FILM NOTES: From GLADIATOR to THE BATMAN: PART II & More

I saw Planet of the Apes yesterday and just wanted to say that like Artificial Intelligence, the movie was good up until the ending...which sucked. Is it just me or this is really the first summer where I've seen movies that really sucked big time (Tomb Raider) or ended on a sucky note (see films above)? Oh well. It's next summer that I should be worried about--since next May is when I might see myself running in fear from the Green Goblin in the new Spider-Man movie...and Samuel L. Jackson's Mace Windu will be doing some major slicing-n-dicing with his lightsaber in Star Wars: Episode 2. That, and the next Matrix film comes out. Did I mention that Apes' actress Estella Warren is pretty hot, though? Also, one of my brothers saw Planet of the Apes last Saturday and said he expected the ending that the film had (he liked the film). I guess I must've been hangin' with an ignorant crowd last Friday if he liked the twist that was given to the conclusion of the Tim Burton remake. Oh well. The following was taken from an article on MSN.com:

Warning: Plot Holes is a column about narrative lapses in the movies. Today's entry gives away the twist at the end of Planet of the Apes.

A scene from Planet of the Apes
While Plot Holes usually delights in ridiculing movies that don't make sense, today it feels obliged to defend Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake. The movie's surprise ending has left some critics scratching their heads: The New York Times' Elvis Mitchell called the finale a "puzzler"; Slate's David Edelstein said it doesn't "make a lick of sense" and asked, "Has Burton lost his wits?"

"He hasn't—or at least, his Apes ending doesn't prove that he has. Yes, the shocker is wildly implausible, but it does hang together with a loopy sort of logic.

Here's the bit that's causing confusion (seriously, if you don't want to know the ending, please stop reading now). After a climactic battle on the apes' planet, astronaut Leo Davidson takes off in a spaceship and flies into an electromagnetic storm, with hopes of returning to Earth in the 21st century. While he's in the storm we see his chronometer spinning backward, and he does eventually crash-land on Earth—in Washington, D.C.'s Reflecting Pool, as a matter of fact. Only now, the Earth is ruled by apes too! In place of the Lincoln Memorial, there's a monument dedicated to Davidson's ape nemesis, Gen. Thade, for "saving the Earth for all apekind" or some such.

But Davidson has just traveled across the universe and time-warped centuries into the past. … So, how can Thade have already conquered Earth for the apes when he hasn't even been born on the ape planet yet?

Answer: Before Davidson leaves the ape planet, there's a quick shot of Limbo, the orangutan slave trader, rummaging through his spaceship and slyly pocketing something. Evidently whatever he pockets contains the secret to space travel. (Maybe it's a manual: "Space Travel So Easy, a Chimp Could Do It.") Thade, who's pointedly left alive at the end of the climactic battle, must have built a ship, flown into the time-warping electromagnetic storm, and landed on Earth at some point before Davidson returned. Then he led Earth's apes in a rebellion against humans, took over the Earth, and had the monument built for him.

Of course, back on their home planet, the apes don't even have simple motors yet. So, whatever Limbo takes from the spaceship allows them to, in Thade's lifetime, master physics, build computers, design spacesuits, test spacecraft, and send the general into space while he's still young enough to conquer the Earth. Remember, we didn't say it was plausible …"

-By Josh Daniel