Planet of the Apes is one of the most intelligent and most enduring works of popular science fiction cinema, a film that uses its extraordinary central premise to deliver a sustained critique of human arrogance, racial hierarchy, and the self-destructive logic of civilisation. Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film is not merely a genre landmark: it is a genuinely serious piece of speculative fiction that earns its famous ending through the careful establishment of everything that precedes it, and whose satirical intelligence has lost none of its force in the decades since its release.
At a Glance
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Runtime: 112 minutes
Starring: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore
Release: 1968
Critics Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars, a landmark of science fiction cinema)
Audience Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars, the definitive entry in the franchise)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Astronaut George Taylor crash-lands on a planet where apes are the dominant intelligent species and humans are mute, primitive animals hunted for sport and used for scientific experimentation. Captured and unable initially to communicate, Taylor must navigate an ape society rigidly stratified by species, with the intellectual chimpanzees, the militaristic gorillas, and the governing orangutans each occupying fixed social roles that the film uses to satirise human institutional structures with considerable precision. The screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, adapting Pierre Boulle's novel, is a model of science fiction world-building, establishing its rules with economy and following them with consistency while using the premise to deliver its satirical argument with a directness that never becomes didactic.
Characters
Charlton Heston's Taylor is the most deliberately ambiguous protagonist in the franchise, a man of considerable cynicism about humanity who discovers, through his experience on the ape planet, that his cynicism was both justified and insufficient. Heston's physical authority and his willingness to play Taylor's arrogance without softening it gives the character a complexity that the satirical argument requires. Roddy McDowall's Cornelius and Kim Hunter's Zira are the most sympathetic figures, chimpanzee scientists whose intellectual curiosity and genuine decency make them the moral centre and whose performances, delivered through John Chambers' groundbreaking prosthetic makeup, are models of physical expressiveness under considerable technical constraint. The casting of McDowall and Hunter as the most sympathetic characters, and the decision to render them through prosthetic makeup that requires the audience to read their performances through a significant physical barrier, is the most audacious creative choice and its most successful. Maurice Evans's Dr Zaius is the most complex antagonist, a character who knows the truth about human history and suppresses it not from malice but from a genuine, if misguided, conviction that the knowledge would destroy ape civilisation.
Tone
Schaffner pitches the picture at a register of serious speculative fiction rather than adventure entertainment, a tonal choice that gives the ape society's satirical dimensions genuine weight and that makes the more disturbing sequences, including Taylor's capture, his treatment as a laboratory animal, and the tribunal that condemns him, genuinely unsettling rather than merely dramatic. The visual design, from the barren alien landscape to the ape city's primitive grandeur, is consistently effective, and Jerry Goldsmith's score is one of cinema's great examples of avant-garde orchestral composition in service of popular filmmaking.
Meaning / Themes
The central concerns, the arbitrariness of hierarchies based on species or race, the institutional resistance to evidence that challenges established doctrine, and the capacity of intelligent beings to construct elaborate justifications for their own cruelty, are pursued with enough consistency and enough dramatic intelligence to give the picture a genuine philosophical dimension. The ape society's Sacred Scrolls, which forbid the acknowledgement of evidence that contradicts their account of creation, are the most pointed satirical target, and the tribunal sequence, in which Cornelius and Zira are prosecuted for heresy, is one of cinema's most effective dramatisations of institutional bad faith. The ending, which reveals that Taylor has been on Earth all along, transforms the satirical argument into a statement of genuine tragic force.
Direction
Schaffner's direction is assured and intelligent, maintaining the serious tonal register across a narrative that moves from survival thriller to courtroom drama to revelation with a coherence that lesser filmmakers would not have achieved. His handling of the ape society's visual design gives the picture a world-building credibility that the premise requires, and his staging of the tribunal sequence demonstrates a command of dramatic space and institutional atmosphere that gives the scene its genuine menace. Goldsmith's score is the most extraordinary individual technical achievement, a work of compositional originality that gives the alien landscape a sonic identity as distinctive as its visual one.
Cultural Reception
Planet of the Apes received strong reviews on its release and was a major commercial success, grossing over $32 million worldwide against a modest budget and spawning four sequels, a television series, and multiple subsequent franchise iterations. It is now regarded as one of the landmark films of American science fiction cinema, a work whose satirical intelligence and tragic ending have secured its place in the cultural canon. Its influence on subsequent science fiction filmmaking is considerable, and its final image remains one of cinema's most recognisable and most emotionally powerful individual moments.
Who Should Watch
Anyone with an interest in the history of science fiction cinema, and anyone who wants to understand how popular filmmaking can engage with serious ideas without sacrificing entertainment value. Planet of the Apes is a film that rewards repeated viewing, revealing new dimensions of its satirical argument with each encounter, and its famous ending retains its power even for viewers who know it in advance.
Final Verdict: A landmark of science fiction cinema and one of the most intelligent popular films of its era. Its satirical argument about human arrogance and institutional self-deception is pursued with a consistency and a dramatic intelligence that give the picture a genuine philosophical dimension, and its ending remains one of cinema's great moments of tragic revelation. The performances, delivered through groundbreaking prosthetic makeup, are models of physical expressiveness, and Goldsmith's score is a work of compositional originality. It is the definitive entry in the franchise and one of the great popular films of the twentieth century.
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