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Smithouser has a point; in all genres of storytelling, the need for a savior is a recurring theme. But I wouldn't call them "cleverly conceived substitutes" so much as human intuitions that lead to inadvertent parables, stories that know more about the truth than their own writers. This is evidence of God's irrepressible truth, breaking through the surface of stories in spite of the authors; it is not part of a creative conspiracy to replace Jesus. For all of Hollywood's defiance of Christian ideas, moviemakers are people too, and still hungry for a savior. Thus, movies persist in reminding us that, left to our own devices, we are unable to save ourselves.

If Planet of the Apes shows us anything, it is that humanity needs no alien threat; we're already busy destroying each other. While the apes are shown as fearsome, slavedriving monsters, their deeds are clearly modeled on behaviors that humans themselves repeatedly demonstrate throughout history. Wahlberg's character scowls and tells Ari that she wouldn't want to see his homeworld, where humans treat each other worse than the apes treat their slaves. So who's the real villain here? And who is the hero in this spectacular mess? While these humans assert sovereignty on an "evolutionary ladder," at the same time they know that they can be more barbaric and simple-minded than even the beasts of the field. Charlton Heston gets a laugh by poking fun at his own support for the NRA, making a speech about the "cruelty" of humans with guns. While this is clearly just a crowd-pleasing joke, it made me wonder if the movie's heroes would find a nonviolent solution to the conflict. But the final confrontation comes down to the usual "my firearm is better than your spear." This is, after all, a summer blockbuster.

I liked Planet of the Apes whenever Tim Burton's imagination came to the fore. (My review is at Looking Closer.) Most Burton-esque of all is Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), a chimp with a conscience who is strangely attracted to the human leader (Wahlberg). Carter proves again she's one of the great screen actresses with a performance that succeeds despite an all-encompassing costume. She's gives this social misfit a sadness and longing not a far cry from Scissorhands himself. Ari is the standard Burton social outcast with taboo longings, unloved, sorely and tragically misunderstood. Her vision of a world where different people live "separate but equal" lives comes out as an oversimplified anti-prejudice sermon, but when she shuts up, her loneliness and yearning shine through. You can feel Burton pressured to deliver a typical lamebrained action pic; his interest in Ari's inner conflict is shoved aside to make room for the battlefield finale, and the "twist" ending that is truly surprising in that it make no sense.

In the mainstream press, the Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert praises the film but asks, "Planet of the Apes is the kind of movie that you enjoy at times, admire at times, even really like at times, but is it necessary? Burton's work can show a wild and crazed imagination, but here he seems reined in. He's made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting." Reel.com's Tor Thorsen is not so generous: "Planet of the Apes is a step backwards for the sci-fi genre, abandoning the innovative spirit of its forbear. Very much a child of today's Hollywood, it's a triumph of production design over storytelling, of clichés over creativity." The New York Times's Elvis Mitchell says, "When Mr. Burton's Planet fixes on being entertaining as single-mindedly as the gorillas bearing down on homo sapiens, it succeeds. But the picture states its social points so bluntly that it becomes slow-witted and condescending; it treats the audience as pets. This picture has as much ambition about conquering the box office as General Thade does in taking over the monkey planet." "What the human race in this movie seems most in need of being saved from is the perils of threadbare screenwriting," concludes Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly. "The movie is all but destined to become Burton's second hit in a row. Let's hope that he uses his newly restored power in Hollywood to become an artist again."

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July (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45