Battle for the Planet of the Apes

#8 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise. What a sad situation to watch a movie stretch its budget as far as it can only to end coming off looking cheap. By all reports, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was made more cheaply than Battle for the Planet of the…

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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

#4 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise. This is the return to form worthy of a sequel of the original Planet of the Apes. The unrated version (the version originally screened for test audiences before those reactions forced some changes that softened the film) is the same kind of damning of…

Escape from the Planet of the Apes

#9 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise. This has a similar structural quirk to its predecessor, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in that the movie doesn’t really seem to start until the halfway point. Everything up through the first forty-five minutes of both movies are almost entirely about justifying the…

Beneath the Planet of the Apes

#6 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise. In terms of follow ups to surprisingly great films that should never have had a sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is almost the exact kind of movie that it should have been to come after Planet of the Apes. It expands the…

Planet of the Apes (1968)

#2 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise. In retrospect, the great twist at the end of the very first Planet of the Apes movie feels incredibly telegraphed. There are clues everywhere about the nature of the world that George Taylor, astronaut, finds himself on, but the biggest key is the thematic…