The passing of Charlton Heston, brings to mind Planet of the Apes, his best movie role, and one of the greatest Sci-Fi movies ever. I've seen all the movies, and TV shows. Roddy McDowell was excellent as Cornelius, and what other name did he have, Cesar or something like that?
The original Planet of the Apes, and the 4 sequels to it were classic. Then they made movies out of the short lived series, which was wrong. And then as Hollywood is doing constantly now, they made a remake of it, which was wrong. As for Planet of the Apes being Charlton Heston's best role, I cant agree with that at all. Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments were much better roles he starred in.
A friend who actually has a disposable income recently was great enough to get me the complete POTA DVD collection (now I just have to get my first DVD player to work). Probably not a good idea to post that picture above, since if by a miracle someone doesn't know the end (as I didn't seeing it on TV a few years later) the film doubles in impact. Anyway, the films gradually go down in quality for me but I treasure it all, and that 1974 series had real potential. Mark Lenard (who played Urko as well as Spock's father) said they concentrated on the humans when the apes were the interesting ones, good point. There was a 70s Marvel POTA magazine with comic great drawing in it.
YMMV as far as Mark Wahlberg is concerned... but isn't Helena Bonham Carter playing one cute chimp? And I just loved the neat reference to the original version, when Charlton Heston (yes, he had a short part in the remake) in his ape costume (Thade's father) said in his last words "Damn them! Damn them all to hell!" - echoing Taylor at the end of the original movie ("Damn you! God damn you all to hell!"). That and a few in-jokes and references to other movies (while on the space station Oberon, an announcement is made on the loudspeaker that says "Lieutenant Bowman, please report to the bridge". ) makes it fun to watch, I think. ~*Ganesha*~
Hello, A few funny thingies about all that... Charlton Heston is hated by many people because he was president of the NRA - some just don't know what to think. They find him to be a great actor but that in the end his brains went "ape" - that he got into something too "delicate". Planet of the Apes dvd box - isn't that the biggest spoiler in history if you never saw the movie? Right away you know Heston is back on Earth because you see Lady Liberty. If you bought Planet of the Apes the latest dvd edition - there were lots of documentaries. The series actually went downhill after the first movie. The studio wanted to milk the apes and milk them good. You are shown on the documentaries that the extra apes masks after part one are really cheap -they show close-up and tell you about things that'll make you think what they are - b-movies. Planet of the Apes went on four sequels (which is good) but because there was a huge base fan, costs had been cut to produce movies and there were a lot of side products. On one of the documentaries, you can actually see a very long screen test - originally, the apes were a modern civilization but it was too costly so, they decided to make it a semi-dark age environment for them. Movies were made in rapid succession because sets were also not (as usual) demolished but reused and many of them in more than one sequence! They were simply moved around - camera cut - and then filmed from another angle. Movie were also filmed in a fast pace because the studio had the rights only for a certain amount of time - so - after the original movie turned out to be a huge hit - sequel we're produced like crazy - they went ape!
I'm not a big fan of the NRA but Charlton Heston was one fantastic actor.The fact that he was with the NRA should be a non-issue.And the original Planet of the Apes is the only one to see,just a great film on all levels.---The remake is pure junk.
