by patio34 10 Replies latest social entertainment
I just saw the new Planet of the Apes. If anyone has seen this, did you understand the ending? How did the situation end up as it was? I understood that he went forward in time at the middle of the movie, then he appeared to go back in time at the end. But why was the ending the way it was with the apes?
Scratching my head,
Pat
La, la, la, la. Just talking to myself here--nothing new about that! My grandson (when he was 4) used to say "Who are you talking to, Grandma?"
Anyhoo, I went to an website about the said movie, and the owner said 'don't e-mail me asking about the ending. No one understands it.'
So, I feel much less obtuse now. . .
Still puzzled, but not bothered,
Pat
Here's the answer, and don't read it if you haven't seen the movie:
.
.
.
.
Now I can't think of any of the character names, so I'll identify them by the actors who played them: The Mark Wahlberg character gets to go back in time to Earth via the capsule that the chimp showed up in. Leaving behind the general character played by Tim Roth. Roth hates Wahlberg, and would love nothing better than to get revenge. So he does. By dredging up Wahlberg's original capsule out of the swamp, repairing it, and using the knowledge gained by the crashed space station's computer, he is able to go back even further in time to Earth, mess with its history enough to cause apes to become dominant, knowing that when Wahlberg shows up again everything will be changed. Voila! Revenge.
They gave it away when they focused on the General's face at the end, after Wahlberg was victorious, and after there was any need to even think about the General. But they focused on his face as he was trapped, showing him thinking. The rest is just thinking about what had to have happened in order to get the General off the planet. No other way to do it, unless you assume it was many years later and they built a spaceship just for this purpose. But why would they do that? And especially since they had a ready-made spaceship just lying there, ready to be used as soon as they checked the logs to see how to return to Earth's past.
I can't swear this is correct, but it makes sense, is consistent with the facts that they gave us, matches the motivations of the characters, and doesn't violate any rules that I can see. The owner of that website didn't think it through, in my opinion. In his or her defense, however, I was very confused at first myself, and only came to this explanation later, as I thought about it. At first, I thought the filmakers cheated in order to give us a surprise ending they didn't earn.
When you watch the ending again, let me know if I missed something. I only watched it once and haven't a chance to verify my theory.
Thanks Seeker, I have a bad habit (?) of doing other things when movies are on and miss things. I missed the look on Thade's face (the ape general). I'm going to go watch it now and will report back 
Waiting has a crush on Robert Redford (in a sing-song voice)! He is a looker, huh? Brad Pitt is easy to look at too.
Toodles,
Pat
DON'T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE!!
Hi Seeker,
Update on the movie. Just watched the last hour again. It completely fits with your theory. It had to be General Thade who went back, because that's who was glorified via the statue. How could he only have gone back? In the pod that Mark Wahlburg landed in.
Spooky, but good. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Really.
Sayonara,
Pat