think they were taken in by the plot twist for all the wrong reasons?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Planet of the Apes
anonymous1234 — 11 years ago(September 12, 2014 01:28 AM)
think they were taken in by the plot twist for all the wrong reasons?
I was born in the 80's and I just saw this movie for the first time a few days ago. Given the fame of this movie I was well aware of this movies plot twist but didn't know how the movie got there.
I see this has actually been discussed to death, but I couldn't really get over how unfazed the main character was by the presence of grass, trees, horses, humans, apes, and the English language. I'd much sooner believe an alien culture built an exact replica of the Statue of Liberty by shear coincidence than everything he was attributing to it.
I know this probably worked better in the 60's when it was common to simply have the aliens speak English and have the supposedly alien worlds look like Earth.
I remember seeing episodes of the original Star Trek where the crew landed on a planet inhabited by Native Americans or Ancient Romans and the audience wasn't supposed to question what they were seeing. I remember seeing one episode where they find a planet with two warring factions called the "Yangs" and the "Chins" or something (this was a long time ago, my memory is very sketchy - don't quote me on this!). After learning the Yangs worshiped an ancient document that was an exact copy of the U.S. Constitution, the crew realized "Yang" must be a modification on "yankee" and "Chin" are "Chinese". I expected the crew to have a serious discussion about how this is even possible, but I was surprised to see that they just accepted it without question.
I guess, back then film makers thought creating alien worlds was beside the point. But doesn't that mean you were taken in by the plot twist for all the wrong reasons? These facsimiles of Earth are supposed to be stand-ins for alien worlds, but in this case it was quite literal. Did anyone who saw this movie when it was new think something along the lines: "You mean I
wasn't
supposed to imagine a more fantastical world? The main character saw what I saw and still didn't realize he was on Earth?" -
wears-alan — 11 years ago(September 12, 2014 12:59 PM)
Yangs (Yanks) and Comms (Communists)
I think Taylor was supposed to have seen the planet as being similar to Earth with the exception of the Apes evolving intellectually rather than the humans. You have to remember that it was widely believed that there were Earth-like planets just waiting to be discovered back in the 60's. As for the language, other posters have mentioned that originally (like the book) the Apes were going to have their own language. This idea was dropped though.
It wasnt me, it was the other three. Hang them! -
haristas — 11 years ago(September 13, 2014 07:22 AM)
Having the apes speaking there own language and showing Taylor laboriously learning it just would have slowed the film down and, ironically, worked against the suspension of disbelief. All it would have gotten the movie in the long run is decades of complaint about how boring the section of it is where Taylor has to learn "Ape Speak." You want to get some of that, go read Pierre Boulle's original novel.
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Fletcherj119 — 11 years ago(September 14, 2014 02:18 AM)
In the novel the apes lived on a different planet, so naturally they spoke a different language. The apes in this movie patterned their culture after 20th century America. So naturally they would speak English.
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whynotwriteme — 11 years ago(September 14, 2014 02:29 PM)
But in 2000 years you would expect the language to have changed considerably. American English has had considerable changes even since the mid-20th century. Go back and read correspondence and newspaper articles from the 1940s and 50s. Even if they were written and aimed at average, run-of-the-mill people, they sound much more articulate and coherent than what passes for communication and journalism today.
Going even farther backwards, look at the form of English spoken back in the Dark Ages 1000 years ago and compare it to today. You can read Beowulf in the original Old English for an example. Then multiply those changes by 2 as the Ape world is 2000 years in the future. That is not even mentioning the differences that would be caused by the brains and vocal chords of Apes as the new speakers of the language.
Ape English of 2000 years hence would be incomprehensible to a 20th century American human.
But I agree that the movie did not treat it this way due to convenience. It really does not bother me that the Apes speak 20th century English. If you worry about that, I am surprised you can even get over the premise that Apes are speaking at all. -
haristas — 11 years ago(September 15, 2014 08:45 AM)
Charlton Heston wrote that there were discussions about this, so the filmmakers did consider it (having the apes speak their own language), but in the end it was decided to go the way they did, and it certainly hasn't hurt the movie, still as popular today as it was in '68.
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Rockhound6165 — 11 years ago(October 30, 2014 06:56 PM)
Going even farther backwards, look at the form of English spoken back in the Dark Ages 1000 years ago and compare it to today. You can read Beowulf in the original Old English for an example.
However, from the time of Chaucer to Shakespeare English changed quite a bit and that is within a couple of hundred years. However, from Shakespeare to now, with the exception of some idioms and slang, English hasn't changed all that much. Not saying you're wrong but I really don't see English changing all that much. I mean, Greek hasn't changed all that much from the time of Socrates. -
AnaElisa — 10 years ago(September 08, 2015 03:43 PM)
I, too, saw this movie when it was first releasedand, had heard nothing about any kind of a surprise ending. I was watching this at a local drive-in (they showed first-run films, how cool was that?) with a group of friends.
No, we had no issues about English being spoken, becausewe were too blown away by the amazing ending!
(One of many good times living the the SF Bay Area in the 60's.)
-AnaElisa -
discowhale — 11 years ago(October 26, 2014 11:54 AM)
anon,
I saw this at 14 y/o, I'd read the book, and the simplest answer is this.
We used to do this crazy thing, where we went to the movies, we unhinged our reality, and we enjoyed the story, FOR the story. We didn't dissect, split, and in general, critique movies the way people do now.
In the entire country, there were a dozen or so, well known, syndicated movie reviewers. The local newspapers and TV stations sometimes had reviewers, but it was NOT their prime or singular duty. Now, with the internet and blogs and smart phones, EVERYONE is a reviewer / critic.
Just as as I couldn't imagine my parents NOT going crazy when "The Wizard of Oz" came out [it's a movie I love BTW], you have no point of view for 'why' we didn't pick POTA apart and question the obvious holes in the story line.
Schteveo -
thetheeyecreature — 10 years ago(April 29, 2015 07:59 AM)
There's no getting around it the movie makes no logical sense (for many reasons). Yet I love it. That's something Rod Serling was great at. He wasn't scientifically knowledgeable enough to do rigorous, plausible hard science fiction, so what he did instead was make a story that works so well as a dramatic fable that the viewer just accepts its crazy reality.
"The truth 24 times a second." -
laplante-co-672-297856 — 10 years ago(August 04, 2015 08:44 AM)
"I see this has actually been discussed to death, but I couldn't really get over how unfazed the main character was by the presence of grass, trees, horses, humans, apes, and the English language."
Late to this thread and this has probably been explained to death already but
in the 60s it was quite common for sci-fi shows to use English as a 'universal' language for the sake of the story.
Watch Lost in Space. Or Land of the Giants on TV. Numerous episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits
Almost every movie about aliens also had them speak in English, often in a sort of pseudo-Shakespearean sounding way.
Star Trek was probably the first attempt to 'explain' how/why English was universal in their universe. -
trollomatic — 9 years ago(April 10, 2016 02:56 PM)
in the 60s it was quite common for sci-fi shows to use English as a 'universal' language for the sake of the story.
Watch Lost in Space
and yet, even that had some episodes where the Robinsons couldn't understand the languages of the aliens. At all.
And also ones where the Robot had to translate for them.
Although most of the episodes did have the aliens speaking English.