Beneath the Planet of the Apes Reviews

To start with, I was pleasantly surprised by the first installment. Indeed, it was actually better than I remembered. Unfortunately, this sequel was quite a step-down. First of all, surprisingly, when you would expect the opposite since the first movie was a success, the budget was even smaller this time and, as a result, they used some masks instead of the awesome make-up for many of those apes. Furthermore, the writing was pretty messed up. Indeed, for some reasons, you start with Charlton Eston and end with him as well but for no particular reason, and this time, the main character was played by another actor, some Heston look-a-like. Why? Furthermore, the beginning was just way too similar to the first movie but, at least, it was pretty neat to get back to this world and get more acquainted with this ape culture/civilization. Than, you had the terribly underwhelming last 30 minutes involving this weird new generation of human-beings… I mean, the whole point of those movies are those apes, not the humans, but even so, if they wanted to put the focus on the humans, develop the ones we already know (Taylor and the savage humans) but don’t bring a new main character and a whole new sort of human beings. I must admit though, the ending was pretty cool. I mean, it was a total mess but to see Charlton Heston launching the nuke and blowing literally everyone to pieces was still pretty neat. To conclude, it was a really disappointing sequel, I’m actually really generous with my rating but I still think it is worth a look though, especially if you like the genre.

Okay, so the first half of this movie is a decent sequel to the first...but then, once in the Forbidden Zone with the more evolved humans, things go terribly wrong, which is also when they bring Charlton Heston back into the story. The movie quickly falls into garbage and badly written story line from this point on, ending pretty quickly afterward.

But before that, it's not bad, follows very well on the heels of the first, although it is very much like the first, and the actor cast as Brent is very close in appearance to Charlton Heston. But the story is good, in the beginning, with more of the themes of discrimination, needless invasion/war. It's just a shame, it tanks quickly after that.

Sequel to the sci-fi classic, 'Planet of the Apes', this movie picks up right where the original left off. This time they go totally camp with the predictably ridiculous results. There's some interesting parts, mostly continuing the themes of the original movies - exploring ape society, the results of nuclear war etc. The problem is that the main theme of the movie - the addition of the race of humans with extraordinary mental powers just goes nowhere. While the end of the first movie was a shocker, the end of this one is just pointless. The movie ends up coming across as a rant against war, especially nuclear war with a ridiculous story tagged on as an afterthought.