Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by	J. Lee Thompson
Written by	Pierre Boulle (characters) Paul Dehn (screenplay)
Starring	Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Natalie Trundy
Release date(s)	June 29, 1972
Running time	88 min.
Language	English
Preceded by	Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Followed by	Battle for the Planet of the Apes
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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) is the fourth film of the Planet of the Apes film series. It explores mankind's future history, as established in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), and is the most violent film of the series. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, directed by J. Lee Thompson, tells of the rise of the apes enroute to dominating the planet. It is perhaps the most controversial entry in the series due to its film-noir flavor, graphic violence and clumsily re-shot ending.

Cast

• Roddy McDowall......Caesar
• Don Murray............Governor Breck
• Hari Rhodes............MacDonald
• Ricardo Montalban...Armando
• Natalie Trundy......Lisa

Plot summary

Building upon the description given by Cornelius and Zira before the Presidential Committee in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), the previous film, a disease killed the world's cats and dogs, leaving humans with no pet animals. In time, humans noticed the apes' capacity to learn and adapt; thus they taught them to perform menial household tasks. Moreover, by 1991, the United States of America has collapsed and devolved to autonomous city-states whose society is oppressive and fascist in culture, of uniformed classes and castes, based upon ape slave labour. Armando (Ricardo Montalbán) and Caesar, a young chimpanzee horseback rider in Armando's circus, visit Central City to distribute flyers advertising the Circus's arrival to town. Armando warns the chimpanzee to be careful in the city; should anyone learn his identity as the child of Cornelius and Zira, it would mean their deaths. Walking the streets, they see apes cleaning streets, delivering packages, et cetera, and are disgusted by the atrocities done to disobedient apes. Seeing an ape being beaten and drugged, Caesar shouts: Lousy human bastards!; quickly, Armando takes responsibility for the exclamation, explaining to the policemen, who were beating the other ape, that it was he who shouted, not his chimpanzee; the surrounding crowd become agitated with disbelief, Caesar runs away; Armando follows. Hiding in a stairway, Armando says he will go to the authorities and settle the matter, by bluffing. Meantime, Caesar must hide among his own kind (in a cage of orangutans from Borneo), and soon finds himself being trained for slavery through violent conditioning; he then is sold at auction to Governor Breck, the head of Central City. Gov. Breck names the ape by allowing him to name himself from a bible handed to him; the chimpanzee's finger rests upon the name Caesar. So christened, Caesar is then put to work by Gov. Breck's chief aide, Mr. MacDonald (descended from slaves), who sympathizes with the apes to the thinly veiled disgust of his boss, Gov. Breck. Meanwhile, Armando is being interrogated by Inspector Kolp, who suspects his "circus ape" is the child of the two civilized apes from the future. Kolp's assistant puts Armando under an authenticator machine that psychologically forces people to be truthful. Rather than confessing, Armando commits suicide by defenestrating himself. Learning of the death of his human pater familias, the only human he loved, Caesar loses faith in human kindness and begins plotting simian rebellion. Secretly, Caesar teaches the combat arts to the other apes, mostly gorillas and chimpanzees (orangutans are not seen fighting) and bids them gather weapons such as knives, guns, and blowtorches. Yet, Gov. Breck learns from Inspector Kolp that the manifest of the vessel that delivered Caesar lists no chimpanzees. Suspecting Caesar is the ape the police are hunting, Breck's men arrest Caesar and electrically torture him until he speaks, thus betraying his identity. Hearing the confession, Breck orders Caesar's immediate death; Caesar survives his execution; MacDonald, feigning over-sensitivity to torture, reduces the electrical power of the machine; Caesar pretends to have been electrocuted. Once Gov. Breck leaves, convinced he has eliminated the simian threat to mankind, Caesar kills the torturer who electrocuted him, and proceeds to rebel against Gov. Breck and Central City. Previously, MacDonald had learned that Caesar is the articulate ape whom humans thought mythical. Caesar leads an ape revolt against Central City. The apes are victorious after killing most of the riot police sent to kill them. After burning into Gov. Breck's command post and killing most of the personnel, Caesar has Breck marched out to be executed. MacDonald appeals to Caesar's humanity to show mercy to his former persecutor. Caesar ignores him, and in a rage declares henceforth apes everywhere will repeat the revolt that happened in Central City, then dominating the Earth after mankind's fall and enslaving the human survivors of the ape revolution. Lisa, later Caesar's wife, voices her objection:N— N— N— No . . . .; other than Caesar, she is the first ape to speak. Caesar reconsiders — ordering the apes to lower their rifles just as they are about to butt-stroke Gov. Breck to death — saying: But now . . . now we will put away our hatred. Now we will put down our weapons. We have passed through the night of the fires, and those who were our masters are now our servants! And we, who are not human, can afford to be humane. Destiny is the will of God, and if it is man’s destiny to be dominated, it is God’s will that he be dominated with compassion, and understanding. So, cast out your vengeance, tonight, we have seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes!'.

Paradox

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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes implies that Caesar started the Ape rebellion, however, this is a temporal paradox, as Caesar is the child of two of the talking apes from the fortieth century future, a future that resulted from the Ape rebellion. Specifically, Caesar's existence creates a predestination paradox and an ontological paradox. The story implies that the Ape revolution, whilst nearly simultaneous to their becoming articulate, would occur whether or not Caesar existed. At the climax, a gorilla, whom Caesar calls Aldo, is seen beating Governor Breck. "Aldo" is the name of the gorilla Cornelius identified as the first Ape to speak "No" against his human master. The implication is that a more violent Ape rebellion eventually would have occurred under Aldo's leadership, yet the timeline has been changed with Caesar leading the rebellion, and, in the end, proclaiming that Apes must remain compassionate. Thus, the original timeline (Aldo leads the rebellion) that resulted in the Earth's incineration at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, might not be the same as that of Caesar's rebellion, thus, the possibility that the Earth will not be destroyed consequent to an Ape war of aggression in the fortieth century. The world of which Cornelius speaks could have been one where slowly-evolving apes learn to speak on their own, with Aldo saying "No" to man. Another possibility is that Aldo could have killed Caesar after the rebellion. It is speculated that Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes might occur in a timeline different from Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes, that Cornelius and Zira's journey to the past and the events of Escape from the Planet of the Apes might have altered the future, but the theory is ambiguous. Screenplay writer Paul Dehn, who wrote and co-wrote the sequels, said in interviews (quoted in The Planet of the Apes Chronicles, by Paul Woods) that the story he was writing had a circular timeline:

"The whole thing has become a very logical development in the form of a circle. I have a complete chronology of the time circle mapped out, and when I start a new script, I check every supposition I make against the chart to see if it is correct to use it."

"While I was out there [in California], Arthur Jacobs said he thought this would be the last so I fitted it together so that it fitted in with the beginning of Apes One, so that the wheel had come full circle and one could stop there quite happily, I think."

Yet, Dehn also said he was writing the story as a circle, and that his intention was that the end of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes dovetail into the story of Planet of the Apes, thus, story inconsistencies among the film stories are just inconsistencies — and not a suggestion that mankind's future had changed.

Trivia

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• Paul Dehn, who took over the Apes series as screenwriter, has said that the Ape insurrection was based on the Watts riots.
• The original ending consisted of the Apes killing the Humans after overpowering them during the rebellion, but test audiences reacted badly to the grim ending, so the studio re-edited the ending with existing footage. The plot twist of the chimpanzee Lisa saying the word "no" was added to the film via dubbing a new voice-over and Roddy McDowall was brought back to record the following dialogue "If it is man's destiny to be dominated, then it is God's will that he be dominated with compassion and understanding. So cast off your vengeance. Tonight, we have seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes!!", in order to create an upbeat ending where humanity may still have a chance to make peace with the Ape Rebellion.
• The riot scenes were filmed at Century City, Los Angeles, California, specifically in the Century City Mall and surrounding office complex (which is clearly seen in the film). This development had just been completed and businesses had not yet moved in.
• Several of the Futurist buildings are the actual school buildings at the University of California, Irvine. The school's Social Science tower, which was still under construction at the time of filming, is the predominant one. It was turned over to the film crew for use as a set before it opened to students.
• Lou Wagner, who played "Zira's" Nephew, "Lucius", in the first film, appears this time as a Chimpanzee 'busboy'. The character is established near the beginning of the film as being 'deathly' afraid of fire; later, at "Caesar's" (Roddy McDowall) silent urging - early-on in the ape-uprising - he overcomes his fear when he finds the courage to 'accidentally' tip a pan he's filled with cooking sherry into a fondue-cooker's flames, and with great pride and satisfaction, sets a section of the restaurant where he works ablaze. He is joined once again by veteran "Apes" actor, Buck Kartalian ("Julius", the Compound 'Cage-Keeper' ["You know what they say: Human see, Human do..."] in the original film), as "Frank" a red-jacketed Gorilla 'waiter', who begins his own personal 'rebellion' when he suddenly refuses to politely & obligingly light a patron's cigarette, as he had been trained and conditioned to do.
• James Bacon (well-known Los Angeles writer & columnist), along with Natalie Trundy (wife of Producer Arthur P. Jacobs), are two of the few cameo-performers/personalities/actors to play both an ape and a human in the various "Planet of the Apes" productions. Additionally, Mr. Bacon is the only actor to appear in all five films in the "Planet of the Apes" series. He played an ape in all of them except for "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" (1971) in which he played a human, "General Faulkner". It was also the only one of the films in which he was credited.

External links

• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at the Internet Movie Database
• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Rotten Tomatoes
• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Box Office Mojo
• The Hasslein Curve--A Timeline of the Planet of the Apes -- A massive timeline of all events from the films, TV series, cartoons, novels, comics and other tales.