SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Ten years following his revolution and a devastating nuclear war among humans, Caesar embarks on a quest to learn about his parents, and in doing so discovers the future. Battle for the Planet of the Apes is by nearly all means the worst film of the original five (though I've only seen the extended cut, so whether this version is better or worse than the theatrical I am unsure of). After "Conquest", the studio wanted to make a less-violent, less-provocative, and more "family-friendly" film (and for way less money). This resulted in the least-exciting, least-intelligent, and most cringe-worthy final chapter possible.First thing: I should clarify for some viewers that the apes did not conquer Earth. Many people have pointed out how that wouldn't make sense, and that's because it doesn't, and didn't happen anyway. There was a large scale nuclear war among humans, so the apes moreso "inherited" the planet despite the misleading implications of the films' titles. I digress. . . .J. Lee Thompson reprises his role as director for the second time with "Battle", and flaws that were only starting to peek into the limelight in "Conquest" have now manifested into their full forms. The central flaw, is overall laziness. For example, the film starts with about five-minutes of reused-footage from the former two films (making it even lazier than the opening shot of "Beneath"). To its credit, there's more reused footage later on that's incorporated more intelligently. Furthermore, there's also supposed to be a three-day journey in the film, but no attempt in editing or direction is made to assist the viewer's perception of passing time. The battle sequences are overlong (which causes them to become boring) and are comprised largely of close- ups and quick cuts. The swindling budget no-doubt influenced these points, but the prevailing lack of forethought/effort should be more than evident regardless. Paul Dehn returns for his fourth Apes film in a writing role, but this time only for story. The screenplay for "Battle" is written for newcomers John and Joyce Corrington, and is rather capricious in quality. There are yet a handful of things to praise, such as the relationship and parallels between humans and apes, and the commentary on determinism/time-travel presented through the corny and belief-disarming tear coming from Caesar's statue at the end. The most notable strength however is its quotability. For example, the "All knowledge is for good, only the use to which it is put can be for good or evil" quote seemed rather insightful and wise, though within the same vein of this strength lies some of the film's greatest weaknesses. The film is quite simply unsure of how to incorporate the same sensibilities of its predecessors, such as its allegorical content or theoretical musings, so it resorts to having the characters say the ideas outright in conversation. These ideas are often very interesting, but lose potency when presented in contrived dialogue, which is also at times aggressively expository. Further weaknesses of various trades are present as well, including the jump in Caesar's character development (from one film to the next) with little to no insight or explanation surrounding it, the campy, cringy mutants, and the irritating, preachy, theistic fable format. Above any other offense though, the nuances of the franchise's central allegory have been sucked dry (along with the budget). The commentary on race has subsided more so in this film than in its predecessors, making way instead for its own internal form of racism. Not enough time has passed since the acquired intelligence of apes to accommodate for the severe class disparities among their society, and instead it comes off as an unintentional statement that some apes are less equal than others. Take for example the accentuated intelligence of orangutans contrasted with the caricatured gorillas, who in this film are basically just violent, unintelligible children. The 1968 film presented a layered relationship between class structure, social structure, and race with nuances and insight, but in "Battle" it's handled so thoughtlessly as to be potentially offensive.The performances in this film are also at their weakest in the franchise, with scenes causing you to wonder if they actually considered doing multiple takes for anything. The actor who portrays Aldo is bad much of the time, though every so often he accomplishes a decent performance when it comes to menacing stares or general physicality. Roddy McDowall is again fine as Caesar, Paul Williams is interesting as Virgil, and Natalie Trundy improves a lot in this compared to the former entry (still not a great as an ape, but not distractingly bad either). Many of the actors don't seem to have gotten the hang of acting in the prosthetics, not having fully developed the techniques that the actors crafted in the first film. Austin Stoker as MacDonald's brother was one of the better performers in the film. The sets are actually very nice, and are maybe the one truly redeeming aspect of the film. The tree-forts and tunnels and location paintings are all exciting and interesting in their own right. The music by Leonard Rosenman however is some of the most lackluster of the franchise. Besides a singular theme that seems to be applied vaguely to "emotional content", the music was either borderline hokey or simply muddy and unmemorable. Upon further deliberation, it seems that this score along with Rosenman's "Beneath" have the least personality of the bunch. That being said, the score is still competent, and I can't hold too much against it for that.As a Planet of the Apes fan, I've found myself obligated to multiple viewings of this film, and have even found it within myself to enjoy it. So if you're a Planet of the Apes fan, you may have a good time despite its flaws. . . .But it's still not a well-made film.Score: 5/10

This fifth and final entry in the initial theatrical "Apes" series is the weakest of the bunch. It seems as if it was limited by budgetary considerations. After "Conquest" set up the rise of the simians, this story is rather small in its scale, focusing on one ape / human community, the woodsy "Ape City", that doesn't seem to have that many residents. The apes and the people peaceably co-exist, but trouble is on the horizon. First, ape leader Caesar (the always great Roddy McDowall) decides on an expedition to the "Forbidden City" to seek out audio and video of his long deceased parents, incurring the wrath of humans suffering radiation sickness. Second, a fanatical, aggressive gorilla general, Aldo (Claude Akins), is just itching to start something.Even at its worst, this series was never completely without interest, and this entry does have some good dialogue and moments. It also has some pretty decent action sequences towards the end, with lots of gunfire (but virtually no gore) and lots of explosions. Unfortunately, story author Paul Dehn and screenwriters John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington just couldn't come up with a tale that was particularly compelling. Still, director J. Lee Thompson, who'd also directed "Conquest", keeps things watchable and reasonably entertaining. The main value lies in the performances of old pros like McDowall and Akins. They're ably supported by Lew Ayres, Paul Williams, Natalie Trundy (who was in four of the "Apes" films), Severn Darden (as the crazed villain, Governor Kolp), Austin Stoker (who plays the brother of the Hari Rhodes character in "Conquest"), France Nuyen, and Paul Stevens. A young John Landis has an acting role as one of the apes; the great actor-filmmaker John Huston appears in wraparound segments as the wise old Lawgiver.Watchable for its duration, but it has to rate as something of a disappointment.Available in both a theatrical version and an extended version which runs about 10 minutes longer.Followed by a TV series.Six out of 10.

the 1970s, when the "Ape" films were shown on TV every so often, and were popular for what they were. "Planet of the Apes" had a certain sheen to it. A kind of gloss that was science fiction of the mid to late 1960s up through the beginning of the 1980s. Star Wars had it, the first Ape film had it, Logan's Run had, the sci-fi illustrations on sci-fi novels at the time had it. There was a sense of wonderment, distance, a certain "beyond" quality to the best of the genre that this film seems begin to shed.Truth be told, in my personal opinion, I think people were getting tired of the Ape films because the sequels didn't dovetail like other sequels. We were watching epochs of Ape-Human conflict and civilization, as opposed to characters going through one story after another. Somewhat akin to my previous review of "Things to Come", where we see not one character, but the same actors playing the decedents of the parents or grandparents of the previous generation.So it is that the whole series, even though the individual films are interesting, as a whole, has a kind of Wagnerian quality to it that with each passing episode tears away at the gloss. So much that when the final chapter comes around we have a low budget film that does its best to stretch the money to try and deliver A-quality material. The result being that we get a kind of what used to be known as a "made for TV" movie, or "movie of the week" quality to the cinematography and overall production values.Even so the actors give it their best, and the art department also puts its best foot forward to add to the more upscale previous films in the series.The sets, the props, the costumes, the very number of bodies, are all scaled back. Fortunately we have a strong cast to buttress a film for a series that was headed for television in the form of a live action TV series and cartoon.All in all I'm glad I finally saw all of it after all these years. The first film in the series was shown irregularly, the second even less. The third and fourth films got the most airing, and this film would air every so often.Ultimately I think the ape films could have ended on a higher note, and a few dollars more injected into the budget could have realized some better films that might have drawn in larger audiences. But as it stands it's perhaps almost fitting that an interesting series petered out as the social upheavals it was commenting on were taking a rest or simmering down.I've liked the ape films for what they are, though I can't say I've been a huge fan of them. I always did want a better ending for Taylor and Nova, and this film seems to close the book on the entire saga in a low-budget kind of way, without dipping into confirmed B- movie territory. Still, if you must see one of the ape films, then I might recommend sticking with the first two, and avoiding the followups, including this one, unless you're inclined to view the entire saga.An interesting if marginally disappointing watch. Check it out if you're a fan.

Made it Ma! After the disappointment of previous instalment #4 me and me Mum didn't bother going to the pictures to see this final part at all, but 40 years later I felt I had to complete the circle now (some circle!) and just saw Battle for the first - and last - time. I was expecting worse, but there are plenty of crappier films than this clinker.Caesar, the King of Ape City - which is apparently a rather sparse collection of trees and tree houses and random twigs strewn about – is encouraged to go on a few seconds arduous trek to the Forbidden City (the radioactive remnants of New York, which is apparently some rather dark boiler rooms and random bits of metal strewn about) by his pair of advisors to view an old videotape of his Mum and Dad talking. He gets to see a couple of clips of it, but the cost of it is that a train of events is initiated leading to a deadly war between mutant (and mad) humans and the apes spurred on by impatient gorillas. Except that the Battle with everyone shouting "Kill" and "Guns" is more akin to a tightly packed affray from a Monty Python film or a Monogram mob scene. A key part is the attempted murder and the subsequent death of Caesar's son – this is poignantly portrayed for 10 minutes but is utterly jettisoned giving the outrageous impression the attention span of chimpanzees must be minimal! The entire film would probably have made a convincing episode from the TV series this incredibly spawned just afterwards, as it is it's almost unbearably drawn out. Maybe a more coherent timeline would have helped those of us ordinary people who had made it this far – as it stands the convoluted chronology is only comprehensible to dedicated geeks. Did MST3K or Rifftrax ever get round to this one?There are occasional good moments amongst the irritating laughable dross: good photography maybe, or some surprising subtlety or acting – but definitely nowhere near enough for me to recommend you waste a part of your life you might end up wishing you hadn't.