shirt.
That's what I've been telling people who don't want to.
But yeah, I'm excited to to that's always a really fun night.
Like people really come out and give their all towards that theme.
So I'm excited.
That's awesome. I haven't given any thought yet to my Halloween costume,
but hopefully before the seven.
Are you are you a costume guy?
Like, do you do you enjoy or is it a bit of a chore?
I wouldn't say it's a chore, but I'm a procrastinator.
So usually I wait till like October 30th and I'm like,
what do I have in the house to just like come up with as a costume?
Which can be fun, but I it's never like the most impressive costume of like
like any party that I go to or whatever.
So maybe this year I'll put some effort into it.
We'll see.
Yeah. Yeah.
You never know. I'm going to have some fun prizes for for best costume.
And we have some really good movie themed costumes last year.
I like to see people's creativity.
But if not, like I said, people wear really fun T-shirts to just to kind of
rip their favorite horror movies and their favorite regular movies, too.
But yeah, it should be a real fun time.
I'm excited for it.
Me too. I can't wait.
Cool.
Well, thank you guys for having me on.
Always a pleasure.
Likewise, it was a blast.
Great question.
Have a great night.
We'll be out here already.
Bye. Thank you. But that was awesome.
All right.
I wonder what the answer to the question is.
I'm going to have to do some research.
Yeah, I genuinely don't know.
Yeah.
Most of the performances are fine.
You know, like that's not the thing to like
criticize about this movie, in my opinion.
But yeah, yeah.
Is the secret of silent.
New York City in the year 2022.
Nothing runs anymore.
Nothing works, but the people are the same
and the people will do anything to get what they need.
This isn't a police.
What they need most is Soylent Green.
Detective Sergeant Thorne.
He has a two year backlog of unsolved murders.
Now he's on a case that must be solved.
Charlton Heston, Edward G.
Robinson, Chuck Connors, Lee Taylor Young,
Brock Peters, Paula Kelly and Joseph Cotton.
Fight for survival and try to solve the most
bizarre riddle ever to face mankind.
The search for the secret of Soylent Green.
You will find out why Soylent Green means life.
You will find out why Soylent Green means death.
We've got to stop them.
Is the secret of Soylent Green.
Please.
That fiend squirrel on my porch is still going at it.
Well, you hope it's a squirrel, who knows?
Man, just don't open the door.
Don't open the door.
Yeah,
that is totally a moment out of a horror movie right there.
Man, I'm just sitting here fighting for my life.
Man, I mean, I'm not hearing anything on my end.
If I start hearing it and if I see anything
in the background, I'm going to start to get really worried.
OK, all right.
Let's oh, my gosh.
OK, let's talk about some themes of Planet of the Apes.
I wrote slavery, racial hierarchy, animal rights and religion.
Take your pick. Add some more.
I don't know.
They're all pretty heavy handed, right?
I mean, like there are a lot of mentions
of like, you know, policing, like slave trading.
It's like certainly, you know, in this case,
the human characters are kind of meant to represent oppressed communities
throughout human history, which is strange because I believe
almost all of the human characters are white.
There's one black character.
But in any case, like the the thematic point, you know, is that the humans here
kind of are oppressed, they're brutally kind of policed by the apes who are in power.
So, of course, there are a lot of themes of racism and bigotry
and prejudice that come out of that well-intentioned.
But there's not really a lot of depth or nuance to that.
Exactly.
Unfortunately, ironically, I think this movie is light on.
Important themes like that,
because it's so in your face, it's really heavy handed.
The script is not subtle.
And in that, I'm just kind of like,
I don't know, you're not you're not digging into it as deeply as you could.
Yeah, it's very surface level.
For sure. Yeah.
Like one kind of cringe worthy example that comes to mind is that
General Thede brings his young ape niece to like a slave trading kind of outpost.
And they buy a young human girl for the niece ape to kind of play with.
And they keep that human girl in a cage and like the apes kind of luxurious manner.
And then the human characters have to rescue that human child when they break
out of their prison. So, you know, I mean, like it's trying to allude to, like,
really terrible, violent, brutal things that humans have done to each other.
Like people in power have done to oppressed communities
for centuries or millennia or whatever.
But, you know, again, it's just kind of like it's not dramatic.
It's kind of just like plotting.
It takes a long time to get through that subplot.
And it's like we get it.
We get the thematic point you're trying to make.
There's not like really a lot of emotional power to this.
And it's not very thought provoking.
Yeah. Same with the ideas of animal rights.
There's a there's a religious aspect to this film.
The apes, there's a Jesus figure named Seamos, who, as we learn, is the the chimpanzee
astronaut Parakles through the time warp becomes their messiah at the end of the film.
And again, I don't.
Not that I want to compare this to the 68 movie, but it kind of begs comparison.
It's like the 68 movie does tackle these
themes in a much more dialed in nature.
And that's why it is a masterpiece of cinema or science fiction filmmaking, because.
It it does it, it knows how to do it.
And this movie, it's more fan service, maybe lip service.
Yeah, I don't know.
It doesn't take itself as seriously, so I don't take it as seriously.
Yeah. And from what I've seen, the newer
reboot series kind of seems to handle the animal rights theme a lot better than this
one does. So, you know, I mean, between the original series and the more recent one,
they like both series tackle these subjects better and more in a more
complicated way than Tim Burton's film does.
Yeah, it does get lost in the shuffle.
I'm sorry, would you say it really does get lost in the shuffle?
Yeah, it's kind of the odd man out.
Yeah, understandably, because it doesn't really have a lot of insight to say.
I do think like the evolution theme is kind of interesting.
It's all implicit. Like they don't really, like, you know,
focus on that subject too much, but just like, you know, the like Mark Wahlberg says
something about a monkey and then one of the ape says, like, oh, no, like, we're
above monkeys in the evolutionary ladder and monkeys are just above humans.
So that's like, you know, that aspect is kind of compelling.
And I think that leads into the question of bestiality and like interspecies sex
because there is a kind of a love triangle between Mark Wahlberg,
the ape Helena Bonham Carter and Estella Warren.
So I like, you know, the producers wanted to cut that entirely out of the movie
because they were like, it's weird.
We don't want to like even approach that or whatever, which is sort of understandable.
But I think it's actually one of the more interesting parts of the Tim Burton movie.
They like they just kind of like drop a ball on that.
They're like, we don't know how to resolve this.
So we're just going to like it's going to fizzle out basically.
But, you know, like some of the some of those like love triangle dynamics
between those three characters and like, is this bestiality?
Is it not like, you know, what are the ethical sort of?
I mean, it's bestiality is bad.
Don't get me wrong. But like in this movie, like
it's just kind of an interesting gray area.
But then the movie doesn't know what to do with that.
You know, 100 percent.
That's going to be my breakdown.
I'm going to address that more in depth before Naomi comes on with the form and
aesthetic, I just had a I just want to theorize a little bit about my own
philosophy of art making with genre storytelling that this movie made me think about.
OK, so some I'll just read what I wrote.
Something I'm ruminating on is how this
movie feels like an action adventure first and a drama second,
contrasted with the 68, which feels the other way around.
For me, when I approach genre
storytelling as a playwright or or I guess just a writer in general,
no matter how big the spectacle and I love action adventure.
I want to I want to ground it in honest characters who like.
It's the characters that we're invested
in ultimately as as observers and to me, the spectacle comes second.
And then you're going to get the best of everything.
But this movie strikes me as we just want the action, the adventure, the makeup.
And we're not going to spend the time
to do the character work that I think it could have had.
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
It's an interesting question about genre
storytelling and how you balance all those different aspects of of making a genre
movie or telling a genre story.
One example that comes to mind recently,
a movie that I liked a lot is Barbarian, the horror movie from a couple of years ago.
Horror is my genre.
That's my favorite genre, maybe a little bit more than science fiction.
And I think Barbarian does a fantastic job
of telling a story with characters that we are invested in, like especially
the first half an hour, we really we can't wait to see what happens because we're so
invested in them and the like at the same time, the movie tackles themes about
gender dynamics, kind of urban sprawl, you know, rust belt cities like Detroit
where Barbarian is set and it's genuinely scary.
Like that is a great piece of genre
filmmaking, I think, because it balances all those different things very well.
To your point, Vincent.
And yeah, you're right.
Like Planet of the Apes does not really know how to do that.
Maybe it didn't really have like the time or the interest to like really go deep
into all these like themes and characters and everything.
But everything feels kind of flat.
Like they don't really focus on boosting all those elements.
So it just kind of falls flat.
Yeah.
Well, in the next 10 minutes here, let's get into our breakdowns.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, I kind of foolishly brought a lot of this up when we were talking to Naomi.
But, you know, I do feel like it's kind
of like a product of another era of movie making, like and I fully recognize a lot
of this is just nostalgia, you know, I was like a perfect age in 2001,
like junior in high school, but I do love that Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes
favors makeup over CGI.
Rick Baker's makeup effects are very, very strong.
I think later in his career, Burton has a tendency to kind of just like rely on CGI
like 98 percent of the time.
And usually it doesn't look all that good.
Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland and movies like that.
Just look, you know, they're like watching a screensaver.
It's so uninteresting.
So I love the practical effect approach to Planet of the Apes.
You know, again, I do think some of the performances are pretty strong.
I like Helena Bonham Carter in this movie.
I think Tim Roth is a very, very good villain.
And it kind of just sounds like an innocence that I kind of like.
I mean, we talked about that when we had the episode about the mummy a while back.
I think it's, you know,
it's both a good and a bad thing, of course.
Like if this movie was a little bit more serious, complex, interesting,
I had like a more distinct vision that obviously would be preferable.
But it's kind of just like an action adventure movie where Mark Wahlberg is
running around on an ape planet.
And I'm never going to totally hate a movie where that's like the main storyline.
You know, OK, that's a good point.
Had this movie just been called something else,
we might feel very differently about it.
Yeah, it reminds me, I didn't actually see this movie, but I think you saw it,
that Adam Driver, Adam Driver movie, where he is like on a different planet,
like or maybe he goes back in time and he's like killing dinosaurs.
Right. Yeah. 65.
Yeah. But see, they didn't call it like
Jurassic Park or Jurassic World.
No, it was just its own thing.
So that's an interesting theory there.
I like that. Yeah, yeah.
That's all I got for the good stuff.
I have even less.
That's the performances.
I think Paul Giamatti steals the show.
Great character actor, just chewing the scenery, but also like he's making sense
of some really tough dialogue, some really corny jokes.
He somehow pulls them off barely.
Like there's a line when he says, can't we all just get along?
It's so dumb.
But he like he knows it's a dumb line as the actor, so he just kind of gives it is
all he said that W.C. Fields was a big inspiration for his performance in this
movie, which is fascinating. You can kind of see it, I think.
Yeah.
He also has another that this can't be.
So I'll hold off.
But I think Michael Clarke Duncan gives a really good performance
and the actor, he's a I forget the actor's name.
He's he plays the gorilla who's sort of the foil to Mark Michael Clarke Duncan.
He's like an older gorilla general who's now retired.
You know, is that actor I think is a really heartfelt performance.
It's like a really earn it a sincere performance.
So that was really good.
Yeah, I think the performances, at least the supporting cast.
Are good.
Yeah, I agree.
I think Carrie Hiroyuki Tagawa is that actor's name.
Yeah, the performances are overall are pretty strong.
And again, I'll just say this.
I don't know.
I'll save it for the bad category. Sorry.
OK, well, we could we could segue.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, like, oh, sorry.
What I was going to say is that I feel
like this movie is like a weird fulcrum in Tim Burton's career.
Like everything up to this.
Most things up to this are pretty good, pretty strong.
He has like a clear vision, a lot of like whimsy, a lot of dark humor, stuff like that.
I think really his career takes a downturn
after or maybe starting with Planet of the Apes.
I'm not a big, big fish fan.
I said that word. I don't love the movie Big Fish.
That was his next movie after Planet of the Apes.
And then, you know, again, he makes a lot of kind of like blockbuster CGI heavy.
He kind of like turns himself into a brand.
I think he's kind of sold out a little bit.
So I just think this movie came out
like an interesting time in his career, like.
Is it the first bad movie of like the latter part of his career?
Is it like leaning in that direction, but like not terrible on its own?
I don't know.
May anyway, I'm getting off topic.
There's a lot of bad stuff to this movie for sure.
It doesn't really know what it's trying to say.
It doesn't have a clear, distinct vision of its own.
The characters are pretty thin.
The plot doesn't make a lot of sense, especially that twist ending,
which, by the way, I'm kind of OK with if they're just like trying to set up
like a cliffhanger, I don't think it totally has to make all the sense
in the world, but still, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff about this movie for sure.
The twist ending.
I don't.
Again, I don't think it makes sense with the story,
but I also by the end just didn't care.
Yeah, I was like, OK, well, hey, at least this is the one visually
interesting thing, set piece of the movie.
Yes. Great.
Yeah.
And even when all the when all the cops drive up and they're all apes,
of course, but they're wearing police uniforms, that's pretty fun.
It's cool.
Yeah.
Now, if only they'd been playing baseball.
I know.
Yeah.
At least that's not the ending they use.
Who knows? Maybe that would have been better.
I don't know.
There was at one point an ending talked
about where he would crash land at the end in Yankee Stadium.
And there would be a baseball game of apes happening.
Why? Why is that such a thing that the executives wanted?
Yeah.
I feel like it was this one producer who, like, fixated on that idea.
And you guys are going to love it.
This is the one thing we have to have.
They even fired the writer because he didn't include it.
That's so ridiculous.
I love that.
That was stupid.
OK.
All right. I'll pick one bad thing just for the sake of time here.
Well, I don't love.
OK. OK.
OK. OK. One bad thing.
This love triangle between Estella Warren, Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter.
It's fine as an idea to play, but
it's not acted well.
It's not convincingly sold.
So Estella Warren plays Dana.
I think that's her name.
It doesn't matter.
She is like making eyes at Mark Wahlberg this whole time.
So visually, the camera is telling us she is in love with Mark Wahlberg.
Mark Wahlberg doesn't give a rip about her at all.
No, and he doesn't even like he's the hidden.
He doesn't fall in love with with Aria or Helena Bonham Carter.
Like he is.
And he is a nonsexual person in this movie.
And Helena Bonham Carter does not like she
might find him cute or whatever, but like there's no love there.
Really, it's just Dana pining over Mark Wahlberg and like being rude and caddy.
To Helena Bonham Carter, it's just like this cat fight energy that I hated.
I was like, what is this?
This.
This is such middle school energy.
And then the payoff is zilch.
And it's just why did why did we waste our time with that?
That romance that went nowhere.
Interesting. Yeah, we slightly disagree on this.
I mean, you're right about most of it.
Like the characters are too thin to make any of those relationships interesting
or compelling at all. The story just like abandons it.
Mark Wahlberg's character only wants to get off the planet.
That's like his only motivation throughout this entire movie.
And yet is like just the concept,
especially from like an evolutionary standpoint of like, you know,
if like an evolved talking human like ape and an actual human loved each other,
what what would be the specifics there?
You know, like thematically, I have to say,
like sexually and just like morally like there are a lot of questions that begin
to be posed that the movie then is just like too cowardly to be like, oh, never mind.
We're not going to like deal with this at all.
So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a flaw.
It's a bad part of the movie.
And yet it's one of the few interesting things about it.
If like if you kind of pick up what the movie is kind of like throwing at you,
then it could be an interesting thing to think about.
But the movie doesn't do that work itself, you know.
Yeah, well said.
Yeah, I have a perverse mind.
Human names. Yeah, it gets me.
Yeah, I'm picking up what you're throwing down.
What are some campy things?
Well, you know, I guess like the example that I'll bring up, like, you know,
Leo, the Mark Wahlberg character becomes like this messiah and all the human
characters like flock to this kind of desert outpost where he's just trying to
get off the planet again, he doesn't care about them at all.
But like there are some pretty campy, cheesy, ridiculous shots of like, you know,
all these human characters who are like gazing at him in awe as if he's going to
be their savior, and that's just like such a cliche from like so many, you know,
science fiction, fantasy movies.
I mean, Dune comes to mind right away.
And it's I don't know.
It's pretty ridiculous in this movie
because like Mark Wahlberg's character is like not even a character.
There's no depth or substance to him.
So that's the example that I'll come up with.
It's like at the moment I saw that I was like, oh, this is such a cliche, man.
My campy is also a cliched and involves
Mark Wahlberg in the beginning of the movies.
That's great. We're going to book in the movie here in the beginning.
He's this hot shot like pilot.
You know, he's he's a he's a loose cannon.
He's given his his his higher up a lot of guff.
He's like, let me do the mission. Let me do my job.
You're going to send a monkey to do a man's job.
I'm like, whoa, slow your roll.
You are not a cadet in in Top Gun training school right now.
Like I would hope at this point in your career, you have a level head, sir,
because you wouldn't have made it up the ranks with this attitude.
Yeah, that's a good point.
And then like the things that it sets in motion, like the time warp.
And then like the his ship goes after him and that goes disastrously or I like
his, you know, his rogue attitude really has like disastrous consequences in this
movie and and I get that the movie I know what it's doing.
It's an archetype. Right.
But it just it's so heavy handed.
We have no basis for this character.
We just like can we get camera and just breathe right now?
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, like nothing anybody does makes any sense, like which again,
I think is like because of the fact that the screenwriters were like writing it as
they were shooting it, so I'm not trying to like give it too much of a pass.
Like it's definitely a very messy,
unenvolving movie with a lot of ridiculous behavior for sure.
All right. On that, let's give it our final rating.
All right. So as always, on Camp Kaiju,
our rating system is number one, it's a timeless classic and definitely
stands the test of time, number two, there may be some antiquated moments,
but overall it's great and stands the test of time.
Number three, it may be historically
significant or just fun, but it does not stand the test of time.
And our lowest rating, it is not worth revisiting and definitely
does not stand the test of time.
I'm not going to give this the lowest rating.
There are some things I like about it.
Maybe it's just nostalgia value,
but it's definitely not a good movie.
So I'm going to say it may be historically significant or just fun,
but it does not stand the test of time.
It's entertaining at times.
Love the makeup effects, but it does not.
Yeah. I mean, especially with so many good
Planet of the Apes movies, which admittedly I have to explore a little bit more.
You have better options out there.
Yeah, I may have agreed with you last year, but the fact that I
really struggled to get through a rewatch just this week, I think is telling.
And I think compared to the other Apes and eight movies in the franchise.
Like, watch this movie just so you know how good the other ones are,
but on its own, I don't think it's historically significant.
And I don't think it is fun enough to spend two hours with.
So I don't think it stands the test of time at all.
And it's not worth revisiting, right?
No, no. Watch it once.
Put it away.
Okay.
So you're giving it our lowest rating.
I am.
Wow.
I think maybe Kildozer is the only movie I've given our lowest rating so far.
There might be some others, but that's the one that stands out to me.
Jaws, the revenge.
I think I also gave the lowest rating.
Yeah, that's a bad movie.
At least it's entertaining at times.
Jurassic World Dominion.
I gave the lowest rating.
Yeah.
Sorry again.
I didn't mean to cut you off there, but that's deserving of that for sure.
I might have given that the lowest rating, too.
I hope I did.
Yeah.
Or to the archives.
I would be puzzled if I didn't give it the lowest rating.
What was I thinking?
All right, everybody.
Thank you for joining us here on Camp Kaiju.
We will see you next time for the relic and we'll see you then, too.
We'll hear from you.
So please rate and review wherever you listen to Camp Kaiju.
You can also share this podcast with a friend.
Send us listener comments at campkaiju.gmail.com, our Facebook page,
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Camp Kaiju is recorded in Minneapolis,
St. Paul with Menia's mailbox music by Ben Cook-Felts.
Thanks, friends.
And until next time, stay campy.
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I promised my niece a pen for her birthday.
Excellent.
Oh, the little ones make wonderful fetch.
But be sure you get rid of it by puberty.
The one thing you don't want in your house is a human teenager.