Why can't I stop thinking about "Planet of the Apes" ?!

It’s 2020. The world is ending. And I can’t stop thinking about Planet of the Apes.

I’ve been hearing about this movie for my entire life, thanks to my Dad, but it wasn’t until this past Christmas that I finally got around to watching it. Now it’s stuck in my head and won’t leave. I traipse between classes and hear Charlton Heston yelling “You maniacs! You blew it up! God, damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

It’s been a weird year, to say the least, making the experience of watching Planet of the Apes feel eerier and eerier and eerier. Maybe I’m a product of my cynical, fatalistic generation, but 2020 feels a lot like the war room scenes in Dr. Strangelove. Coronavirus, World War III waiting at every corner, climate change, the impending re-election of our so-called president. I’m just waiting for the Doomsday Machine. 

I recently spoke to my aunt about Planet of the Apes, to which she said, “that’s a horror movie.” I think that sums it up pretty nicely. But I hate horror movies, and I'm obsessed with this movie. The costumes, the characters, the concept. It's entirely fake and yet entirely real all at once. Somehow, it makes a lot of sense. 

The movie opens with Taylor smoking on a spaceship, recording a message for the men of the future. He tells us that “We’re now in full automatic, in the hands of the computers.” He goes on to say: ”This much is probably true. The men who sent us on this journey are long since dead and gone. You who are reading me now are a different breed. I hope a better one. I leave the 20^th century with no regrets, but one more thing – if anybody’s listening that is. Nothing scientific, it’s purely personal. Seen from out here, everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely. That’s about it. Tell me though – does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbors’ children starving?”

This scene, too, is at the forefront of my mind. The men who made this movie are similarly “long since dead and gone.” I was reminded of the 2017 solar eclipse in the United States, when everyone was reposting via Instagram a video of the 1979 solar eclipse coverage in which the newscaster said “So that’s it, the last solar eclipse to be seen on this continent in this century, and as I said not until August 21^st, 2017 will another eclipse be visible from North America…may the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace.”

I’m not entirely sure what I am trying to say here, but I hope, somehow, you get what I’m saying. If you’ve read anything on here at all in the past year, you know I talk a lot about the moments when you’re watching a movie and the gears all kick into place and you think “yep, this is the one.” When you’re completely gripped by the images moving in front of you. This is one of those movies for me. I don’t think I’ll be watching the sequel, or the one after that, or the reboot(s), but Planet of the Apes will be on my mind for a long time.

The opening scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZ5Ie72Awc