Cinemaniacal: Return To The Plot Holes Of The Planet Of The Apes

BE WARNED: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.

IF YOU DON'T WANT THE ENDING TO RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES RUINED FOR YOU GO READ SOMETHING ELSE I'VE WRITTEN.

IF NOT READ ON.

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A while back I wrote a piece about my concerns over possible plot holes in the movie Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Basically I expressed doubt that a few hundred apes, no matter how clever, could destroy human civilization.

Well, I was informed by an anonymous reader, whom I shall now call Damn Dirty Ape Dingus McGee that it's not the rebelling apes that destroy human civilization, but a pandemic caused by the genetic tinkering that made them super smart ultimately destroys humanity.

Okay, plot hole filled, but I fear that a metaphorical hole may have been opened.

You see one of the big themes of the original Apes movies was that it was humankind's inhumanity that destroyed their civilization and opened the door for the apes to take over.

In the first movie it was implied that it was nuclear war, sparked by Cold War paranoia, that wiped out mankind and that the all purpose bogeyman of radiation that bumped the apes a few more steps up the evolutionary ladder.

See, mankind in general was responsible for its destruction.

This message was hammered in even farther with Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, which featured mutants worshiping a planet smashing nuclear missile, and literally ended with the complete destruction of the planet, apes and all, at the hands of Charlton Heston's astronaut Taylor.

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes served to not only lay the groundwork for the upcoming film Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, but also satirized our paranoid, and narcissistic culture. Conquest, took that to the next level, showing America becoming a rigidly stratified fascist state with an economy based on ape slave labor. It was humanities fascist policies that led to the ape's rebellion, and the ultimate destruction of mankind. The final film Battle For The Planet Of The Apes centered on the struggle to avoid having the apes becoming as brutal as the humans and hopefully preventing the planet's total destruction as seen in Beneath.

Now, instead of society in general being at fault for its destruction, the fault now lies with a mistake made in the research by James Franco's scientist, leading to a mutated virus that ends up doing all the dirty work for humanity, and the pissed off apes.

I'm not sure how this affects the power of the franchise's original metaphor. Is it making a statement about individuals in power being well meaning but short-sighted perhaps instead of humanity in general destroying itself as in all the others? Is this a more fitting metaphor for our times as the original film's was for its time?

Only history can effectively judge, and see if this film becomes a perennial classic like the original.