Another Pass at Battle for the Planet of the Apes

As we approach our 150th episode, we’re taking a look back at the original Planet of the Apes series, and what better way to handle a series rich with time travel shenanigans than to take them in reverse order? That’s right! We’re starting with the oft dismissed and forgotten: Battle For The Planet Of The Apes!

Seth Decker from the Film Rescue podcast joins us to combine our editorial voices to proudly proclaim that APE SHALL NEVER KILL APE (until they do)!

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Meeting summary:

●      The meeting focused on discussing the movie "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" within the franchise, including themes of equality and anti-war sentiment, character analysis, and potential improvements. Special effects in Tim Burton's movie were praised, and there were discussions on continuity issues, the significance of the Lawgiver character, and potential pitches for enhancements. Action items include further analyzing the Tim Burton and Beneath movies, inviting Seth Decker for future episodes, and preparing a pitch for an animated version of the movie.

Notes:

●      🎬 Tim Burton and Beneath Movies (00:00 - 01:04)

●      Discussion on Tim Burton and Beneath movies as the least favorite but interesting entries.

●      Special effects in Tim Burton's movie praised.

●      Introduction to the podcast and hosts.

●      🦧 Planet of the Apes Franchise Overview (01:04 - 02:04)

●      Introduction to the Planet of the Apes franchise.

●      Discussion on the fifth movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

●      Guest introduction: Seth Decker.

●      Seth's background and current projects.

●      🔄 Themes and Continuity (22:33 - 37:13)

●      Discussion on the themes of equality, anti-war sentiment, and the destruction of war.

●      Recast of MacDonald and its impact.

●      Continuity issues and timeline discussions.

●      Foreknowledge and its impact on Caesar.

●      👑 Character Analysis (37:13 - 54:21)

●      Character analysis of Caesar and his leadership.

●      Role of Mandemus as Caesar's conscience.

●      Virgil's role and potential sinister motives.

●      General Aldo's character and motivations.

●      📜 Lawgiver and Ending (54:21 - 01:22:23)

●      Significance of the Lawgiver character.

●      Ambiguity of the ending and its implications.

●      Comparison with the original novel and other Sci-Fi influences.

●      Discussion on the 'no' rule in ape society.

●      🎨 Pitching Improvements (01:22:23 - 02:20:40)

●      Sam's pitch for a more political and conniving General Aldo.

●      Seth's pitch for a longer timeline and focus on societal integration.

●      Case's pitch for a more sinister Virgil and a more primitive ape society.

●      Discussion on the potential for an animated version.

Transcription

00:00
Case Aiken
So the Tim Burton one battle and beneath are tied for me for, like, the last place, and they each have something interesting going on for them that prevents them from being, like, fully written off as a movie. Like the Tim Burton one, the special effects are incredible.

00:14
Seth
Next level. Insane. Yeah. That movie looks so good.

00:17
Case Aiken
Yeah. I just can't get over it. It's the only one that really sells with a prosthetics perspective how big the gorillas are relative to everyone else. That's so incredible. The face work is incredible. The fact that they do really good stuff with, like, appendages and so forth.

00:31
Seth
I mean, it helped that they put prosthetics on Michael Duncan, who's a giant.

00:37
Case Aiken
Yes. A choice that I'm like, why is this the first time we're thinking about?

00:41
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

00:42
Case Aiken
Like, if the gorillas are supposed to.

00:43
Seth
Be huge, Lou Ferrigno was doing stuff back then. He could have been a gorilla.

00:49
Case Aiken
Welcome to certain POV's another pass podcast with case and Sam, where we take another look at movies that we find fascinating but flawed. Let's see how we could have fixed them. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my coast, Sam, Alizea.

01:07
Sam
Hi.

01:08
Case Aiken
And today we are traveling forward and backwards through time in a. In a circle. It's a bit. It's a big wheel.

01:16
Sam
It's the best wheel.

01:17
Case Aiken
It's. It's the. Is it the best wheel? I don't even know.

01:19
Sam
It's a banana wheel.

01:21
Case Aiken
Sure. Today we are starting our conversation about the planet of the apes movies, and we're doing that reverse. Today we are talking about the battle for the planet of the apes. And to have that conversation, we twisted the arm of Seth Decker.

01:41
Sam
Yeah. We threatened him with some large primates.

01:47
Seth
The Aldo hit squad popped by my house, and I had no choice.

01:51
Sam
General Aldo, general auto.

01:53
Case Aiken
Yes, general. General Seth, I am so glad to finally get you on. We've been sort of podcast adjacent for a long time and finally got a chance to meet over the summer, and I'm glad we have you on today.

02:04
Seth
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, first of all, for having me here. It's been. It's been kind of funny to be, like, ships passing in the night, like, seeing each other's podcasts on social media. And now to be like, all right, it's time to combine. We can cross these lanes. We're making a chaotic swerve into one of the lanes of time. You know, there was a lane where we didn't meet up.

02:23
Case Aiken
No, no. Quantum realities have split off because we made the choice to hang back 30 seconds. We have survived and together are on this call.

02:32
Sam
And who knows what terrible things will befall us because of it.

02:36
Case Aiken
Yeah. But for listeners who aren't familiar with any of the stuff that you're working on. Seth, who are you?

02:42
Seth
Hey. Yeah, so, I am a Maryland writer, director, and podcaster. I kind of take my free time away from my job editing to work on music videos and short films, and I'm currently in production or trying to get production going on my first feature film, which case you are one of our beloved benefactors of. You even got to show up to set for some of our first days of footage. Yeah. So that's what I do. I make movies, and I like to talk about movies professionally.

03:14
Case Aiken
You have had your podcast, film rescue, which is very similar to ours.

03:19
Seth
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how parallel thinking works. Like, I saw the. I saw the opportunity, and then as I looked for other podcasts, I think we launched our podcast within a couple months of each other, too, probably. So there was no way to, like, cross it over. It was just like, we both thought it might be fun to look at old movies and see what we would pitch instead. Easy, fun premise. Like, I would go as far as to congratulate you on having the idea, because I feel smarter myself.

03:48
Case Aiken
I think the craziest part, though, is, as you mentioned, you're a Maryland person. We're actually, like, not that far. We live, like, 30 minutes from each other.

03:55
Seth
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It was so funny when you had donated to the indiegogo, and I sent you an email, and you were like, oh, yeah, I'm, like, 20 minutes away. I was like, what? How does this happen? Cause we'd met through somebody, I think.

04:08
Case Aiken
That lives in friend of the pod shady.

04:10
Seth
Like, how does that happen?

04:11
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. Just wild. It was like, oh, I love it. Well, I go there for coffee. I go there for coffee. We could meet for coffee.

04:19
Seth
And, Sam, it's wonderful to meet you. Thank you for having me.

04:23
Sam
Yeah, we're so excited. I cannot wait to talk about this movie. I can't wait to hear all your thoughts on this movie. And I can't wait to hear your pitches, because I feel like I have a pitch, but it is. I'm sure both of you are going to have much better case. Always has a very prepared pitch. And so I feel like maybe today I'll go first. I feel like you'll both beat me.

04:44
Case Aiken
Well, let's talk a minute about what we're doing here and then the franchise in general. So it's been a while since we've taken on a full franchise. So we are doing the Planet of the Apes movies, the original ones, and we are going in reverse order. So today we are talking about the fifth Planet of the Apes movies and discussing what we would do assuming that the first four came out and you're kind of stuck with all the production behind the scenes stuff that was required of you at this point. It's been a while since we've done that. Our big one was we did the Star wars movies in reverse, and I'm excited to talk about this one because, just, like, I love this franchise so much, it's one of my favorites.

05:26
Seth
Me, too. Yeah. So my dad is really into old westerns, old filmmaking. Something that he introduced me to at a young age was the original planet of the Apes film, and just, he was enthralled by how lifelike the masks were to him as a kid and showing them to me. I was also just like, how are they doing this? And so from a really young age, I was really latched into practical effects, and that's something that's lasted through to this day. But this movie series is like the origin of me looking at things like this and going, like, how would you do that? Like, if I wanted to make a monkey mask, could I do that? It was early formative stuff. Yeah. Really, really important series to me.

06:13
Seth
And then for the remakes to be as good as they have been, I feel really, like, spoiled for riches at this point. The remakes have been insanely good, too. And so I'm like, I mean, you got some goofy ones. You got some good ones. You got some big budget modern blockbuster versions. You've got old, slower. Everything is in this series. Everything.

06:37
Case Aiken
Yeah. I mean, eventually we're going to talk about escape, but, like, you get. You get into, like, your seventies slice of life comedy at some point in this franchise.

06:43
Seth
Exactly.

06:44
Case Aiken
All right, cool.

06:45
Sam
It's amazing. It's amazing.

06:46
Case Aiken
Yeah. You mentioned the remakes that have come out. I wouldn't really consider them remakes so much as the other points on the fractured timeline that this weird time travel eight movie, because, like, I have a head cannon that makes this whole thing work really well. Like, the eight. Like, obviously, you have to throw out the Tim Burton movie because that's just not part of anything.

07:09
Sam
It was a. Tim Burton is so red right now. I would like the listeners to know that, like, to describe that he is getting read with embarrassment and explaining why he's throwing away the Tim Burton movie. Go on.

07:21
Case Aiken
I mean, the Tim Burton one was one of our first episodes of the show.

07:24
Seth
Oh, wow.

07:25
Case Aiken
So listeners should go back and check that one out, because it was a really fun conversation with Jeff Moon and talking about that, because the. The show launched around the time that war for the Planet of the Apes came out. So it made sense to do an episode at the time that was, like, kind of coming out. Yeah, absolutely. But the Tim Burton one, it just feels like the smattering of here's all these ideas that go into the franchise, whereas if you look at the Andy Serkis ones, they actually fit from a perspective for all of. As part of this whole weird time travel story, because in rise, there's a point where. Or actually several points in the background where they talk about the Icarus shuttle, that they've lost contact with it and so forth.

08:03
Case Aiken
So you can see that as, like, the actual starting point of the timeline. And then you go through those movies, then you go to the original planet the Apes movies, which is set in the future, and then you've got two movies set in that future timeline, and then you have apes from the future go back in time, and that creates a splintered timeline, but it also, by, like, one of the weird, like, continuity snarls of the original Planet of the Ace movies was like, all right, so Cornelius. Cornelius and Zira come back in time, and they have a baby. And that explains why that there is a super smart ape in our time, but it doesn't explain why, by the time you get to battle, everyone can fucking talk when it's only, like, 30 years in the future.

08:39
Case Aiken
It's like our past for us right now. But it works if you understand that all the apes in the future had a virus that was causing them to become super intelligent. So the baby coming back and being around apes would actually make them all smarter over time.

08:54
Seth
Interesting.

08:55
Sam
Right? That makes sense, because he would spread that virus.

08:58
Case Aiken
And I think my one regret of the modern planet of the ace movies is that they don't have a note at some point that all the dogs and cats die by virtue of the virus that makes the apes smart, because I think that would perfectly, like, cement all the things together, because we know that virus happens between escape and conquest, where all the dogs and cats die. And all of a sudden, the apes are smart enough, at least, to be slaves. You know, they start, you know, coming close to talking. One kind of talks at the end. You know, you get. You get there, and then you get to this movie, and they're all fucking talking.

09:28
Seth
Yeah.

09:28
Sam
Yeah.

09:29
Seth
That's really interesting. I don't. I don't understand why that would undo the need for the Tim Burton one to be, like a. Just a spin off.

09:37
Case Aiken
I mean, it could just be some weird offshoot, like, yeah, like, way off out there, like in space. Oh, the apes are getting smarter. Why is that? Oh, well, I guess a monkey traveled back in time and exposed us all to mind advancing viruses, and that's all that. But it does feel like it's so separate.

09:53
Seth
Yeah, yeah. I don't. I don't. I want it to be in the orbit. I want it to be like, you know, a planet x that can swing in through the solar system for it's still, like.

10:02
Case Aiken
So the Tim Burton one battle and beneath are tied for me for, like, the last place, and they each have something interesting going on for them that prevents them from being, like, fully written off as a movie. Like the Tim Burton one, the special effects are incredible. Like that.

10:16
Seth
Next. Insane. Yeah. That movie looks so good.

10:19
Case Aiken
Yeah. Like. Like, you just. I just can't get over it. Like, it's the only one that really sells with a prosthetics perspective how big the gorillas are relative to everyone else.

10:28
Sam
Right.

10:29
Case Aiken
That's so incredible. The face work is incredible. The fact that they do really good stuff with, like, appendages and so, I.

10:34
Seth
Mean, it helped that they put prosthetics on Michael Duncan, who's a giant.

10:40
Case Aiken
Yes. A choice that I'm like, why is this the first time we're thinking?

10:43
Seth
Right. Yeah.

10:45
Case Aiken
Like, if the gorillas are supposed to.

10:46
Seth
Be huge, Lou Ferrigno was doing stuff back then. He could been a gorilla.

10:49
Case Aiken
Well, like. Like, especially for the Planet of the Ace movies. Like, why not just cast giant people and dub it? Because, like, it's not like you can't. Like, it's not like you're getting the audio from them in the performance.

10:59
Sam
Right. Yeah.

11:01
Case Aiken
Like, you're definitely dubbing at least a sizable amount of these because the prosthetics just make it difficult to talk.

11:05
Seth
Yeah, exactly.

11:07
Case Aiken
So cast fucking basketball players.

11:09
Sam
It's an excellent point. Yeah. Never even thought about that. You're right. It's mostly dubs. Go on.

11:15
Case Aiken
Like, pull a predator too. Hire the basketball team to come out, like, every time you need a couple shots where gorillas are standing next to anyone, and then just roll with that.

11:24
Seth
Right. Yeah, exactly.

11:25
Case Aiken
But, so, yeah, so Tim Burton. The special effects are incredible, but the plot is nonsense, and all the dynamics are just weird and funky. Beneath has its issues, and we'll talk about beneath a lot when we get to it. But it was just always doomed to be the sequel to Planet of the Apes. Like, you know, like, where do you go from that first one? I don't know, man. Like, what about fucking mutants?

11:48
Sam
It's the logical next step. What are you talking about?

11:50
Seth
Well, and it's. Yeah, it's not unheard of because, like, the Jules Verne stories, you know.

11:57
Sam
Oh, yeah. Like, the center of the earth.

12:00
Seth
Journey to the center of the earth.

12:01
Sam
Journey to the center of the earth. That's it.

12:02
Seth
The time machine. Like, you've got, you know, you're kind of future people messing with monkey people in that. Like, there's a lot of Sci-Fi crossover bake in Planet of the Apes, just across. Like, this movie, if you stop and look at it sideways, is kind of dune. It's a little bit Dune. There's a lot of dune in here.

12:25
Case Aiken
Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about that today. Yeah.

12:27
Sam
There's a lot of political intrigue.

12:29
Seth
Yeah. And not to spoil my pitch too much, I would lean into that more if that. If that's really where you want to go with this, I would lean into that a little bit more. It, like, the stuff that I like in battle is. Is the political stuff. And. And to know what. What has come before in the previous four movies, like, that, the just absolute separation of genre throughout. I think it's kind of. This feels like a whole thought, like, this. This movie, when we talked about initially case, when I. When I brought up, like, wanting to do this one, the reason for it was compared to all but the original. I think this is the tightest, like, summation of all the ideas that had zeitgeisted into Planet of the apes at that point. Like, every.

13:18
Seth
This is kind of everything it could be at that time.

13:21
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, and it knew it was the last movie, like, going into production, they were very explicit. This is going to be our last one. Because, like, first, Planet of the Apes did well. They got a sequel together in two years. And then they were like, okay, well, the second one did well enough. We're gonna get a sequel together. But from that point on, each of them had, like, kind of an idea for a sequel in it. Like, there's a little bit, like, there's a super strong sequel hook between escape and conquest.

13:44
Seth
Yeah, yeah.

13:44
Case Aiken
And then conquest. The test audiences hated the original ending where the apes murder everyone and they force, like, what is the most awkward, like, dub. Like, they don't do reshoots. They just zoom in on Caesar's eyes where he clearly is not saying the words he's saying. And they, like, introduce this idea of, like, of compassion.

14:03
Seth
We might be human, but we can. Can be humane, right?

14:08
Case Aiken
An expression that they. They bring up a lot in this one, especially in the extended cut. But, like, I think that's an interesting idea. And that actually prompts a question I have about this movie, which is that is this movie breaking the wheel? Like the. I think that there's an interpretation of this movie with, like, the tear of Caesar, like the statue of Caesar at the end, that humanity and ape are going to split apart eventually and that things will go to the planet of the Apes, that we are in a fixed loop of time travel. But again, if you allow for a headcanon where the Andy Serkis movies are setting up the original timeline, that creates it, that it's not a fixed loop.

14:47
Case Aiken
Like, is this a scenario where Caesar, by way of actually having foreknowledge of the future, has established a society that will break away from that cycle of oppression and slavery and so forth? There is the chance at the end because we see a future. Not the far future, but we see a point where humanity is still at peace with ape. And when you watch this movie, do you feel like we are doomed to get to the point where Charlton Heston, as Taylor, is going to destroy the world?

15:21
Sam
I think it's interesting that you saw the tear that way because I kind of saw it as one tear of joy for, like, a reality where his dream was partially realized, where people are there or people in apes are standing there listening to lore. And it's interesting that you went, does this mean it'll all be doomed?

15:43
Case Aiken
Well, that's actually the thing. I didn't take it that way. But the production staff has said that's what it was supposed to mean. And I was like, oh, that's not how I read that.

15:54
Seth
See, I I read that it does not break the wheel. And I think Virgil's lines about time travel at the beginning about. Because he suggests the bootstrap paradox, right? Where he's like, if you play something in one city, travel back in time to hear it in another city, which I don't know why they needed to add that part in. I guess it was for the distance of the equation, but it didn't matter. But, yeah, if you hear yourself play it, decide you didn't like it, and then don't play, how did you hear yourself play in the first place? I think that is a line in the movie to suggest the movie believes that this is not something that can be changed.

16:35
Seth
Like, it all, it has to happen that way to allow for Heston to make it around the loop at this point, because they don't know about the future movies for Heston to be able to make it around the loop. They're just suggesting that, like, yeah, unless the bad shit happens, we don't get to the point where we can loop things back around and try over again. I guess that's my read based, because he's a good character relaying it and he's never wrong in the movie. So I think the movie is suggesting we have to take it seriously. I'm not sure if I personally agree with that read based on the content of the film, but if the. If the film is insisting that this all will go to shit eventually anyways, then I will just accept that.

17:20
Sam
Yeah, I feel like, although the production team may have felt that, I don't feel that the end that they gave us fully implies that. I don't think that the tear is enough to imply that. And I think that, like all good art, it's really up to your interpretation. So I'm going to choose that it broke the time wheel and that everyone is happy now, at least in that little sliver of time. Because the thing is that even if you change time, it's only true right where you changed it, you know, it's. The timelines are not going to be here. We are having a really deep conversation. Planet ape and timelines. But let's just say it like the timelines, it's only going to be that way. And maybe the tier, you could interpret the tear then, like it's a tear for the other timelines.

18:04
Sam
It's the tier for unrealized dreams. The tier can symbolize multitude of things. But yeah, I mean, I kind of like my positive read and I'm keeping it. It broke the gosh darn wheel.

18:19
Case Aiken
Yeah, I just think it's interesting that we can get to that place here with this movie. You know, like, I think the assertion that the wheel is fixed fits with like the original novel, like the Pierre Bla. The monkey planet, or how, you know, I mean, it's the planet of thieves, but wherein it's not Earth necessarily. That is all of a sudden ape. Or like, there's multiple permutations of it. Basically the assertion is that all societies eventually will just have apes take over because they're just doing monkey see, monkey do, because humanity is inevitably doomed to destroy itself and be replaced. That was sort of the assertion that people suck. And eventually the only thing that's going to live on from us are things copying us without actually innovating.

19:05
Seth
And again, Dune is a very direct Sci-Fi influence on this stuff. And that is Dune's take as well. The self fulfilling prophecies. Just because you know the future doesn't mean you're able to change anything. And it's about enjoying the journey while you're in it. And I think that's why I have such a hard time accepting that they ended up in a good timeline.

19:29
Case Aiken
I mean, again, I think it's just sort of an interesting element of it. And like the. It's like a tease at the end that's meant to sort of be like, okay, well, maybe things are better, but also maybe things aren't. And it's up to you as the audience to sort of go with it. I think that it works better as, like, breaking of the wheel knowing that there are then three movies that sort of set up like, here's what the original timeline could have been. And I think that sort of makes it a more interesting. What? Fuck. Five decade long, like, epic of a movie series.

19:59
Sam
Yeah.

20:02
Seth
I would love to get into themes of this movie.

20:04
Case Aiken
Yeah, let's talk about this movie specifically because were talking about the franchise, but there's a lot going on in a very short runtime.

20:13
Seth
Yeah, yeah. A big aspect that I really enjoy is the gift of foreknowledge given to Caesar. Like, especially his ability to, like, communicate with his parents. Kind of has, like, a old kryptonian feel to it. Like they're trying to introduce some, like, really cool Sci-Fi elements that were meant to be reflections of culture at the time. Right. So I'm. My take on this movie is that they've kind of classified the ape structure, right. To give us, like, the. The intellectual orangutans and your everyman chimpanzees and your blue collar gorillas. And the movie tries to explore the. The class politics within, I guess, is kind of what I'm taking that it's running after and having it come out in 1973. I'm trying to think about the world at that time and, like, what. What it is the movie's trying to say.

21:18
Seth
I feel like it's trying to satirize something. I feel like it wants to satirize something. I think it maybe ends a minute early to land on anything. But I really. I like that it seems to be a reflection of maybe classism at that time. But I'm curious how it struck you guys. The themes within what were you getting out of it?

21:39
Sam
Yeah, there are a lot of underlining themes. There's theme of equality, not just between classes, but even racism. You have. Oh, God. Names the human that is closest to Caesar, who helps him, whose name is escaping. Thank you. MacDonald is a black man, and this is a black man. And he numerous times says to Caesar, like, we need to be equal. We need not to be slaves. Like, we need not to be your servants. Like, numerous times. So you have McDonald kind of always saying this and kind of introducing this. And I am sure it was not lost to the audience in 1973 that this was a black man on screen saying these words asking for equality. You've also got a lot of, like, anti war sentiment in this film.

22:33
Sam
If anyone knows what was going on in the seventies, you'll understand how that definitely struck people. You know, the destruction of war, the aftermath of nuclear fallout. You've also got, you know, it was not just like anti war, but like, the idea that you want to destroy the weapons of war so that you can't continue to make the same mistakes is something that struck me really hard. Like, it wasn't just like, okay, we've got everything back and we're going to stockpile it. Like, it's like, no, we're going to destroy this so that. That we as apes and as human are no longer tempted to continue to make the same mistake.

23:13
Seth
Right.

23:14
Sam
Because both of us are capable of making those same mistakes and embracing this violence and this urge for power and being unhumane. Right. Not fitting into a more compassionate kind of world. And so you hit all of those points. And even in the underground city with the humans, one of the humans say, well, actually, I think they only used their weapons in defense. Like, I think they probably came in peace. Like, maybe we should talk.

23:49
Seth
Yeah.

23:49
Sam
And the leader of the humans who knew Caesar when he was a little ape. I don't know why I had to say it that way. I'm sorry. And. But, like, what if he knew him when he was a wee ape? He was just like. He was like, no, he's a monster and he's. He's animal. And I'll always, you know, and so.

24:08
Seth
Right.

24:08
Sam
That prejudice right there. So there's, like, very strong underlining themes. There's a lot of them in there, but they all fit the time.

24:16
Seth
And that. That scene specifically that you're talking about is intercut with Caesar talking to his wife, and she's telling him. I don't know. Maybe they were right to attack you. You were trespassing. Maybe, like, you're not as innocent as you feel like you are. How do you really know that? They're mad mutants. I love that. That you're getting those, like, side by side to each other, like, these. These secondary people, the people that are supposed to be protected. That's the role that they're both filling, and then their leaders are both in the wrong and not hearing it. And that's a really interesting segment within the film to just, like, exactly what they're trying to highlight there. It's got almost, like, a pre south park edge to it, of, like, yeah, okay.

24:58
Seth
But just cause you're smart doesn't mean that you're also not fucking up over there. Caesar.

25:03
Sam
Yeah. Which. That's one of the most interesting things about this film. And it kind of gets drowned out with some not interesting gunfights and things like that. But they do have a really good. They do have a good way of, like, everyone in this film. No one is quite innocent in anything they do. Like, even. Even Caesar's child, who, unfortunately, spoil alert for something that's super old, dies. He was sneaking around. He wasn't supposed to be out. He was climbing trees. He was spying on people. He was eavesdropping. I mean, did he deserve what he got? No. Absolutely not. But no one in this film was actually, like, all the way innocent. Like, everyone had, like, a depth of, like, little gray areas. It was really lovely.

25:50
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. I mean, especially if thinking about culp and his relationship with Caesar, like, anyone who saw Caesar on the night of the fires, like, any human who saw Caesar on of the fires, I should say, is gonna be scared of him.

26:03
Seth
Yeah, yeah.

26:04
Sam
That's fair.

26:04
Case Aiken
Like, the end scene of Conquest is a terrifying scene. You know? Like, it may have been defanged a little bit, but it's still a chimpanzee talking about taking over the world from humanity with an entire city on fire behind him. And, like, that. Like, Caesar has this hubris at the beginning that ape cannot be as bad as. I think that's one of the strong themes there, where he just assumes that because he has seen the mistakes of someone before him, that they won't make new mistakes or make the same mistakes. And it becomes very clear that is not the case once we start dealing with Aldo. And even with the way how Caesar handles the mutants when he's encountering General Aldo.

26:47
Sam
General.

26:48
Case Aiken
Sorry. Sorry, general.

26:50
Sam
I think that's part of the issue. Maybe if people just called him what he'd like to be called.

26:53
Seth
Right.

26:54
Sam
Maybe he would have felt a little more respected.

26:56
Seth
Did he earn that rank, though? That's really my question.

26:59
Sam
Well, okay, so, like.

27:01
Case Aiken
No, definitely not. I took this like a. Like, it's a. Like any of these, like, sort. I really. So the hard part about talking about planet the ace movies is that there are real world examples that they're drawing on. But if you say it out loud, it feels a little racist to, like, make a comparison. It feels like a lot of, like, post colonial Africa, a lot of the scramble to, like, take titles for political reasons. But, like, I really don't like making a comparison between, like, a black general and a girl. Like, that feels really uncomfortable.

27:36
Seth
No. So I've had that thought along with this series as well whenever I talk about it to people. And the thing that I landed on was these movies existed pre intersectionality. And I don't think these movies understood that they were touching more than these, like, topical race class things. They didn't know that they were kind of going a little deeper into intersectionality about how all of this is connected to capitalist, warlike systems. It was meant broader. And because we have more context now, it's, I think, a little harsh to apply our intersectionality to this because they didn't understand that, like, kind of webbing of things. Yeah, it just gets really ugly to talk about as you pull back different layers as things could be connected and definitely are in certain circumstances.

28:32
Seth
But we're dissecting art from the seventies, which were not adults in, and so understanding what they were going for. Yeah, it gets ugly to talk about. Yeah, it gets. Cause they hadn't pulled everything apart yet. Yeah, yeah.

28:47
Case Aiken
I mean, like, there was sensitivity to it in the first minute of the apes. Apparently there was a whole issue where they didn't wanna hire any black stuntmen for any of the April's because they didn't want to get in trouble on that side of things. So, like, there. There was sensitivity, and I, like, I think that there was thought put into it, but, like, just the language has evolved so much.

29:04
Seth
Yeah, yeah.

29:05
Sam
And the way that we describe things, I think also. I think you're probably right. Like, he probably didn't deserve it, but I think that when I saw it as this, I actually didn't think the teacher was that great of a teacher.

29:16
Seth
Also true.

29:17
Sam
Like, he was belittling him a little too much.

29:19
Seth
Also true.

29:20
Sam
And like, I was just like, bro, like, you didn't have to mock him. In front of the class, like, oh, that's a good effort, general. Good job.

29:28
Seth
Yeah, right.

29:29
Sam
We need to work on this part of your a. But, wow, you're coming a long way. Like, a little reassurance. And I get it. It was the seventies, so teachers were more assholes. I asked my mom. She went to the school. Seventies. She'll back me up on that. But Mama Alyssia mom call into the show. So anyway, but no, but I think that at the end of the day, like, you know, he felt like he fought. He felt like he fought for their freedom and he felt like he deserved it. And I feel like, did he end up being a traitorous, murderous, ridiculous person who was frustrated with the fact that he wasn't good at reading and writing and all the peace stuff? Yeah, maybe if the teacher wasn't such a dick, he would have found for me. Okay, this is.

30:12
Sam
This is my problem, guys. I have a learning disability, and I tend to hate teachers that are really mean to students in movies. So this made me actually really, like, as someone with dyslexia and a couple other things, it made me kind of see something in generaldo, which. Scary. I know you got it.

30:32
Seth
You got a geared to him. No, yeah, I did.

30:34
Sam
Because I was just like, there's no reason to embarrass him. And some people are just not good at certain learning methods. And if you, as the teacher, can only teach one way, maybe that's on you. Yeah, maybe that's on you.

30:48
Seth
Maybe he didn't get a long enough dose of the virus to, like, you know.

30:53
Sam
Yeah, that's the other thing.

30:54
Seth
You had cannons helping out just all along the way here.

30:57
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah, the actual exposure.

30:59
Seth
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

30:59
Case Aiken
I mean, how old is Aldo supposed to be? Like, all, like, this is still only, like, 15 years after conquest. And, like, Aldous appears to be a fully grown adult, but he's also going to class. And I guess everyone is kind of. I guess the question across the board is, how old are any of them? How smart are any of them supposed to be? Like, why are they talking about physics, but also struggling to read like that? That's sort of the issue of this.

31:21
Sam
Aldo does seem. I'm sorry, General Aldo does seem a little bit older. I'm just going to use his preferred title and name because that's what he's asked for. That's respectful. So, General Aldo, he, like, definitely feels and seems older than a lot of the gorillas. He even feels, like, a little older than Caesar. So I'm wondering if even age, like, if we're going with cases head cannon.

31:47
Seth
Yeah.

31:47
Sam
If age has something to do with how that could affect them or develop, you know, into the skills that are needed, you know, he's like, why are we learning to do this? I should be riding horses. And it's like, well, I get it, bro. That sounds like a lot more fun than. Riding ape does not kill ape over and over again.

32:06
Seth
No. Yeah, like, what if. What if they're. The more, like, established the ape brain was before it got the virus, the more plastic. A younger brain would maybe be able to utilize the virus and grow the brain more than a hard set. Cause, like, a 15 year old gorilla would be a teenager to us, but he'd have a fully.

32:31
Case Aiken
But a full adult.

32:32
Seth
Full adult. So then you give him the virus, and it's like, okay, you made him as smart as a human child, but he still has the mental facilities of an adult at that point, so he's struggling with adult thoughts and kid processing. And as someone in therapy, I understand that. Am I becoming endeared to general Aldo now?

32:54
Sam
You're welcome.

32:55
Case Aiken
I think there's interesting comparisons to make in this movie in a way that we honestly don't even get enough of in the Matt Reeves Planet of the Apes movies, where we actually are starting to see the striations of classes based around sort of gravitating towards types of interest. It's represented in the Matt Reeves stuff by the gorillas are the guards, because they're the biggest ones. But the idea of all these gorillas enjoying riding horses, and that's a callback to the original because it's the gorillas rounding up the humans in that first scene. But, like, it also maps pretty well to, like, the rise of, like, a cavalier class or, like, you know, like a knightly order kind of thing.

33:31
Case Aiken
It maps really well to, like, you know, post western Roman Europe with, like, when we're talking about, like, the franks or anything like that, where it's like, oh, we're. We're creating like this. You know, what often is the nobles, which are the horse riders, like the, you know, like I said, the cavalry. Like that oftentimes is that specific subset, and they. Because they have, like, military prominence, like, take on, you know, more like a high. Like a higher role in society, and that's them sort of struggling for that. You know, it's interesting that the character is named, you know, General Aldo. Like, Aldo specifically is a name that has already shown up in the planet of the Apes movies at this point.

34:08
Case Aiken
It's the name that Cornelius, when he says, or when he gives the history of the planet of the apes in escape, where he explains that, like, oh, eventually an April led the rebellion and stood up to mankind. And that was Aldo. And I wonder if there is a conversation going on here about, is this someone who's going to be, like, a usurper king who then creates the society of violence? And is Caesar holding off what was the destined more draconian kind of ruler by way of existing by virtue of time paradox here?

34:42
Sam
I think the movie actually supports this because at some point, when he decides, when he comes down from his little ambush of the humans that did come in to shoot up their village, and he basically, like, lets everyone know that they're going to round stuff up and they're going to continue to, like, go on the warpath. He sits down in a chair that's very similar to a throne, and someone goes, you can't do this. That Caesar won't allow it. He's like, Caesar is no longer here, which is great, because there's roman, blah, blah, and we all know what happened to Caesar with Brutus and things like that, but it just. The way that he did it, the actor was kind of sitting on it like it was a throne.

35:24
Sam
So, like, there is an imagery of having Genera Aldo as a usurper king, like, in that moment. Yeah, definitely.

35:32
Case Aiken
So I think that's really just an interesting element. Like, this movie has way more interesting ideas than the actual execution.

35:38
Seth
Oh, absolutely.

35:39
Case Aiken
For every, like, this entire conversation, the budget's the biggest thing that's working against, like, they didn't. They couldn't shoot enough.

35:46
Sam
Yeah.

35:47
Case Aiken
And, like, I know that a lot of filmmakers today forget that it used to, like, just cost money to run film. Like, you could only shoot so much, and they would measure it in yards or feet. Like, that's. There's, like, the cost of just making a shot is expensive, let alone, like, you get into everything else. Like, there's so many cost cutting efforts throughout this whole thing, and some of them are smart and some of them frustrate me, but, like, you know that if this movie had the budget of the original, it, they could have at least done, like, a really interesting story, and the fights would have been interesting, and, like, everything would have, like, the sets would have been better.

36:19
Sam
Like, and the production value would have been better.

36:22
Case Aiken
Yeah. Production values hurt this movie more than just about anything.

36:24
Seth
Yeah.

36:25
Sam
The music was so boring. Like, I just remember thinking, like, they need, like, not this, because it's not that the music was bad, okay? Like, I just so much. Someone did compose it, whatever. But it's clearly, like, recycled. Like, it's clearly, like, patched together and it's very dry and that I forgot, you know, I did forget that they used to put credits at the beginning of, like, over, like, stuff. Like, while I was watching it. And for like, half a second I was like, wait, did I accidentally go to the end? I was like, no, no. Right? It's. It's the seventies. Nevermind.

36:57
Seth
It's an old movie.

37:00
Case Aiken
Sam, you brought up the character of MacDonald, and I wanted to talk about that character because I think that we lost out a lot by virtue of a recast from conquest to battle. It was supposed to be the same MacDonald character from that one, which was also a black man who had issues with the whole overliving in a slave society. Right now I feel really weird about this because I'm a black man.

37:23
Sam
Like, right.

37:24
Case Aiken
And at various points is like, I am the descendant of slaves. Like, they're very explicitly talking about, like, how, like, no, some people are very acutely aware that this is like, a bad thing that humanity, like, fell into and that probably that we're better. I mean, I don't know if better off being destroyed, but, like, wants to see the world, like, move away from those kind of patterns.

37:45
Sam
I mean, I think the movie series does believe that we're all better off being destroyed, but go on.

37:50
Case Aiken
Sure, but, well, but the thing is, so because they couldn't get the original actor Harry Rhodes back, they rewrote the part as being his younger brother, which is why there's like, these very awkward exposition bits where it's like, well, when my brother was doing this thing, he told me about all these things. Or when Colb is like, that's the younger brother of the man who was the assistant of my friend. I'm like, wow, you know a shitload about, like, family members for people who were like, your.

38:17
Seth
My brother was telling me about this video of you future apes that at his job. Okay, yeah, sure.

38:23
Sam
I once went to their family home barbecue. That's actually probably the only explanation, right?

38:30
Case Aiken
I mean, not that, like, I think he does a really good job.

38:33
Seth
Oh, yeah. From assault on precinct. Austin Stoker.

38:36
Case Aiken
Yeah, I think that Austin Stoker does a really good job with the part.

38:40
Sam
I do.

38:41
Case Aiken
And he would have. I think he would have also had been great if he had been the original cast. But it is an awkward recast point right here that I feel like they didn't do, like, him just being the fucking brother feels, like, so much more awkward than just, like, it's a different person. Like. Like, there's a little bit of exposition, but you could just say, I used to be the archivist. Like, you just didn't see me before, because it's a different thing. And, like, the relevant information he could just have because he worked there, but he just wasn't one of the main characters.

39:10
Case Aiken
Like, but we miss out on this, like, through line of a character who actually was, by virtue of being, like, just caught up in the inertia of the direction of society, got stuck in a situation where he realized all of a sudden, like, holy shit, I am overseeing a slave society. And, like. Like, I very much do not agree with this whole thing. And that's why he sides with Caesar at the end of conquest. And then he, you know, was supposed to be the right hand man or at least the representative of humanity in this movie. And, like, so we lose that element, and that's sucks. Like, that. Like, that just sucks. Like, it would have been nice if that wasn't the case.

39:43
Sam
Yeah, you lose a little bit of that. Plus, what could have happened when they were at the factory and they come to face with what would have been his coworker, right?

39:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. Because that whole bit where it's just like, he's on the security, being like, that's Caesar. I'm like, how do you recognize a chimpanzee 15 years later? I get it. It's the chimpanzee from the night of the fires. Like, I understand that. Like, he's gonna be fairly infamous. But then it's like, that's the younger brother of this whole thing. Like, I don't recognize the orangutan. I'm like, I didn't think you would.

40:14
Sam
If it isn't McDonald junior.

40:18
Seth
It's such an easy workaround, too, because you could have added to his character. Let's say we go with your pitch there, that he's just an archivist that knew that the tapes were there. What if he knew that there was shit on those tapes he didn't want Caesar to see? And so telling him about the tapes is a step in his character development as well as delivering new information without it being an awkward. And my brother told me about these tapes at work one time when were discussing.

40:44
Sam
I mean, and you can also have him be friends with the character from the past. Like, maybe that's partially why he's there, right? Like, it's like, well, I'm here because I followed my friend. Because my friend believed that you were right, and we both saw the ways. And you've got to know this information because I was there all the time. I was recording your parents. I saw what they were talking about, but you should see it yourself kind of thing. Like, it also creates, like, a stronger, like, reason for him to want to go back to the archives, show him, because this is, like, his life's work. Right? You know, like, oh, no. You have to see my life's work. Yes. You know, it would have been way more interesting.

41:24
Seth
Absolutely. Absolutely.

41:26
Case Aiken
And, I mean, that sets up, like, the central conflict that, arguably, the movie is about the titular battle part. Although you could also say that the battle is the battle for the soul between Aldo and Caesar. But, you know, we get to go to this, like, bombed out city, and, like, the production values are pretty good. I'm assuming that those are sets from the Omega man. Yeah, because those. The screenwriters came right off of doing that. But, like, I mean, they actually look really good. Like, when you arrived at this bombed out city, like, oh, okay. Definitely a reuse, but, like, a good reuse. Very, very proud of those choices there. And then we get in there, and it's like, the mutant city, and we deal with these individuals, and it's just like, oh.

42:05
Case Aiken
As with everything, it's just moving along a little too fast. Like, they're. They're fully on, like, a couple generations ahead of the mutants from beneath at this point. Like, they're wearing weird caps. They've got, like, weird marks all over their body, and they're starting to worship a bomb.

42:19
Seth
Yeah.

42:20
Sam
I mean, as one does.

42:21
Case Aiken
And we get the scene with Caesar actually seeing the clips of his parents, and I find that scene really interesting because why the fuck did they have stills for them for all those spots? Which, like, I was like, it must be for rights. But the first part of the movie is, like, five minutes of recycled footage from the first or from the previous two movies.

42:41
Seth
One of the first times in a long time I've watched a movie that had a previously on section to set it up. Yeah, two movies worth, too.

42:49
Case Aiken
Yeah, like, a lot of footage.

42:51
Sam
We're gonna catch you up. Okay, kiddos.

42:54
Seth
So these time traveling apes, I was like, what? That's right. That just starts off like that, buddy.

43:00
Case Aiken
I mean, it's worthwhile, but, like, I kept on checking, being like, okay, how long? Oh, my God. And it is a full five minutes of footage.

43:06
Seth
It's a whole montage. Yeah.

43:08
Case Aiken
Yeah. It is quite a bit and then here we don't. They just have stills and then they don't actually show, like, the ape's talking. I guess part of that might be it to show off, you know, when the mo. When the movies had a better budget, like, what the makeup looks like versus now maybe might be there and it might be some, you know, like, licensing dealies. But, like, again, that doesn't make sense because they had so much footage from before.

43:30
Sam
But I'm still guessing that maybe it is because they, like, wasted whatever they had on their budget on that five minutes. If they had just cut out a minute, maybe. Maybe we would have gotten a couple of motions.

43:42
Case Aiken
But I think what that scene does set up really well, though, is then this additional element looking at, like, looking at Caesar and looking at him being given foreknowledge. This is the spot where it becomes dune. Because prior to this point, he was a revolutionary. He actually, you know, he's this wonderful figure, but he doesn't really know that much. Ricardo Montauban told him a bunch of stuff, but he didn't know that much about the ape future stuff. It's like, oh, well, eventually an ape society will be dominant. But he didn't know that the world ended. Yeah, like, he doesn't know all those things.

44:20
Case Aiken
So he might honestly think that he's building towards a utopia just based on the stories he's been told, you know, third hand by way of his circus trainer, like, adoptive father who was quickly told the stories by his actual parents. Like, yeah, who also, we're just piecing everything together last minute because, like, if we go off the planet, the ace movies at the end of the first one, they're like, oh, fuck. Our ideas that maybe were like, previously the pets of humans, those might be right. And Cornelius puts a lot of shit together between the end of the first movie and traveling back in time and being like, okay, I've pieced it together, like, 300 years from now, you guys are going to have a slave society of apes, and Aldo's going to rise up.

45:01
Case Aiken
That story comes together really quickly, and so it's probably full of holes and all kinds of wrong.

45:07
Seth
And then if it's one of those self fulfilling prophecy things, the fact that he goes back to stop it is the thing that launches into the story. It might be one of those situations that, oh, not Lawgiver. This is the one that looks like Lawgiver.

45:25
Case Aiken
Virgil.

45:26
Seth
Virgil. Thank you. Virgil's theory at the beginning, you know, just like the fact that he went back to start it started it like, if he. If he didn't do that at all, it may not have launched into it at all.

45:39
Case Aiken
Yeah. Also a thing there. And I think that's where it's cool.

45:43
Seth
Yeah.

45:43
Case Aiken
Where, like, this element of there is foreknowledge of the future sitting somewhere in the world. And whoever taps into it sort of, like, sets the world into that, like, cycle of destruction of, you know, like, literal destruction. The planet getting destroyed, like.

45:57
Sam
Right.

45:59
Case Aiken
And I think that's a cool element there. You know, like, the challenge of foreknowledge, because that then does weigh on Caesar at every point from that, like, for the remainder of the movie in some way, at least.

46:10
Seth
He's such an interesting character to me. Like, just the weight of what he's going through and the ways that they try to humanize him in, like, how he interacts with people, and he's often wrong. He's not. He's not like, he's not a perfect protagonist. And I find that really engaging. And that's something that carried through the series as well. That, like, I think Matt Reeves really goes in heavy on that in the later films of, like, how heavy is the crown that sits on this king? But I like him specifically in this movie for philosopher main characters is a weird main character. Like, characters that are actively fighting mental battles more than they're fighting physical battles, I think is really. Again, it's more dune shit. That's just Paul tradies. That's all we're doing here.

47:06
Seth
But in an earth setting, in a smaller environment, something that's a little more digestible than the Dune saga, it still functions really well. And I really enjoy Caesar within this for that reason that he's kind of struggling with epic giant questions, really. This is heavy for one guy to go through.

47:27
Case Aiken
Yeah, I do have a note, which is just, like, I adore Caesar as a protagonist, as this epic figure who doesn't even, like, doesn't appear in the first two planet of the Apes movies, but is ultimately the protagonist of the whole franchise.

47:42
Seth
Protagonist de facto. Yeah.

47:44
Case Aiken
Yeah. He's such an epic, kingly figure. There's shades of Gilgamesh, shades of Moses, especially with war. This idea of this person who shaped the foundation of the society and tried so damn hard to make it all work and knows that it's not gonna be a perfect thing. Especially this version of Caesar.

48:10
Sam
Yeah. He's working really hard to uphold ideals and without knowing how exactly to enforce those ideals. And it makes it very interesting because there's always this inner struggle.

48:23
Seth
I really love his setup with Mandemus and Mandimas voicing at least twice that I can remember. I am the conscience of Caesar. Like, that's a. For a heavy character like Caesar to instate that role onto someone, that's a heavy role to instate, and he takes it so fucking seriously. I'm sorry. I have been cussing a lot. Am I allowed to cuss?

48:45
Case Aiken
Oh, we.

48:46
Sam
Oh, yeah, no, we curse all the time. Yeah, this is.

48:48
Seth
I got scared for a second there. I was like, I think I said shit.

48:52
Case Aiken
Like, I'm pretty sure I've said fucking cool and fucking weird a few times.

48:56
Seth
Yeah, I just. I love Mandemus for that. And. And that decision exists off screen. Like, we don't see that get instated. We just watch this process happen and we kind of learn about it while we watch it. The fact that it exists says a lot about Caesar himself, that, like, this is something that he takes so seriously that he would. He would make it next to impossible for the wrong person to get their hands on weapons in. In his future. And it. It shows you how. Where his mind is benevolently. I really like that. Like, just off screen, this man has been doing hard work, making really tough choices to make this work, and I really appreciate that. And then we get to see his thinking process and how he weighs morality and. Oh, man, a moral hero. I love it.

49:45
Case Aiken
Yeah.

49:46
Sam
And putting into place protections to make sure that he himself doesn't become fully corrupted because there are people within his society, or apes within his society that would follow him blindly. I mean, not Jenner Aldo's men, but certainly there are. There are the people. Because even when he decides to. Spoiler alert. For people who haven't seen it, I don't know why you're listening this yet. They, they. When he eventually takes General Aldo's life, basically as retribution, justice, I don't know, he wonders if it actually is justice to have taken that life. And. And so, but, like, Virgil kind of just, like, for you, it's okay. And. And the fact that. And that's the reason why Virgil's not guarding the woman demas is. So it also speaks to the fact that Caesar's very good at knowing who's in his team, right.

50:43
Sam
To safeguard and make sure that he doesn't end up the corrupted leader. So it says monumental things about his leadership, I think.

50:52
Case Aiken
Okay, so you just brought up a thing I wanted to talk about, which is Virgil being the student of Mandemus, I thought was really interesting as an element. I think the timeline doesn't sure, but he's like, oh, in my youth, back when were all living in Century City, he was my teacher. That element, I don't think works really well there. But I do like the idea of this continuity of orangutan viziers that sort of, like, has taken up by the time we get to Doctor Zaius in the future.

51:22
Case Aiken
I like the idea of the orangutan starting off as these vizier types who become the viceroy, who have effectively usurped the control of the community of apes by the time we get to Doctor Zeus, that they are not the military leaders, they're not the scientific leaders, they are the religious and philosophical leaders that have become so powerful by way of knowing how to manipulate the other groups against each other that I think it's really interesting that we see the foundation here, that we see the only ones we see in this movie are all presented as good in different ways. Virgil is much more okay with breaking the rules.

52:00
Case Aiken
And this is a spoiler for my pitch, which is that I feel like we're missing out on a little bit of a sinister narrative with the orangutans, considering that they typically are the actual bad guys in the series and that the warlike gorillas are usually more just like, the manipulation of base instincts, the fact that they don't want to learn reading and writing, they want to learn how to ride and shoot guns and so forth, because that's just exciting and cool. And the idea is it's appealing to the base novelty, which maps pretty well, again, to post Roman Europe. You know, a lot of people who were like, nobles and whatnot, didn't care to learn, and it gave an opportunity for the church to seize power. I think that's sort of a missing element there. And Mandemus is a really cool take on it.

52:45
Case Aiken
Like, I love his personality. He's such an interest. Like, it doesn't make sense that he would be so articulate and so smart and so everything about it at this point in the timeline, but still cool and, like, and that idea that, like, okay, we've got that. And you can see that he's the teacher for, like, Virgil says he's his teacher. And we get the vibe that, like, lawgiver is, like the next in that line, like, you know, a couple centuries later. Yeah, but, like, I think that part's cool.

53:11
Sam
Yeah, totally.

53:13
Seth
It's, it's a great. I landed on the same thing when I was thinking for my pitch of like, yeah, these guys are being under underutilized. If we're doing a classism metaphor, I think it might be important to highlight that a little bit more within this. I really like the. Honestly, that's why I like Tim Burton's version. So much for his portrayal of the orangutan class with Paul Giamatti just being the noble sons. You know what I mean? Those 16 hundreds aristocrat types. I don't know how to do anything. He's so useless.

53:52
Case Aiken
It feels like a merovingian king.

53:53
Seth
Exactly. And knowing that it stems from this really benevolent, helpful, useful, like early Socrates era kind of stuff. Like, like they're really trying to reflect real world politics and how they evolved across the monkey time or the ape timeline. And to show, I think it's on purpose to show that even if the humans weren't here, the apes would have landed over here anyways. They would have landed on this shit on their own.

54:23
Case Aiken
Yeah. One thing that I was surprised that they landed on their own so fast was that they all revert to the outfits of the future timeline in this movie.

54:31
Sam
Yeah.

54:32
Case Aiken
And I know that this is a cost cutting measure. Like, I mean, I know there's a few things going on. Like, for one, like, just they're saving money by being like, okay, we've got these ape costumes. They're color coded already. Let's, let's roll with that. And also you can tell that they're shooting and it's fucking cold out because everyone is wearing turtlenecks. Like, every human, when you look at them, has, like, a long sleeve shirt on and a turtleneck underneath, including, like, non mutated, just regular people.

54:57
Sam
Yeah.

54:58
Case Aiken
And like, it's like, oh, yeah, it's definitely fucking cold when they're filming. And that's probably good because I know, and we'll talk about this when we talk about planet the apes one. That one was shot during the summertime and a lot of people almost died because they were shooting in, like, full ape outfits in the middle of summer and wild.

55:17
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

55:18
Case Aiken
So I get, like, that these costumes are nice and insulated and they cover up enough of their body so that you only need to do, like, the hands and the faces for the actual, like, ape effects and so forth. But it is crazy that they're all wearing exactly the same clothes that they would be like, 2000 years.

55:35
Seth
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

55:36
Sam
Yeah. Well, maybe they're just the kind of creatures that really enjoy what they like. You know? They, like, they're just, they're like, yeah, this is their style. They're very comfortable with a case. No evolution needed. We've evolved enough in our minds.

55:54
Case Aiken
Yeah, they come one fashion, and then they just keep on doing it forever.

55:59
Sam
Well, I mean, it's a good fashion, so why not? It's breathable. It moves. You can attack people from trees. You know, like, it's fine. You look dignified if you're going to a meeting. I mean, it's really the catch all out.

56:12
Seth
I wonder if they would devalue fashion, them all being, like, furry and covered in fur. Like, the. They would just have differences in color with their fur. I wonder if you were really going to dive into how these kinds of things evolve, if that's something that they would. Even if maybe clothes would be less likely and they would style and color their fur in different ways to stand out for fashion sake.

56:40
Case Aiken
Yeah, I think if they're actually located in colder environments, would need some kind of insulation. Like, their bodies are not built for that, even if they. Like. Even if they do have, like, thick fur. And, like, reminder, chimpanzees actually have less hair follicles than humans do. We just have very thin hair on our bodies. A chimpanzee couldn't just, like, walk around in, like, San Francisco without any kind of protection in the middle of winter. Like, that's gonna be an issue. So, like, they would have to, like, gravitate towards some kind of clothing. It's just weird that it's the same clothing that they settle on and just never change. And I kind of would be cool with it if they were, like, starting to learn how to make clothes because, like, the.

57:22
Case Aiken
The society of, like, the planet of the apes is not, like, while they can make guns and so forth, it's not industrial. Like, they don't have, like, factories that they're building. Everything's, like, handcrafted. It'd be interesting if they were, like, learning to hand stitch clothes and they only had, like, a few things to kind of go off of or something like that, you know, like, just as a foundation for eventually the fashions of the future. It's. And again, I get it.

57:42
Seth
Totally. Absolutely.

57:45
Case Aiken
I just kept thinking, like, man, like, they all had, like, jumpsuits in the previous movie that would have at least been, like, an excusable for the story carried over. You know, you could. Yeah, it would make sense. Like, okay, we don't. You know, we had a nuclear war. We can't make a lot of new clothes. So, like, we've got, like, dirty versions of the, like, bright red and green jumpsuits.

58:02
Seth
From previous movie or those had been stripped down and used for, you know, their. Their pants. Like, I see. I'm just. I'm thinking back to the original movies and the kinds of clothes the humans wore, the human slaves wore in the original film. I'm like, I feel like that is what early ape society would look like until they advance to that future clothing line. But then I guess you have to show, like, furry bodies. Like, fully furry bodies, and that's even more expensive and.

58:29
Case Aiken
Yeah, like, they definitely needed full coverings, but, like, I I don't know. I feel like they could have made a case for just, like, oh, yeah, we scrounge clothes from, like, the local sea. True. You know, like, when the nuclear bombs.

58:39
Seth
Yeah, I would. I would have liked to see, like, apes and jeans. Yeah, apes and leather.

58:46
Sam
That would have been amazing. Again, budget.

58:48
Seth
True.

58:49
Case Aiken
Well, but. But you probably would have all those clothes in the wardrobe, and then you could have general Aldo ride up in, like, a leather jacket looking all James Dean, like.

58:56
Sam
Yeah, but you would also have to, like, support that by, like, at least having an alcove of a partially destroyed department store or something. And that would cost money.

59:06
Case Aiken
True. Or, like, oh, you could do military fatigues for the gorillas.

59:09
Seth
Oh, yeah.

59:10
Case Aiken
Like, they, like, rated an army surplus or something, and then that's, like, because they're all obsessed with that kind of shit. And then you could kind of, like, differentiate them in the protoculture based on, like, what they're imitating from our modern culture that they are then taking and using and, like, transforming into the future. Stuff like, that would be cool. Like, you, like, the general aldo, he's got this, like, necklace thing. Like, it covers, like, the top of his chest. It's. It's the same piece that was on general Ursus in beneath, and that was used to sort of, like, set up, like, oh, this is, like, a proto version of the armor that Ursus would wear. Like, if they, like, take that part and have with, like, modern military stuff. And, like, you know, look at.

59:52
Case Aiken
Look like, it's like, okay, this part we handmade. This is ape. Like, what ape looks like, and this is what human looks like. And this is what we're taking, the human stuff. And it's, you know, a stage between, like, the human clothing and then, like, what ultimately, apes will settle once they have, like, a fully established society. But this is, like, early in that phase would have been kind of cool, right?

01:00:11
Seth
That's. That's another question the movie kind of left me with to move into maybe some of my negatives, the. It's not really established, is, like, this ape society, like, a tiny little pocket, and the rest of the world is either irradiated from bombs or I guess, not every city in the world could have got functionally destroyed. Are there pockets of humanity out there? Like, this feels kind of like they exist on an island with them one end and then, like, the. The irradiated city on the other. And I'm not sure what all else is out there, and I'm not sure how interested the movie was in telling us that, either.

01:00:51
Sam
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I felt like I asked myself more than once, like, why, again, humans are weird. So I do think there. That there's probably something in there to why these people would stay down there, including vanity. But, like, I was just like, bro. Like, they felt secure enough to chase the apes or the. The intruders out of the cave and to leave the cave to, like, wage war. And I was just like, so why are you still living there in the radiation? Like, is this. I like. And I understand, like, there's, like. Like, there's, like, small things in the text of, like, oh, they're. You know, they're. They're down there, and they're protecting this area, but, like, there's clearly space you could have left. Like, you didn't have to stay in that radiation.

01:01:41
Sam
And I don't think that the film ever really gives us a real enough reason other than maybe some, like, you know, kind of a couple lines where they just seem very passionate about protecting this space. To really say that I would risk my skin peeling off my face for this. Like, why would I devote my time to being here when there's clearly an unsafe world and you're okay leaving it like you left it.

01:02:09
Seth
This is another circumstance where I really see opportunity for, like, less and than storytelling. The biggest issue with this movie is there's lots of and than storytelling, and that could have been turned into, like, it could have been that those people were trapped underground and they had to find a way in, and them getting in allowed the people out in the first. You know what I mean? Like. Like, him needing to know the future is the thing that unleashes the group on them that leads to the gorillas breaking out. Like, his choices are all kind of predetermined in front of him. You could have introduced that in, like, right there. Just exactly right there. Oh, yeah. We've been trapped in here, and now we see this escape with.

01:02:53
Seth
Where these guys busted in with their superior intellect that they were able to gather because they've lived in this more utopic, peaceful society. And let. But, yeah, it's all character development, baby.

01:03:05
Sam
I mean, like, on. On some level, I also, after living through quarantine, know that humans would not have been so happy to just stay underground like that unless they believe there was a true and real threat above ground that they couldn't exit.

01:03:20
Seth
Right?

01:03:21
Sam
Like. Like, there needs to be a reason why, whether it's being trapped or literally feeling like the earth is not a place that's safe for them. So, like, there's a virus if. Right. If there was a virus, or let's say General Aldo behind Caesar's back was going around and kind of picking humans off, that came out, you know, secretly, that kind of thing. And that just spoiled my part of my pitch. Damn it, Sam. We are not past the commercial break. But, like, if that was. If that was the thing, then, like, then you understand, like, you. You get more for why they're afraid to have Cesar come in and also why they won't fucking leave. Like, I. That I did have a huge problem with that. Like, I was just like, okay, well, yeah, I guess, like, I'm very devoted to this place.

01:04:11
Sam
I once worked. I got. I got. I got news for you guys. Nobody likes work. No one's sticking around that long. Also, if you're that kind of person, your job doesn't love you enough. Please go home. Please clock out.

01:04:22
Seth
They would replace you the next day. I promise.

01:04:25
Sam
Yeah, once. Once all your skin fell off and you and the cancer set in, they'd be like, well, I'm sorry you have to leave. We've got this other guy who's willing to watch this.

01:04:36
Seth
And it's funny because, like, I don't want to knock it for adding that. Like, I love that this is a precursor to the reveal of their skin faces in the. In the previous movie. It's like this movie loves the series. This movie specifically loves this series and feels like it's just really trying to try everything that has been tried along this and wrap it together into a finale for everyone. If you like this little element in one of the previous movies, we remembered that we're showing you what that looks like. I feel like we kind of got worse at prequels sense here. Like, this kind of prequel, like, functional prequel. I really don't think we're this good at anymore. As far as you're trying to set this stuff up in a useful way, in a way that's not an obvious.

01:05:28
Seth
On the nose setup of like, oh, yeah. Do you remember this thing we're doing? That thing? This movie is like, no. We thought of that when we wrote the script, and we thought of that when we built the sets, and we thought of that with the characters. So you get to discover all of this stuff that is prequelly. I really appreciate that.

01:05:46
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, like you said, this movie loves the previous ones way more than I even realized when I had seen it before. Because, like, looking into it's like, oh, the pacifist guy, Mendez, is like, that name's all over the stuff in beneath. And it's like, oh, they're really setting all that up. It does make me ask, where is this movie supposed to take place? Because the first two movies are definitely New York. Like, that's the point. And then the third one is definitely LA. So where, you know, I guess, like, Caesar was with a traveling circus, so they could have gone anywhere. But, like, it's being shot in LA because it's a century city, so it's like. It feels like it's still la. And this feels like it's like, just in, you know, somewhere in California.

01:06:24
Seth
This movie had no interest in answering that question because they.

01:06:28
Case Aiken
None whatsoever.

01:06:28
Seth
They even have the mutants say at some point that place we came from, it's like, oh, wow. Thanks, guys. Really specific. I was hoping for a little more information there.

01:06:38
Case Aiken
And I get it. Like, okay, on a certain level, it doesn't matter.

01:06:43
Sam
Well, it's really funny because also when. Cause I was trying to get a sense of it, too. When McDonald was talking about street names, he kind of mentioned two streets that could be in New York City, but then he mentioned two streets that definitely were not in New York City. And I was like, where are you? Where are you?

01:07:01
Case Aiken
It's just the nebulous city. You know, it's. It's the one city humanity came from.

01:07:06
Sam
It kind of feels like very simpsons to me. Like Springfield, but you don't know which Springfield in America kind of thing.

01:07:12
Case Aiken
But it's just so funny because, like, the first movie is, like, so fixed on, like, where it is.

01:07:16
Sam
Yeah.

01:07:17
Case Aiken
And like, that's, you know, kind of the point. I mean, I think that just generally, this movie, like, looking at the mutant stuff, looking at everything, it's weird that earth is so cool when. Or, like, not, like, cool in the.

01:07:27
Sam
Yeah, it's cool. You cool?

01:07:29
Case Aiken
Like, actually just nice. Like, I actually do mean, like, in the, like, it's a cool place to live, guys.

01:07:33
Sam
It is where I keep all my stuff.

01:07:35
Case Aiken
They've got an awesome, like, tree village with, like, farm fields and everything and looks great. And, like, it's just, like, just a little bit away from, like, effectively hiroshima. You know, it's weird that the world of the apes. And this is what we're saying with the mutants. Like, why didn't they come out? Because it appears to be very nice the second you leave, like, the cities themselves. And we know that's not really how nuclear war would go. Yeah, so it's weird. It is weird that it. This is not just like, the tin. This tiny little scrap of population that survived. Like, you know, that we very well could imagine a shitload of people all over the world still just fine. And this just happens to be, like, a group of apes that got out and, like, where is this all going to go?

01:08:16
Case Aiken
How is this going to become the status quo? I don't know. I feel like they could have sold us on it being like, oh, no. Like, really? Like, we're almost at, like, full extinction level. Yeah, it's just, like, a weird element there. But I like that they're dealing with the mutants. I do find it weird that they're already wearing caps, that they're already, like, in this, like, phase where it's, like, already cult level. And it's, like one of those spots where, like, rewatching it now, I'm like, man, war does this exact thing so much better.

01:08:41
Seth
Right?

01:08:41
Case Aiken
Like. Like, Woody Harrelson's character in war is just such a better version of the same, like, cult leader type thing, the same sort of setups that they're doing. And it feels like a much more apocalyptic. Even. Even though it's actually not a nuclear exchange in that where, like. But it's still, like, cold and desolate and shitty and, like, humanity is at itself right in that all.

01:09:04
Sam
I think they just didn't fully commit to that part. There's so many themes here, like, in this movie. Not. Not war. Sorry, I didn't want to.

01:09:13
Case Aiken
Well, and I don't know if they could. Again, this movie had. It had a $1.7 million budget.

01:09:19
Seth
Yeah. I'm trying to imagine the amount of, like, volunteered time just from fans of the series to make something like this happen back then, like this, for one point set. Like, I. It feels like a John Carpenter movie for a lot of reasons. And. And many of them are like, how they solved these budget problems. And it's. There's something really endearing to me about watching an underdog film like this reach as far as it's reaching to be like, I have something to say about society and not a lot of money to do it. And also, this is a Sci-Fi series about time traveling apes, so let's see where we end up. It's so experimental. It's so punk rock. I really. I really dig it for that. But it leads to all of these, like, immersion breaking things across the movie.

01:10:13
Case Aiken
And just moments where it's like, oh, it's a bummer that we don't have the money. Like, yeah, the last fight between Cesar Naldo, I, like, my notes are like, God, can you imagine if that fight was happening with the modern, like, Andy Serkis style stuff? Like, I can't think of a proper, like, guerrilla chimpanzee fight that we've seen in the Planet of the Apes movies because, like, generally speaking, either it's two humans and actors, and it doesn't fucking feel like anything because it's just two humans or two humans in, like, makeup, and, like, it's like, okay, yeah, that's fine. But, like, it's just two guys just, like, struggling not to fall off a tree. Or we've had, like, generally everyone been like, no, the grills are real fucking big. We're not gonna do that.

01:10:50
Case Aiken
We'll have gorilla on gorilla fights, but, like, a tree fight of a chimpanzee swinging around against a gorilla who just can't, like, has too much weight to step on. Most of the branches would have been really cool. And it's like, oh, that's a bummer. And, like, the fights, like, the actual, like, siege of, like, the mutants on the ape city, it doesn't look that impressive, but it's because they don't have money.

01:11:11
Seth
You can. You can see a lot of, like, mad Max in that, too. They were like, well, if we get a bunch of vehicles in a field, it'll look like a battle, I guess.

01:11:19
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, like, that. Exactly. Mad Max kind of stuff is going on a lot there, and it. But it's not quite a mad Max. It's not quite as good as a Mad Max movie in terms of handling that use of it also. It's just like, ooh, not quite there. Yeah, I mean, like, they, like, they. They make excellent work of it. Like, they, like, when they would blow up, like, some of the tree houses, they shot it from, like, four different angles so that they can insert the shots from different angles at all at different points where it's like, oh, that's one tree house blown up. That's a different tree house blown up. All the same treehouse. They just, like, had a bunch of cameras. Like, they're doing their best, but they're just like. They just don't have much to work with.

01:11:52
Case Aiken
They've got a lot of good themes going on. They've got a fairly coherent voice, at least by way of Paul Dean, who had written the previous two movies, came back and did a rewrite on this one. So that I think that's where we get a lot of the references that are going to be a little bit more tightly worked in there. And then we've got actually some really good actors. Like Roddy McDowell is great. Like, he's such a strength of the series and does such a great job in selling this character. You know, like we said, as this, like, heavy as the head that wears the crown type leader. I like, you know, like I said, austin Stoker as McDonald.

01:12:27
Case Aiken
I wish that it wasn't a recast because it would have been nice to have continuity, but I still think he does a great job. I think he really sells it on the, like, we're not your equals. Like, you're. You want us to be here and not be violent with us, but you're not our equals. Paul Williams, I think, is good as Virgil, but there's, like, a little bit of a weirdness to the character. And it's mostly because I want him to be a bad guy.

01:12:47
Seth
Yeah, no, I know. Exactly. He's supposed to. I feel like that's the prototype goo to the orangutans we get later on.

01:12:56
Case Aiken
Right. But then, like we said, lou Ares as Mandimas. Like, I think he does it. Like, he has a really interesting performance that I think is really compelling. Claude Akins as general Aldo, actually. Like, his speeches are really good. And there are some moments there where you're like, oh, I see this brutal intellect there, like, this, like, half formed brain that just wants violence because all it knows is violence. I like those things that are going on there. I don't really love Steven Darden as culp. Like, I think that he worked better as this, like, CIA type guy in the previous movie, in this one as, like, the cult leader. I don't think it has quite the right vibe.

01:13:32
Seth
It kind of reminded me of Dennis Hopper in Waterworld a little bit that just kind of, like, that was a really over the top decision for what is otherwise a pretty grounded movie. Okay.

01:13:43
Case Aiken
And I would say even more so.

01:13:45
Seth
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Even more over the top. Yeah. He's. He feels like he's in a Mad Max movie. Like, he. He saw this as a Mad Max movie and went that way with his character, and then everyone else was like, this is like a political esque action futurism. They kind of left it vague, and they all just went for acting chops. And I feel like Severin really went hard into Mad Max camp for his character.

01:14:14
Case Aiken
There's two things left that I really want to talk about before we take our break. The first is John Huston as the Lawgiver. So we finally actually get to see Lawgiver in this movie after it being referenced multiple times previously, and especially with the statues and the previous movies. Like, what do you guys think about that as, like, the bookmark or the bookends for this all, like, the superstructure that tells the story.

01:14:36
Seth
Is it weird that it feels a little Star Trek to me somehow? Like, it almost. It feels that the addition of it feels made for tv to me.

01:14:45
Case Aiken
I think that makes sense.

01:14:46
Seth
That's kind of how it struck me.

01:14:47
Sam
Well, I can see that. I can see that because it's a. Gather around, children. Let me tell your tale of great Caesar. And. And, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, like, I thought it was fine. I thought. I thought it was nice to tie it in. So I think limited budget plus, this is definitely the last movie, and they know it's going to be the last movie, and. And I think it leaves the door open for you, imagining the world the way you want it to imagine, no matter what the artist said about the tier, because you can think like, oh, like, this is, like, he's there. He's reminding people of, like, this.

01:15:25
Sam
This moment where Caesar remembered or not remembered, but kind of realized that was the word I was looking for, realized that everyone, apes and humans, are susceptible to those flaws, and that in order to have a truly peaceful society, we have to continue to remove the things that really entice us to destruction, to self destruction. And so, like, in that way, it's kind of nice because you tie in basically what is thesis of the entire series, which is that there is self destruction within society, within humanity, and that is mirrored in the apes at times. That is only us at times. That is how we treat the apes. That is how they eventually treat us. So that the destruction of others and the destruction of humanity. Right. That is all part of self destruction.

01:16:24
Sam
And so having this character that we've seen before kind of tell this story as if it's a parable because it's the moment where, like, it's the, aha. We'll just take away this temptation you know, for self destruction, and kind of try to teach that to each new generation as they are living together in harmony. It kind of ties the series together, and it can leave you hopeful or it can leave you sad, because, you know, who this character and how they play out later, and, you know, and so it's kind of like, will these words actually mean anything as we're telling this parable? Right. Because this. This story, like, the story that we're watching is kind of like a parable now, right. It's kind of like this thing to teach generations. It's oral. Orally being taught.

01:17:17
Sam
Like, this is what happened, and this is what, you know, it was almost an insurrection, and Caesar was almost overthrown, and. And we. He almost became exactly what he didn't think he was going to become. And then he had the foresight to. To pull back and. And realize that, like, we needed to leave equally. And that's why we're all here together now. So hear this story and try to keep this up. Okay. You know, so I think. I think that you could, you know, it's fine. It does have a made for tv element. I agree with that. But I do think that as a nice way of kind of paying homage again to the previous movies and tying up the story as the last movie.

01:18:00
Seth
I like that. Like, functionally, it. It almost. If I take all of that and run with Case's headcanon, Lawgiver is functionally outside the multiverse. He's like the watcher.

01:18:16
Sam
Yeah.

01:18:17
Seth
And he's like, and now you've seen the good timeline, and next we can look at. He kind of exists outside, and then we can look at the Tim Burton timeline. Yeah, no, I can see that. Absolutely.

01:18:30
Sam
Yeah.

01:18:30
Case Aiken
Yeah. I feel like the lawgiver supports thesis that this is breaking of the timeline just because he's talking about Caesar, because he, you know, as opposed to aldo, as opposed to anything else. Like, I think there's that element there, but obviously, like, it's just, like, nice to be like, oh, here's a character we have alluded to for four movies, and we are finally, or at least three, because I don't. I don't think he's ever referenced in conquest, but, you know, like, it's a thing that we definitely had strong allusions to in the first two. Like, you know, there's all those statues of lawgiver in those where, like, all right, let's. We'll seal this part up here. You know, we open the movie, and we don't see who he's talking to.

01:19:07
Case Aiken
So we allow for a scenario where this is just him telling the story about the final fall of humanity kind of thing, and then, like, hit the reveal at the end that, you know, we've got the sort of mixed group, I think is at least an interesting element of, like, try. Like, if this is the. The end point from an eight movie arc, if you're looking at it from that way of that weird anti machete order, I guess you would describe it as. I guess you watch rise then the original Planet of the Apes and then dawn and then war and then beneath. I guess, like, whatever kind of order you're going to do this works is like the. Okay, we have now seen all these struggles, all this stuff, like, all, you know, every almost slipping back into.

01:19:49
Case Aiken
Into kind, and we've finally emerged from it. Like, we've become, you know, an actual society of harmony. I think that part's cool. But again, I think it's like, it was originally not meant to be quite so much of, like, a. We're definitively saying that, like, we're outside of that timeline. I think it was intended to be like, oh, well, we might have come through, but we actually might not because humanity still has the same tendencies towards violence, and apes are just the same as humans now. Like, it's, you know, it's a little bit of animal farm at the end where you can't tell if it's the pigs or the humans when they're arguing with each other. Like.

01:20:21
Case Aiken
Like, you know, it's two kids and it's just like, oh, it's kind of cute, but, like, that violence is sort of being represented as being endemic to the state of this higher level of intellect that we can't break away from that cycle.

01:20:33
Seth
And it's really hard to be a social commentary and land on where you think things are gonna head, you know what I mean? Because it is kind of the safe bet to say that history will repeat itself. History has continually repeated itself, so that makes sense to me. But if you want to do this breakaway timeline, I like the idea that it is possible to be broken.

01:20:58
Case Aiken
Yeah. I don't need this movie to have answer. And like I said, I think that it's one that is more interesting by way of additional sequels, building out the franchise as a finale. It works fine to be ambiguous. Either we're heading back towards that point or not. I do wish that the lawgiver was more firmly established in that lineage that were talking about with Virgil and with Mendemus. I almost like the idea of Logiver being a title that had been passed on from one to the next or something to that effect. But I know that's not really how they sort of saw it. They saw it. I mean, they saw log of as being, like, very specifically their Moses type figure, what with the slates and everything, like the scrolls. Yeah, it's just interesting.

01:21:41
Case Aiken
I mean, I think you were kind of stuck in a spot of, like, how do you, like, definitively say this is the last movie? And what's better than having, like, this, like, messianic figure standing there? Like, being like. And that's how we round up the story, guys.

01:21:54
Sam
Yeah.

01:21:55
Case Aiken
Like, it's done. We're finished. It's been five minutes. We're all tired.

01:22:01
Sam
And the end. Yes, and you're welcome, everyone. Go the heck home.

01:22:06
Seth
What happens next is up to you.

01:22:10
Case Aiken
Exactly.

01:22:10
Sam
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. I'm done reading.

01:22:14
Case Aiken
So the one other thing I want to talk about before we go to break, and I know this is running long. No, the fact that's, like, a big, like, talking point in this movie where when. When the teacher, Abe, says no to the gorilla, that's, like, all of a sudden a huge fight.

01:22:31
Sam
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't like when people tell me no. I respect it, but.

01:22:37
Seth
So their logic for it was. It was. Stemmed off of previous movies. So that's, like, previous movie continuity.

01:22:44
Case Aiken
Yeah. I think there's two things going on. There's the whole, like, the first word that someone said, or like, that an ape said back was the one that they'd heard a million times. That whole, like, he said no. And, you know, that becomes the thing Caesar in later movies, but was, like, an aldo thing there. Like, there's that I just don't understand, like, how you could have it be, like, there's a rule. Humans can't say no to an ape anymore in this society, and I. Because, like, I know what they're trying to do here. They have this, like, paternalistic ape society holding on to people as second class citizens. Like. And that. That's what they're going for. I don't understand how the language works, if that's the case. Like, I don't.

01:23:19
Sam
I think you would have to use complete sentences and not use the word no.

01:23:22
Seth
Yeah, yeah. Like, I prefer not to. Would not be a just singular no.

01:23:27
Sam
Yeah. Like, I think instead of saying, no, you can't have a cookie, you would have to say something like, I'm saving that for someone else, like, you would have to say no. But in positive ways, I think anyone who's done gentle parenting, which, by the way, I'm not a parent, but I have TikTok, gentle parenting, would tell you that there are ways to say no without saying no. And so, like, I think that they would just have to use phrases that basically mean no, but not say no because no is triggering, because no was the word that helped limit them. That's what I. That I got, that it was. It was the word that basically kept them as ape slaves.

01:24:08
Seth
And if you take it on a realistic, real world basis, if you had a group of sentient beings that were ten times stronger than you, that had just been through a terrible ordeal and their trigger word was a simple no, and that might unleash mental health fury upon you, it might be in your best interest in that society to find ways to not just say no. You know, like, it just kind of makes sense that it might be like a. Yeah. So we got to figure out a way to work around and around each other. And if not saying no is the only rule to, like, help this other, you know, group cope and not. And not get constantly PTSD triggered, it kind of makes sense. Yeah. I would try to find a way to function in that society.

01:24:56
Sam
Yeah.

01:24:57
Case Aiken
I just feel like that needed to be 100% like. Like, the thing is, because there's no real setup for it in the previous movie, that no by itself is this traumatic word for them. It's a word that they hear a ton because it's the negative and they're getting commanded a lot, but it doesn't feel like that. It should just be like, oh, well, you said the word, and now we're going to have a riot. Seems like a bit of a stretch. And I don't mind the idea if it's like a clockwork orange, kind of. We're trying to condition people's brains. Maybe they see it as a positive thing. We're trying to make humans used to not expressing these, like, outright commandments kind of element to it all.

01:25:33
Case Aiken
But I feel like we need more explanation, and it needs to not just be like, when it slips, it should feel like a big deal as opposed to just the first scene that we have.

01:25:43
Seth
Right.

01:25:45
Sam
I think also, like, I think making it know makes it a little more difficult than if they had made it a pejorative word. Right. Because I think. I think on some level, they're using it also as kind of a discussion about pejorative words within society. Right. Because you can definitely take that and kind of make the similarities. Right. Because I think definitely right away, I was like, yeah, there are words that some people can't use and some people can use. Right. And that resonated with me. But I think that, like, because it's a word. But because a word like no is so simple, and because a word like no means power. Right. And the power to say no is sometimes taken away from people, I think that it becomes, like, a little hard for us to wrap our mind around it.

01:26:39
Sam
But that's why it's also kind of brilliant that they used the word no, because, like, for a really long time, no was something that the apes could not use, and no is something that was taken from them. But no was also something that was always said to them. And so, like, in that way, no is very powerful. And the fact that they have built a society where they can say now they have the power to say now, but no one else can tell them no. Right. As a woman of color, that resonated really heavily with me, because women are often told not. Not to say no, and we have to come up with other kind of ways of expressing ourselves, or sometimes we face kind of, you know, not so friendly replies or even violence.

01:27:30
Sam
And so I think, like, if there were a society where we'll just, you know, I will drop the intersectionality and I'll just keep it lady based just to simplify it. But, like, if. If we lived in a society where I could say no to men and they would have to accept it and they could never say no to me, but they had to think of clever ways to work their way around it. That sounds amazing to me about right now. So, like, so, in a way, like, I kind of get what the apes are saying, I can say no, you can't. Like, we've got to flip flop it. Is it fair? No. It is not equitable and is not actually what Caesar wants. But. But it's part of the thing that Caesar needs to get over.

01:28:13
Sam
And society, if they want to live together, as, you know, this utopia that he thinks he wants to live in with apes and humans living side by side, that's part of the gray area that Caesar himself and everyone there would have to get over. But it needs to take. There needs to be time before that can actually happen. The apes that are there, right? They're so fresh to the actual feeling. But why it's also brilliant is that by not allowing humans to say no, if Caesar doesn't accept the change and he continues to or not. If he. Right. And he continues to let them deny humans the ability to set boundaries, you end up in the original timeline.

01:29:00
Seth
Yeah. Okay. Okay.

01:29:03
Sam
That's. That's how you end up with slave humans, because you're in this space where you're like, oh, yeah, no. You just can't say no because it's something that we're very sensitive about. And, like, eventually. Right. You would have to work it into a thing that. Where someone could still reject.

01:29:18
Seth
Yeah.

01:29:19
Sam
And they could reject you, like, in, you know, in a more sensitive way. And then after you understood each other, maybe. Maybe because no is not necessarily pejorative of. No could work its way back into a relationship between ape and human. But without the ending, without General Aldo doing us the favor of being an absolute punk and being a murderer, Caesar would have never realized that what he was doing was still leading them down the same path. And it would. And humans not being able to say no would have led us back to the future in the wheel that we need it to because not being able to say no means that even sometimes excuses don't mean no. And sometimes then people just.

01:30:03
Sam
That means that you can't say anything and you get taken advantage of and, you know, 2030 years, 40 years down the line servitude. So I think, like, in some ways, like, yeah, I understand. Like, it's really weird, but I kind of think that on some level, it's also brilliant.

01:30:20
Case Aiken
Yeah. Because I think you're making a really strong point in terms of if it was a really well established. Like, this is how we're trying to lead people into a more conversational way of speaking with each other or more accepting way of speaking to each other and not having these strict commandments towards one another. But part of it is the compressed timeline here, I think, is also playing against it, because how long these apes weren't even. Obviously, being enslaved for any stretch of time is terrible, but at most, they were enslaved for, like, 20 years before the night of fires, based on the timeline of just that we know of here. So there's kind of that going on there.

01:31:02
Case Aiken
And then, like I said, it would just be nice to sort of explain how no specifically was set up that way beforehand, because, like you said, a pejorative. Like, even if it was just, like. Like, bad ape or something to that effect. Like, okay, that feels like it's specifically a thing being said to these apes, but, like, I have to imagine that no was just one of many things that were said to apes routinely. I don't know, like I said, I just wish that they had set it up more before. All of a sudden, like, oh, the teacher said no, out of instinct in a very rational or, you know, very normal.

01:31:32
Seth
They should have had a kid ape and a kid human dealing with that early so we could see it in, like, a safe space to understand the functionality of it because I wanted to stay. I love the idea of it.

01:31:46
Sam
I think what you could do is you could have the first scene with the teacher, and I think it'd be actually really interesting to have it happen between Caesar and McDonald. Like, McDonald forgetting himself and saying, no, that's not. And then Caesar being like. And having a tension between two people who are actually friends. Right.

01:32:06
Case Aiken
Yeah. And Caesar, who didn't fully experience everything. Like, while he did go through a period of time being a slave, like, he grew up under the control of Armando. Like, Ricardo Maltemon's character. So, like, he would be the one who would be the least scarred.

01:32:21
Sam
Right.

01:32:21
Case Aiken
He could. He could say, like, because we're together and it's quiet or no one else is here. And, like, I. Like, I'm me and you're you and we are friends. And, like, it has not cut me the way it has cut, you know, so many of the people outside these walls. Like, if it was, like, you know, in his cabin or whatever, like, that would, you know, that'd be a good setup. And then, like, you know, do a rule of three, because I think, like, the classroom scene should be, like, the break into.

01:32:45
Seth
Yeah, yeah.

01:32:46
Case Aiken
Or, like, the action that leads to the break into two. You know, like, the. That leads to Caesar having to decide to go out, because it kind of does.

01:32:52
Seth
Oh, yeah.

01:32:53
Sam
Yeah.

01:32:53
Case Aiken
But it's just that this movie is fucking 90 minutes for extended.

01:32:57
Seth
Yeah, like, yeah, it was the extended cut that I watched for this episode as well, so I'm more endeared to that version.

01:33:06
Case Aiken
Yeah, it's surprisingly better without being really, like, it's only ten minutes longer. It's not a ton of stuff is added, but it's. It's just enough, like, just enough mortar scenes. Like, between, like, here's all the bricks that we're laying out. Like, here's how it connects. And, like, the stuff of the doomsday cult is better set up in the. The extended cut, it's still real fucking fast. It's, like, 95 minutes.

01:33:28
Seth
It's got a lot to show us. Got a lot to talk about.

01:33:31
Case Aiken
Anyway, that was just, like, a thing that kept. Because it's such an early scene, like, you know, we get the law giver. We have five minutes of footage from the previous movie, and then we have, like, three minutes of just, like, General Aldo riding on horseback before he goes to the classroom. And then, like, it jumps in. Like, I like that classroom scene up until that point. I really like when Cornelius II makes a joke making fun of gorillas and all the gorillas laugh in agreement because they also agree, like, oh, yeah, we would totally just be, like, practicing riding and shooting. That's how we are, right? Yeah. That felt like a fun bit.

01:34:06
Seth
That's little character development for Cornelius to show what kind of a leader he would have become had he survived the story. It was really cool of them to see that he was really studying his father, to follow in his footsteps. And so that's, like, proof of good environment being useful for the continuation of peace. He is the core of the soul of the movie, and so him dying at the end is another reason that I think it's so nihilistic.

01:34:37
Sam
Speaking of extended cuts, this episode is about to become one.

01:34:42
Case Aiken
Yeah, we should get into it.

01:34:43
Seth
I would like to say before went on air that I was told that I needed to bring it. Like, bring the a game. So.

01:34:51
Sam
Wow. I'm gonna tell you right now before we go commercial break. You can bring whatever game you want. Like, you don't have to bring a games. We're cool. We're very cool people.

01:35:02
Case Aiken
That's easy for you to say. You're the one who said that he needed to bring the a game.

01:35:06
Sam
I did. Oh, crap. It was me. Sorry. I take it back, but I don't. That was a different timeline.

01:35:13
Seth
Yeah, yeah. We swerved into a different lane, we.

01:35:17
Case Aiken
Broke the wheel of time, and now we're going off into all of our c game pitches.

01:35:21
Sam
Either way, that's when I chose violence. Now I choose peace.

01:35:25
Case Aiken
All right, either way, we need to take a sidestep. In time. We're going to hear some ads from some of the other great shows on our network, and when we come back, we're going to have some pitches.

01:35:36
Sam
Hey there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snarky?

01:35:40
Case Aiken
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

01:35:44
Sam
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

01:35:49
Case Aiken
I mean, who doesn't? Screen Snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

01:35:56
Sam
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks. We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

01:36:09
Case Aiken
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

01:36:14
Sam
POV podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts. Fresh and tasty off the presses.

01:36:20
Case Aiken
What? That's, no, that's not.

01:36:22
Sam
Can I call them screen beans now?

01:36:25
Seth
Fine, screens beans.

01:36:32
Case Aiken
So tune in and we'll see you at the movies or on a couch somewhere.

01:36:37
Seth
Cause your whole screen beans now she will be mine.

01:36:41
Sam
Aurora.

01:36:46
Case Aiken
Hey. Oh, hey, Jeff. What's going on, guys? Oh, you know, talking about Superman. Oh, cool. I could talk about Superman. I could talk some more about Superman.

01:36:55
Sam
We know.

01:36:56
Case Aiken
I'll bet a few people would want to get in on this. I'm down. You know it. That sounds like fun. I'll do it. Cool. Let's do it. We can call the show men of steel and you can find it@certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Yay. And we're back. Alright, so we have talked a lot about all the quantum possibilities of the battle for the planet of the apes, but why don't we focus on what we think our preferred quantum reality would be? So, Seth, here's the deal. I am not allowed to go before Sam. That is the one rule that we've got. So you, Seth, as the guest, would you like to take the first swing or would you like Sam to take the first swing?

01:37:38
Seth
I'm curious to hear what Sam had. We got a little taste of it earlier and it piqued my interest and I'm going to keep mine on the shorter side in the middle because I feel like you and I, case, may have landed on some similar things and so maybe I might be a good supplementary writer to you on this. So. So I'll let Sam go first. I'll kind of like dump my couple ideas and then we can jump into yours and see if mine fit in anywhere.

01:38:03
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:38:04
Sam
Okay, cool. Yeah, and this can totally be collaborative because I feel like, I kind of feel like everyone's kind of going to merge into something because you said before that you wanted to be a little more political. And my thing is, as much as I connect with Genera Aldo and sympathize with him, clearly I didn't actually know that I would become such a villain apologist until I started doing the show because I definitely end up finding ways to be like, well, but I really feel like the motivation for this villain was this, but I really liked his character. I thought this was a good performance overall. I think that I wanted to see a little more of, like, a sneaky usurping, right? Like, like he's not good necessarily at the writing and the philosophy, right.

01:38:50
Sam
But where he excels, where this intelligence is, because there's different types of intelligence, right? And we often like to pretend that there's just, like, Aristotle sitting on it, but there's different types. So, so this is what this guerrilla is good at. He's good at warfare. He is good at. He is good at being sneaky. He's good at being stealth. He is. I'd make him a little sneakier. I'd make him a little less, like, bombastic. I'd make him bombastic in front of people with his false pride and puffing up his chest. Because I think that's very gorilla. I think that's very, like, what we kind of think about when we think about gorillas. And I would keep that, but I would keep kind of, like, underneath it all, this, like, very sly, conniving.

01:39:37
Sam
I would basically make sure that he's a true version of, like, brutus or someone from the roman court that could actually, like, take Caesar on. Maybe not when it comes to, like, you know, writing or philosophy, but when it comes to waging war. And then again, I have limited time, right. But let's say I had some time. I might build out a little bit of the loyalty with him and his girl es squad, and I would make it so that they who suffered especially probably, you know, definitely longer than Caesar, were basically picking off the remainder of humankind. People who had scattered, who weren't necessarily living in the community, you know, showing him being aggressive to the humans in the community, disrespectful, but, like, biding his time with them because Caesar is towing, you know, he's toeing the line. He lives in this community.

01:40:36
Sam
But anyone who's not in the community's protection, what do you know? See what Caesar doesn't know about. And so I would make that the reason why it's so much easier for the cultists to continue, for the cult leader to keep people in check, right? Because if you leave here, if you go outside, I can't offer you protection. Here we have weapons here we have all the things that can protect you. And so building those two elements out, because that is a big struggle of what Caesar has to deal with here, right? Because it's not just within his society, which is already fragmented, but having General Aldo play an even more fracturing role in the fact that he's actively fracturing outside of their community. Right.

01:41:30
Sam
Which is, like, really devious of him, because there's no way for new humans to find their settlement and find salvation. And so he's sowing discord in the region, which, again, that kind of equals into the issue we've been having. Or one of the issues we discussed is that we don't really get the sense that there's much more than what there is, right. And we can do this with a couple of shots kind of at night, you know, because I would assume that he and his squad would go out when they would be least watched by the rest of the community. And you can do it in shadow with a couple of different extras that you don't really see. You can use the same couple of guys with different clothing, actually, and kind of have them, like, coming back with. With new objects, right?

01:42:19
Sam
Like, oh, no, we just found this. We went, like. We went on raids, but they're actually, like, killing people and taking their shit, and they feel like it's stuff that they're owed, right? That. That they're owed this for. For their slavery. And so I think that will make it more interesting, because then when Caesar and. And his little trio, which I get, it's much. It's a small group, right? You know, wanna go. And when they go into the cultist area, they're already used to being preyed upon, and so then they're more alert and trying, like. And they're wondering, like, what the fuck they're doing in there. But it doesn't matter. Like, they're here to annihilate us. Right? And this allows the cult leader to mobilize them enough to be like, no, we need to take the fight to them.

01:43:07
Sam
And I think that is enough motivation to kind of set off the war that needs to, like, for that little war that happened again, I understand they didn't have a lot of money. They didn't have a lot of extras, but I think with a little, like, nighttime shooting, things like that, you can use the same humans whose skin is falling off to be the people that they're doing. I think it just adds a little more of, like, that political intrigue to it. And then because of that, I would cut down on some of the longer scenes where, like, I would put a little more story in and a little less shooting in. Like, I don't need all of the explosions. And specifically, I mean, like, when they're escaping from. From the city.

01:43:53
Sam
Like, I feel like they should probably be in hot pursuit, but I don't need that scene to be quite as long as I'm getting more story, because, again, we're paying for frame. So, like, I'm trying to work within the budget constraints, and I would like to expand on the. No. I'd like to give one scene of the. No. Maybe I would cut back on some of the. This is what happened in previous, just so that I could have a scene where Caesar reiterates or explains to his friend again, why even to him, because to his people, it's hurtful that he would prefer his friend not say it and what it means, and his friend kind of challenge him on that because he's a friend. And hearing the challenge, I think that would make that sit better, and it would be more interesting.

01:44:45
Sam
And I'm trying to work with my limited time, and because I only have, what, 90 minutes.

01:44:52
Case Aiken
Well, that's just what it ended up being. The bigger issue is you're working with your budget.

01:44:58
Sam
So I would be, like, nighttime, that kind of thing. Just a couple of those. We already have the horses. We'll just do it the same day. And then we shoot. We shoot. We shoot the sabotage scenes the same time we shoot the little war scene. And then I would basically. Oh, man. See, I really would like the fight to be fixed because that, like, focusing on just the knife and then just being, like, the implication of Valdo falling off was just kind of flame to me. And, like, that's, like, something that I really wish I could fix, and I don't know how I would fix it in the era in those costumes on a tree branch, other than maybe, like.

01:45:39
Case Aiken
I mean, less wides. That's. Yeah, like, more close ups.

01:45:43
Sam
Close ups. And maybe have the knife jab and then have an arm, like, basically push it away, and then I'll do fall. Then you hear the sound of falling. So, like, maybe, basically, it needs to.

01:45:54
Case Aiken
Be the end of Disney's Tarzan.

01:45:56
Sam
Yes. Yes.

01:45:57
Seth
That's what it needs to be.

01:45:59
Case Aiken
Like, that's how that fight needs to go.

01:46:00
Sam
Yeah. Thank you. You fixed it. You fixed it. So, yeah, I would basically fix that. And I I'm fine with the endings the way that it ended. I'm fine with all the. The messages with the disarmament and anti like war and all of that stuff. So I'd keep all that stuff. And, yes, I would let Caesar's son die, because I think that it's important for him to want to face Aldo because of that. And I would have him face the realization. So those are my main changes. Just to make the front of the movie a little more interesting for me and give a little more depth to why. Why humans join cults. I mean, I know it's easy for us to join cults, but why stay in radiation? And also to give.

01:46:49
Sam
Give General Aldo, I think, the respect that he deserves and give him the propensity and the skill to actually be someone who is sly and conniving and calculating, even if he can't, because I think there are plenty of people who can't read and can't write but can definitely still politically handle other people, and I think that should be acknowledged, and General Aldo can be their hero. And that's my pitch.

01:47:17
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, I think you nail a huge thing that I. As soon as you said it out loud, I'm like, oh, my God, that exactly, like, needs to be darker. Like, there. There's so many. I. Like, I was sick of this when I was watching the movie, but, like, I wasn't thinking how I would do it, just like, oh, it's weird that everything is daytime because they do have a couple night shots in there. Like, there are the night shots when. When Cornelius II goes out and, like, oversee overhears Aldo.

01:47:38
Seth
Yeah.

01:47:39
Case Aiken
Murdered or, you know, wounded and then dies later. So, like. Like, you could easily have, like, gorillas riding on horseback with, like, torches and then save money on costumes, because, like, you'll. You're getting the silhouettes for some of these people. Yeah, you could. You could easily have, like, much cheaper masks and whatnot on riding it, and that could be a really scary visual. And I think that the idea of them going out raiding does a really good job of sort of being one of the two solutions for, like, what's going on with the mutants. Like, the other one, Seth said earlier, what. What if they were trapped and the apes coming actually freed them? But either one of those, I think, works perfectly fine.

01:48:15
Case Aiken
And the idea of the apes being out there, building off of that, what if the whole extended writing sequence was them capturing humans and dragging them back? And that sets up why there are humans there in the first place, and you can set up the policy is, okay, we found humans out in the wild, and we brought them into our society and asked them to join us, and then you could do a setup for the world.

01:48:37
Sam
Yeah.

01:48:38
Case Aiken
That. That you're in, and then you can explain, like, okay, and this is how the apes. Like, eventually, the gorillas get worse. You know, they, like, they start becoming, you know, like, the shot of them imprisoning everyone, I thought it was a really good shot in the movie that we got, like, build on that and, you know, have them already have this role of being, like, you know, like, rounding up all the. All the strays that are out there in the world and bringing them in, and it becomes more violent, and eventually you could see how it would turn into the apes of the future.

01:49:05
Sam
Yeah, because I think also, like, you know, I think that, like, in, like, what. The question we asked at the top of this, you know, that's that Seth asked at the top, did he earn that title of general? Well, in my version, yeah, he has that title. It is his title. And he is a general. And he does go out and he does do these raids, and he does bring people back. And some people he doesn't bring back. And. And that he starts to undermine Caesar, which is very common. Right. Like, without throughout literature, where a king will have a trusted. You know, you have a man to advise you, and then you have a man for a weapon that's, like, very. Like, not even just, like, western media. That's also, like, in other types of media, they'll like.

01:49:53
Sam
And then someone will decide that they're taught. They're like, wait, but I'm your arm. Like, when you want violence done, you send me out. Why am I listening to you? Like, I'm clearly the hand that does it. Like you say, but I'm what does it. So, like, I'm the hand that should be doing. So what if I'm in the position and. Oh, my gosh. Case you. This is where you can have. Oh, God, I'm gonna forget his name again. Virgil, be kind of evil because he can lead. Like, he can basically philosophically be just like, well, you're just serving a new master, aren't you? Like, he totally worm tongue that whole thing.

01:50:32
Case Aiken
Yeah, you're kind of getting to where my pitch is gonna go. No, no, it's fine. That's why I just didn't, like, chime in on that part.

01:50:37
Sam
I'm sorry. It just, like, I was like, no.

01:50:40
Case Aiken
Like, again, we're kind of all building this because, like, we are stuck with a $1.7 million budget. Like, there's only so much. You know, when we did, like, the Star wars movies, it's like, yeah, they could fucking do anything.

01:50:51
Sam
Yeah.

01:50:52
Case Aiken
They could have been anything about anyone, right. With anyone. Like, they could. Could hire any actor. This is a very tight budget. We are very stuck with, like, some things. And so, like, I think anything that we're working with is still going to be kind of close to the original in some way. And I think we agree there's good ideas. So it's like, just, how do you, like, take those ideas?

01:51:10
Seth
Yeah, there's some fleecing together to happen, and we don't even do the budget and time period stipulations on my show. So this is, like, extra hard mode, but it's all right. I'm. Can I wait?

01:51:24
Sam
I want to say one last, please. So I don't step on your. So instead of having Virgil do it, I don't have a worm tongue thing. I have McDonald's stepping out of line and general Aldo basically telling him what his place is. And because he's pissed off, McDonald says something to him of being like, well, we all serve Caesar, don't we? And then walks away. And that's what. What sparks in general Aldo that he needs to, like. Like, wait, he's right. I'm actually under someone's thumb, and I shouldn't have to be. Cause that would make him more angry if a human said to me, all.

01:52:01
Case Aiken
Right, and honestly, you could have a. Why not both here? So I think that all works. I think that all works great.

01:52:06
Sam
Okay.

01:52:07
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:52:08
Sam
Seth, your turn.

01:52:10
Seth
I need more of the budget back to do what I want to do. And I don't know if this breaks the rules of the show at all, but if it's me, you can.

01:52:19
Case Aiken
You can go for a bigger budget, but you would have to say, if you're a producer, how would you.

01:52:23
Seth
No, I'm sticking within the. I'm aiming to stick within the budget for this. I just. I don't know if what I'm about to suggest will break the rules of the show. I don't need the mutants at all in this story whatsoever.

01:52:33
Case Aiken
Okay.

01:52:34
Seth
I think we could get everything that we want out of a couple adjustments to the a story. We can keep aspects from the mutant outing if we need to. But as I watch the movie and as I listen to what we're landing on. So my pitch stems off of. I wanted to follow down the Moses analogy stuff, so I wanted to go really israelite with it. And so I looked into some biblical law, and I thought it'd be really cool if our movie is in this setting about 40 years in the future, giving us a little extra timeline to mess around with stuff. Caesar will be much older, so he's a wizened, older Moses leader, and they're about to enter into a seven year time of Jubilee is what it was called in the Bible. And basically this is the changing of the guard.

01:53:32
Seth
This is the part where they're about to allow humans the same access levels as apes. And so the rule of no is about to change. Allowing humans onto the war council is about to change. Like all of the stuff that is called out as issues within their society across this movie, I want to make that. The plot points. I want to make all of that. What is inhibit to what's happening to the story? So basically, Caesar declared that after 40 years of integration, humans sharing their knowledge, ape sharing their philosophy, integrating society, overseen by the gorillas. This is important. The gorillas have overseen this entire system just to make sure that there was no human uprising. We could even reference. Maybe there was a previous human uprising or something like that. So anyway, the guerrillas have had the power for the last 40 years.

01:54:24
Seth
And now basically they're being told that you are going to give some of the guns and some of the access, some of the stuff over to humans and we get a. I said I want to lean into political intrigue. I want Virgil to be a straight wormtongue that is trying to turn this back around to put him on top of the gorillas and then negate this year of Jubilee or the seven years of Jubilee that Caesar's going for. I don't have a better term for it, so I'm just going to use the biblical term for now. So I think like a dune style changing of the guard. This is, you know, the Atreides coming to Araxes and taking over. This is. And Caesar's overseeing all of this. He's, like, maintained this kind of Paul Atreides top level where he's overseeing this.

01:55:11
Seth
And he kind of is burdened with this job and watching the changeover because I liked, like I mentioned before, I liked that he has this man that is his conscience within his order. Like, I love that he kind of takes these metaphors and literalizes them. So I'd love to see him literalizing that for humans across this changeover period. And this is what leads to the battle for the planet of the apes. The finale, sans mutants, is going to be kind of the humans and the chimps working together to stop this, overthrowing this kind of underhanded political move within there. And this is the other part I want to establish that this is the only society left on Earth. This is it. They've been out. They've explored. Nothing else is out. The humans have wiped themselves out.

01:56:03
Seth
And it was the peacekeeping of the apes with humans that kept them safe in their environment. So they kind of became the proto janitors of this future ape society. So that's kind of bigly where I would go in and strip pages out of the script and be like, hey, let's focus in on this a plot, the stuff at home. Locationally, you really don't even need to change that much like the fact that they live in an oasis utopia in the middle of the desert. I say play into that. The gorillas are sick of having protected the borders out in the sands. They're ready to come in and have all of the lush greenery around them. But there's fucking humans everywhere and they hate them. Cause they've been staving off maybe mutant humans from this area.

01:56:52
Seth
If you had to keep the mutants, you could do that where they're out on their rides protecting the humans from mutants if you have to have it. But I don't. Even if we need to send Caesar out of the plot to go find the video of his parents and come back with that knowledge to affect change, that can stay and you can have maybe the machinations of Virgil being played out while he's gone. If you wanted to do like a b plot in the middle, there's. Because I like the. Again, the stuff that they landed on, having the mutants talk about who attacked first. You could have the gorillas have that exact same conversation amongst themselves. I don't think. The idea doesn't have to be specifically the mutants delivering it.

01:57:34
Seth
You could have the gorillas fighting that out amongst themselves while Caesar talks to his wife about it. So you still have the same contrasting bits there. I want to keep the ideas of the movie rolling. I think I really want to focus on what is it about this society that is causing all of this turmoil and upheaval that might lead to just repeating slave states into the future?

01:57:59
Case Aiken
Yeah, piggybacking off of that, going with that scenario. If Caesar actually goes into the irradiated city and the mutants are there, but they are in secret, literally. You catch them spying on the apes as they move through, but never actually confront them or anything to that effect. You still get that setup for like, oh, there's a secret society of mutants living underground without actually having to deal with it. And I get from a budget standpoint, the rationale was like, all right, it's easier to have these people be our antagonists because they're humans with just some minor makeup as opposed to anything else. But no, I like that idea. I especially like the bigger time jump there. I think that does a lot, because that also kind of resolves, like, why are they all so smart already?

01:58:42
Sam
Yeah.

01:58:43
Seth
And you can have, you know, a young cornelius within this story still. I think they're functionally, there's a space for, you know, a kid to be kind of. I would like him to be our audience pov, more than anything, as he's learning about this greater society that he lives in and why they have the rules they have, he can functionally explain things to the audience like, we're his age, and then we see, and once we get the nugget of that, seeing that playing out in the bigger field with the adults, it's like, oh, okay. He's just being taught the way that they're fucking things up kind of.

01:59:15
Sam
Yeah. Also, he's so young that he didn't really. He's the newer generation.

01:59:20
Seth
He doesn't carry any of that trauma with him.

01:59:23
Sam
I mean, there'll be some generational trauma, but not. But he won't. He'll have lived in a society where he's known good humans more so than anyone else. You know? I mean, yes, Caesar had his. But I mean, like, the other. The other apes, he will. He will have had been raised by his father, who knew someone who cared for him, who, you know, and. And then been around humans who care for him. So he will be more sympathetic than some of the others.

01:59:53
Seth
Yeah. And my thought, too, of adding that time in it, like, it could be his grandson. You know what I mean? Like, it could be Cornelius could be a grandson in that situation, just to show how quickly one generation in between things can jump and diverge. Maybe the old guard of apes that knew the human society previously, maybe there's not many of them left. And so now you're getting into a society that is fully assumed to itself. Like, these people were born into a whole generation, born into their own society that are now running things based off of their experiences instead of the struggles that the previous generation with Caesar had gone through. I like the idea that they're kind of holed up in that little oasis like they've been. You know? I really want to push into that.

02:00:41
Case Aiken
Yeah. I think that the fact that it's so lush and green for so much of the movie does not sell the nuclear winter that the world does.

02:00:49
Seth
Matt, painting cutaways. I mean, they're nice looking, man.

02:00:52
Case Aiken
Yeah. No, I like that. I think that works for a lot of it. It would still be a shorter movie. Like, I don't. I don't think you could. Like, we're not ending up with a very fleshed out part just because, like, there's only so many players involved and that you can have the money to have, like, good looking makeup for and stuff like that.

02:01:08
Seth
Exactly. Yeah, I try to. I wanted to work with just the characters that we had within this already because, honestly, really, the way they should have gone with this is like a tombstone thing. It should have been like, we're just so disconnected from any of this that we're just meeting all new characters and how they're dealing with this future and that kind of, if you're going for an Oasis setup, I guess, like a.

02:01:33
Case Aiken
Really old Caesar, and that's the only character that's, like.

02:01:35
Seth
Exactly. Yeah.

02:01:37
Case Aiken
I mean, I do really like that take where you go that much further because I think that also addresses one of the issues, which is that, like, Roddy McDowell is both a little bit older at this point and also just like, a human. And so is not going to be, like, doing the really, like, acrobatic kind of stunts you would expect an ape to be doing. Like, even. Even his son character has, like, some swinging scenes that we just never get, like, Roddy McDowell doing. And, you know, that's a limitation of just, like, you know, what you can do with your lead actor when they're just, like, an adult male, as opposed to, like, something with, like, the agility that far exceeds anything humanity has to offer.

02:02:11
Seth
Something. I think the Tim Burton version did pretty well. Was the wire working and making it believable that these guys could have these, like, strengths and abilities.

02:02:23
Case Aiken
Some of it, they went a little too far. Some of the jumps are, like, a little insane, but. But, yes, I agree. Yeah. Like, again, man, if you had the Tim Burton production values on this.

02:02:31
Seth
That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

02:02:33
Case Aiken
God, even just this script, like, I. It would be so much more interesting than what we got. Well, I like both of yours because I like, I was going a little bit closer to the original, what we had, and not deviating quite as far forward in the future. But I do really like that. And that timeline, I think, helps some of it. So you could work with that, too. For what I was kind of thinking, my big thoughts were, as we're all kind of going, Virgil is like a warm tongue. Like, I think that he should be the shit starter in this whole thing. You know, I think mendemus kind of fills the role of, like, Maurice in the more recent movies. And, like, if he had been sort of the orangutan that Caesar would go to confide in.

02:03:12
Case Aiken
And it's like, oh, but you have a new advisor now. Virgil is the law giver now, or Virgil or the law keeper or something to that effect. And that sort of speaks to the change in the role of orangutans over time, where at first they are writing down the dictates of Caesar at this point, and Caesar is the one setting forth everything. And in the future, they will be presenting themselves as this iconoclastic force controlling what everyone thinks. Like, that. They. It's like, no, you cannot think any way than the way that we set out for you all, you know, because I think they're like that. That intersection of how political forces work with each other in the original planet of the Apes is so fucking cool. And, like, ultimately, Seth, like, what you're pitching is a defund the police movie.

02:03:58
Case Aiken
You know, like, the gorillas are the police in this scenario that have gotten, you know, they took a position of authority based on a need to establish peace. Like, they became this, like, military control and then relinquishing that authority is the thing that they're having a difficulty with in your pitch. And I think that's really cool. You know, I don't know if America was ready to have that conversation then. It's certainly not now. But it's at least, like, in our lexicon to, like, even talk about it. So I think that's really cool. And I think you can do it that way or you. You can keep the mutants as, like, as an additional player.

02:04:31
Case Aiken
And, you know, if, like, Caesar is the thing that is different in this timeline, like, if his presence is why they might not go into a direction of pure violence, I think that could be kind of interesting.

02:04:41
Seth
I love the mutants as a cautionary tale of, like, look what the humans did to themselves, homie. Like, this is not cool.

02:04:48
Case Aiken
Well, and building off of that in the second movie, establishing, like, oh, yeah, no, some did hide away. Like, I thought was at least an interesting element totally. Of that movie. Like, you know, it does kind of, like, make you question some of it, but, like, no, it's. If the. If the apes have. Have had the run of things, that makes enough sense. And in your scenario where we don't even, like, have the mutants as players and they're just, like, literally, like, hiding in the darkness when apes move through their space because, like, they are so devastated and so scared of the outside world, and that plays into their xenophobia that eventually will be magnified by the time we get to the future timeline. Awesome. You know?

02:05:22
Seth
Yeah.

02:05:23
Case Aiken
I love anything we can do in this movie to, like, play up, like, where we're going to get to in the later movies or rather earlier movies later in the timeline. Man, that's wild to talk about. My big thoughts are, yeah, so Virgil is like a wormtongue type character who's, like, manipulating things. And then in that regard, I actually think Aldo should be more sympathetic at the beginning and then push too far. I feel like he should be like a Macbeth type if Virgil is like a lady Macbeth here. Because when he first arrives in the human camp and helps pick up the.

02:05:53
Case Aiken
The wagon so that they can put the wheel on and stuff, I feel like those are moments where the guerrillas should sort of gravitate towards these positions that are kind of the manual labor positions out of a pride that they, like that they are so strong and that they are so capable and that they should be motivated to assert military power by way of the orangutans who are not as strong in this scenario and are not as capable of, like, fully usurping these roles. And then when they actually grab for power and actually political power, that should be motivated by Virgil being like, but you are so strong. You've been the one who's been protecting our borders for kind of thing. And Virgil shouldn't actually have a comeuppance at the end of the movie. I don't think.

02:06:40
Case Aiken
I think Virgil should then rat out Aldo at the end the same way that he does. But in this scenario, it's like, it should have been. He's been holding that information and now he reveals it to everyone, you know? And, like, Virgil should be the whole time positioning himself to be the one in power, the one actually controlling. I think that's. I think that's really good there. But I also think that all of the apes need to be dumber. I think that them being as sophisticated as they are, especially ones like Virgil, where, like, we're talking about, like, physics, I think is crazy. Like, regardless of, like, how. How smart they could possibly have become in this interim. If it's the nuclear radiation, if it's some virus from the future, from a different movie that hasn't come out yet, like, whatever.

02:07:20
Case Aiken
But it doesn't make sense that they would have the grasp of subject matter. Even if they're smart, it doesn't make sense that they would have. Like, when Virgil was talking and Caesar says, like, can you explain that in terms that even Caesar could understand? I'm like, fucking hell, man. You're supposed to be the smartest ape, right?

02:07:37
Sam
Yeah.

02:07:37
Case Aiken
And, like, I feel like that's a place for Cornelius as well as the. As the only direct offspring of this lineage of future apes. Like, Cornelius should have been the bright future for them, the next in the line of these innately smart apes, as opposed to the ones that are in the process of being uplifted. And I feel like he should have more burden to be the leader by virtue of the fact that he is so stellar compared to all the other apes. I think it makes sense for them to be smart or working their way, but I just don't think that they should have, you know, like, it should be more, like, broken english kind of speech for all of them, especially the gorillas. Like, the speech Aldo gives about guns.

02:08:16
Seth
Love that.

02:08:16
Case Aiken
And, like, how that's important. That actually feels like, the right cadence for where the apes should be. You know, they're. They're articulate enough that it's not, like, painful to listen to for the audience. I don't think were at a point yet where were going to do a whole sign language movie here. Like, that just wasn't going to happen. That said, if you're watching dawn of the planet the apes and you can turn off the subtitles, that's. It's a fucking amazing time. You'll let. You'll thank me for it, but, like, you know, we just weren't there here in 1973, gonna do a whole sign language movie. Like, that just wasn't gonna happen. So, like, have broken English, but don't have the language be so complex that we have jokes about how someone is smarter than Caesar. Like, that doesn't make sense.

02:08:54
Case Aiken
Like, have Caesar be, like, very smart. And that's why he thinks he's got the right idea, but it's being reinforced by the fact that he's talking to people who are struggling to keep up him. And I think that's a scenario that would allow for his hubris to be even further. That would have the tragedy of Cornelius dying be even more profound, because now, like, the idea of Caesar having no heir is actually really cool, because then you're like, oh, well, but now they don't have the steward to sort of, like, shine them on the way. Now, in terms of outfits, how do you make that work? I think you keep the jumpsuits from the previous movies. I would love to have long hair on these apes.

02:09:29
Seth
Oh, yeah, yeah.

02:09:31
Case Aiken
Like, the apes all have this, like, slick back design. I love this. To be the opportunity to have, like, just a little bit more fur coming down on their shoulders and stuff, and I would feel like it would make them feel a bit more feral and help sort of sell this whole thing. It's feral in a different way than the way apes actually look, but I think it would read that way to the audience without it being a big, expensive addition. You know, we're just talking about extensions on the masks that they already have.

02:09:56
Sam
Yeah. Expensive, though. Go on.

02:10:00
Case Aiken
This is true.

02:10:00
Sam
But.

02:10:00
Case Aiken
But they already have the hair on the mask part. It's just the extensions part to make it, like, a bit longer. Sam, I love your idea about, like, them being sort of on the border and whatnot. I think, like, I was, like, tiny, kind of tackling how I wanted to handle the mutants and whatnot on this one. I wasn't quite positive on, like, what, because I was thinking, like, well, maybe the mutants are, like, scoping out gorillas or apesity or whatever it's called at the beginning of the movie. And I'm thinking, like, well, no, actually, I like this idea of the gorillas just being out there, like, rounding up stragglers. Like, you could open with it being, like, a really harsh, desert kind of environment, and, like, a person wandering and starving and whatnot.

02:10:35
Case Aiken
And then all of a sudden, like, a gorilla nets them and drags them back to the. Back to this ape city, and they're, like, actually, like, shown compassion and whatnot. And you can set up this whole, like, this, like, dichotomy of, like, these, like, aggressive, violent actions of the gorillas to, like, capture people. And they see it, you know, this is, like, this is the cop conversation. Like, they see it as being, like, for the greater good, for order, for peace. They're, they're rounding up, like. Like, these random people, but they're doing it painfully. And then, like, it's the. Then all of a sudden, on the chimps and the humans and the orangutans to, like, you know, smooth things over with these people. But this is how you could introduce, like, maybe somewhere in act one after not the.

02:11:14
Case Aiken
Not the first person, but, like, a person later on, they capture, and that's a mutant from the city. And it could be like they finally broke three, or they've been. Every now and then, like, you know, we reveal, like, oh, well, like, we know of you. Like, you're raiding part of. He's capturing anyone who, like, walks through. And we can kind of set up that, this idea that the gorillas have been the scary force for the humans in there, it kind of becomes I am legend.

02:11:36
Seth
Yeah, a little bit.

02:11:37
Sam
Yeah.

02:11:38
Case Aiken
And I actually. I like that. Like, as I say it, I'm like, oh, I like this idea. And the same writers as the omega man, which is then an adaptation of I am legend.

02:11:48
Seth
Perfect.

02:11:49
Case Aiken
Which means it actually feels like it's something that could have happened.

02:11:51
Seth
Yeah.

02:11:52
Sam
Yeah.

02:11:53
Case Aiken
So I think that could be kind of a cool vibe there. And that sort of creates a natural catalyst for if this mutant from the city is being like, you've been raiding our people. You've killed so many. It's like, oh, you have people? Like, where? Oh, like, you mean in the city? And then all of a sudden, McDonald's like, oh, shit. There might be still functional thought things there. Like, we thought it was all bombed out, but if they're saying, like, the lower levels are intact, we actually could access, like, all this stuff. Like, we could find your parents or the Fremen.

02:12:22
Sam
Yeah.

02:12:26
Seth
Oh, yeah. Caesar's trying to make. Make deals with the mutants for their stuff down in the cities. He's trying to establish trade routes that would be so. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. This is the big budget version, though. I'm pitching. I'm pitching stuff.

02:12:40
Case Aiken
We.

02:12:42
Sam
I mean, honestly, like, even. Even on that end, like, you could have the person, like, you know, you have McDonald's say, like, there's all this information down there and be, like, very interested. And he and Caesar. And even, like, Virgil. Right? Because, like, he's kind of worn tongue and knowledge is power, and he knows that. Be interesting what's down there. But what General Aldo hears is that because the guy can also say that they have weapons, and so what hears is threat.

02:13:08
Case Aiken
Yeah.

02:13:09
Sam
And so you have, like, a diverging of, like, you know, differences of opinions in this government between the arm of justice, of violence, of the law, of the general, versus, like, this. Like, these intellectual people who are standing on the other side of Caesar being like, oh, we need to get the knowledge. And general Aldo can be like, no, we need to fucking destroy that place. They have weapons. Like, they're humans with weapons. Like, it's different having humans here who are, like, helping us farm and living here under our protection and our control that are not allowed to say no to us. But it's different having a colony of humans with weapons. And whether or not that guy is telling the truth, it doesn't matter. He said it, like, oh, we have weapons. Like, because he's afraid.

02:13:54
Sam
And that can set, like, a schism between all of them, which Virgil can play, like, both parts to.

02:14:01
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. I was gonna say Virgil then could be the r1. Like, Virgil could put that seed in Aldo's ear.

02:14:07
Seth
Right.

02:14:07
Sam
Well, I think Elder is gonna think it no matter what, because of his.

02:14:10
Case Aiken
Well, but really play it up.

02:14:11
Sam
But I feel like Virgil can be like, no, I understand you. I understand you more than Caesar understands you. But we need to let him go in and get the information, and you can come with us. And if something goes wrong, you know, and kind of had that kind of, like. You know, there's always, you know, in all those great movies, there's always one loose cannon, right? This is. This goes back to aliens. There's always one loose cannon that does something that they're not supposed to do and sets off the shit storm that shouldn't happen. And so you can still have some of the violence that happens and, like, the spurning of, like, the group, if you want to still have that part.

02:14:47
Sam
And you can have that, you know, because you send Aldo or he sends apes with them, who then, like, won't let the diplomatic things happen. And. Yeah, and then you've got a war because it's still based in fear.

02:15:00
Case Aiken
Because I picture it being like, Virgil is like Loki in the first Thor movie, whispering into Aldo, who is Thor in this scenario? Being like, Caesar knows what's best for us, even if there is a threat. But you and I, we know that the humans can't be trusted. If they have weapons, they'll come for us. Like, throw that out there. Like, one thing I think is in the movie, but not really played enough with, is this idea that all the mutants are really sick from all the radiation. Like, I think it'd be interesting if, like, either they're in a safe area in, like, below, but if they come out, they'll get, like, sicker from all the radiation. Or, like, the upper layers are radioactive, but, like, down below.

02:15:36
Case Aiken
Or, like, maybe if the radiation itself is, like, I don't know, like, there's a vibe of, like, almost like you're gonna be trapped there because you'll eventually need the radiation. Like, when he says, we'll become permanent residents, and that doesn't make any sense with science. So maybe it is like, oh, you have to be all the way down and you can't pass through this area without getting increasingly sick, and you just never recover. Anyone who moves through the space will take some kind of damage that is just going to be there forever. And so even going down into the lairs, the apes are affected by it somewhat and vice versa. That's one of the reasons why the mutants have been down there for so long, even if they could escape. And it could be that, like, they only just.

02:16:15
Case Aiken
Just recently were able to get free. And so previous people had always been, like, just random human stragglers versus, like, the actual mutants from, like, the actual, like, survival community at the subterranean group. Either way, I think, like, playing it up where, like, I feel like the humans should feel less pathetic in the way that they look in this movie. They all, like, look a little goofy. Like, when they're traveling, all the shots are terrible of them. Like, riding on motorcycles and stuff. It's, like none of them know how to do any of the things they're doing. Like, the armies are never impressive or anything like that. I think that they need to feel, like, a scary force. Like, a weird force that's, like, gotten really twisted.

02:16:54
Case Aiken
And, like, some of that is just me being affected by the later movies, because, like, war nails it. Like, they. They all have, you know, like, I think if they all had shaved heads and, like, weird marks on their faces and stuff, like, that would work better than the weird caps and stuff. But I realized that bald caps cost money, and, like, you can't pay everyone to shave their head, necessarily. So, like, what are you gonna do to make it work here? I don't know, necessarily maybe make it look a little bit more, like, fake military than, like, weird cults at this point. Just so that, like, you know, they can all have, like, berets on instead of.

02:17:24
Sam
I mean, weird.

02:17:25
Case Aiken
It's really the weird. It's the caps that they're wearing. Like, that throw me off so much. Like, they look so dumb.

02:17:29
Sam
Weird military can also be weird cults. I mean, like, yeah, like, just sell.

02:17:34
Case Aiken
It a little bit better. And I think. And likewise, you know, like, have some outfits, like, you can have, like I said, like, the jumpsuits from before. Or maybe some, like, military fatigues. Raid wardrobe departments that aren't just the planet of the apes, though, because the clothing from the future doesn't work here at this time. You can have elements, but having, like, full on, like, all the orangutans are just wearing those goddamn orange robes. Like, feels like that. They have become the aristocracy of the future already, but it hasn't actually gotten there yet, you know? Like, again, this movie is just, like, has all these ideas it wants to hit, but they're like, well, we've got this one actor who plays this part, and we can't have him be, like, his grandson also, like, that'd be a lot, you know?

02:18:12
Case Aiken
So we want him to be Caesar and not, you know, Cornelius IV or something for that effect. So, like, the timeline is very compressed and, like, they only have so much money, so they have to use it the best they can. But, like, I like this idea of gorillas on horseback with torches at night, like, being really scary, and then you can just have, like, shitty masks on, like, all the ones except for the ones up front. You could really sell those better and have that be a truly terrifying visual at the opening of this starving person who just gets netted all of a sudden, dragged by horseback.

02:18:44
Seth
Yeah. Present it horror. And then discover through pov with this human that they're actually being helped.

02:18:52
Sam
Just have the gorillas not know how to treat people's stuff right. Yeah, it's just not in their forte. Like, I helped you. Why aren't you thanking me? Yes, you're bruised, but are you getting fed? Yes. You're welcome.

02:19:05
Seth
It's k two. So in rogue one, I'm saving you.

02:19:10
Sam
Exactly.

02:19:11
Case Aiken
Yeah. So that's my general thoughts there where it's, like, rewatching this movie, it is surprisingly deeper than I thought it was. Like, it's still tied for last for my Planet of the Apes movies. But there are fun things going on there that I just wish that they could have. Have really gotten onto the screen because you can see where they wanted to go, and they just are so hamstrung by, again, a $1.7 million budget, which is less than it costs to pay two actors on friends in the last season per episode.

02:19:41
Seth
Can I. Can I put on my asshole producer hat for a second and pick the idea? What if. What if we did animated movie of this story instead of trying? What if we capended it with animated film? What if I was, like, an asshole producer that was like, yeah, okay, you guys can finish the story. You can use this script, but you got to animate it. What do you do if this is animated movie?

02:20:04
Case Aiken
Oh, God. I mean, like, I would take kind of what were talking about and go further. I think that would help so much for, like, having all the apes look like apes. Like, the fact that this movie, you know, it was already kind of bad in the previous one, that they. That they didn't look like apes. You know, it like, the. In the original one. It makes sense that, like, okay, it's thousands of years in the future they have been living in a human like society. It makes sense that their body posture and whatnot would have changed a little bit over time for whatever reasons are the justification for their intelligence, but it makes enough sense. And the second one is the same rules. And then the third one, they've gone back in time.

02:20:40
Case Aiken
And all the other apes are either a more conventional gorilla in a costume or an actual chimpanzee that we actually get in the third movies. So, like, though, you know, we know that the chimpanzees look different from the chimpanzees of the future. So when you get to conquest, it's like, it's awkward. And at least they're all hunching and pretending to be sort of, like, animalistic. Yeah. This one would have been really a good spot for them to be still much more ape like and on the verge of being, like, fully ape still.

02:21:04
Seth
What about you, Sam? Anything pop into your head when I say animated instead of live action?

02:21:09
Sam
A way better Caesar, General Aldo fight, for sure. Number one.

02:21:14
Case Aiken
Like, can you imagine if there's, like, primal animated in that style?

02:21:18
Sam
Like, that was, like, my first thing. I was just like, oh. We could, like, actually, like, show, like, a really good fight and it'd be amazing. And that showdown would still definitely be in it. Absolutely. I mean, I actually, like, probably would just expand on, like, what. What we thought and then honestly, like, because I do think that fundamentally, this film is not that bad. It just has a very low budget, and therefore they skimped on a lot of things. And so if they had more time to kind of let the story breathe a little and kind of expand on some of the plot points, I think it actually would have been a pretty good movie.

02:22:02
Seth
Totally.

02:22:03
Sam
So I think. I think just the ability to kind of expand on some of the characters and definitely playing with our pitches and playing with the political nature because this is really also about, like, how do you start a new society, right? And how do you start a new society with people or with creatures that are starting it based on a place of trauma. Right. Because all of. All of the apes have just experienced a trauma. Even if it's. It's only for 15 years, 20 years, they're still starting from a place. I know, Case, you're going to regret that forever.

02:22:41
Case Aiken
I know it's terrible, but is it as terrible?

02:22:45
Sam
Yes, it is. Absolutely is. And so they're still starting from this place of hurt and trauma and distrust. Right? And so they're trying to learn how to trust each other and better than what could actually be in store is basically becoming what. What they were freed from. Right. So. So I think that on some level, like, that's kind of, like, such an interesting story that I don't know that other than expanding on it and really tweaking it and putting in some really kick ass fights and some more acrobatics, which you can totally do easily.

02:23:22
Seth
Right.

02:23:22
Sam
Because you don't have to worry about anyone bodies getting hurt. You don't even have to get stunt people or pay them extra. I think that what it'll allow you to do is be more dynamic with actual physical fighting. And, like, not that I would get rid of the guns because I really like the. Oh, that's an aesthetic anti gun kinda. Right? Like, and I love that, you know, and it's been part of the thing. But I think I personally find more hand to hand combat fights more dynamic. I get really bored in shootouts, which is why I'm not a big western fan. I like high noon and probably high noon only. And that's a good one to hang your hat on. It is a good one to love it. Right.

02:24:10
Sam
But I think that for me, just watching two guys or watching people hide behind things and then shoot at each other and roll out, that's not very dynamic or interesting to me. You put someone on a wire or have people flip around and throw kicks at each other and I'm in. Like, I'm totally in. So, So the apes being animated, you give a chance for them. Yes. They're still going to use the guns, but they're going to be able to use their physicality and he'll be able to incorporate animal physicality into that, especially because the era is not that far forward. Right. So, like, they should still have some more animal.

02:24:46
Seth
Yeah.

02:24:47
Sam
Esque body postures, which I would put into the animation, which I think would make it very interesting and dynamic because you can even show, like, Cornelius, like, as a new generation, walking more upright, doing less ape things, like still climbing around like a kid and stuff like that, and still having those abilities. But you can have him kind of feel a little more detached from those older generations. And I think you do that with animation really well because you don't have to worry about the posture or even people dying of heatstroke in costumes or even, like, back then. I mean, those costumes are amazing, but, you know, there's not a lot of line of sight. Right.

02:25:28
Sam
So I think, like, in a lot of ways, you want to make sure that when your actors are doing any kind of physical work that they can actually see what they're doing, especially if there would be weapons or something like that or hand to hand combat. And those masks didn't really lend for those too much. I mean, you can get it done, but it's hard.

02:25:49
Case Aiken
Are these really that bad? They're noted for being made so that people can ride horseback and whatnot on it.

02:25:56
Sam
Yeah, that's true. And what is great about, especially in this film, you can tell that they really left space for the eyes, which is actually kind of why I like the fact that the actors are actually in the costume, even though you're totally right about the basketball players. But because you can read the actor's eyes, like, you really get their expressions. Like, even if the mouth doesn't move as much as we would like it to, which is why it was dubbed, you do read real things in the actor's eyes. And I will say that's why, you know, when you say, like, this is a great performance, it's because in the eyes there's something, you know. Yeah. When Caesar says to Aldo, ape killed ape. You killed my son. And then you see, like, General Aldo's reaction to it. Like, oh, shit.

02:26:46
Seth
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:26:48
Sam
You know, it is real. And that's, you know, kudos to the actors and to the mask makers for leaving space around the eyes so you get those expressions. But. But, yeah, I just think animation in general will free up some of the movement.

02:27:02
Case Aiken
Yeah. I also think that animation lends itself towards wide shots.

02:27:05
Seth
Totally.

02:27:06
Case Aiken
Obviously, drawing out, like, individual soldiers is really rough. And that has only gotten to be a thing you can really do now with computer generated images. But you can have big cinematic backdrops and have things moving through it in a way that you just mats as good as they can be, are still going to look like a different thing than the human actors moving through it. If you were to try to composite those kind of shots. And also, it's, you know, layering it is a bit more difficult when you're. When we're talking about, you know, earlier filmmaking techniques. It's not like they were green screening it.

02:27:39
Seth
I just. I think about the. The visual of being able to watch apes, like, pull apart our old world. But, like, with their physicality, you know, like hanging off of a bookshelf and reading through, you know, leftover books in a. In a busted out house or I just. The. The image of apes exploring our world and, like, pulling information out of it because they can literally understand it. That lends itself, I think, a lot to animation.

02:28:09
Sam
Yeah, I think would have been really cute. Now that we're talking about, this is like having Cornelius kind of go into a sector that's kind of not. He's not supposed to be in kind of flipping around and bringing back knowledge and, like, kind of getting scolded by people. Maybe even have, like. Like, the general, like, save him. Like, so that adds, like, a layer because, first of all, you add more connection for us as, like, viewers to him, and then you add, like, a relationship between them, which makes the betrayal even worse, which I love.

02:28:46
Case Aiken
But I gotta tell you, though, that is exactly what they do with Koba when they get to dawn, like, Copenhagen, bright eyes. Like, that's. That is the thing which is talking about this movie. I'm like. I am also acutely aware that, like, literally the better version, the better big budget version has been.

02:29:02
Seth
Yeah, yeah.

02:29:02
Case Aiken
Like, already.

02:29:03
Seth
Yeah. They literally. They rescued their own movie.

02:29:06
Case Aiken
They split it up into two, and they put a lot of money into it. We got, like, truly incredible movies. This is what if you're trying to take. If you're trying to do an abridged cut of dawn and war and only had $1.7 million, this is the movie would make back in the seventies.

02:29:25
Seth
Maybe there was real time travel involved with this.

02:29:31
Case Aiken
It's just such a crazy franchise. Like, I can't think of any other franchise that's quite like this in terms of it being, like, honestly, this, like, depressing social commentary thing. But also, like, you know what? Sometimes just looking at, like, people dressed up like gorillas makes you smile. So, like, there's, like, that endearing side to it. But it's also. War is hell. Man is awful. Everything's gonna end poorly. Like, the cycle of violence and trauma will never be broken. Also time travel.

02:29:55
Seth
Yeah. Just to complicate things even more.

02:29:58
Case Aiken
But I think that we are in danger of traveling back to the beginning and starting this whole process over. At this point, I feel like we have talked through quantum circles, and I think that we should probably call it because we're gonna have a lot more conversation about the planet of the franchise. But this movie being fairly short and, you know, they were kind of, like, locked into a lot of the stuff they had. You know, would it have been cool to see a really big budget version of, like, the ape city? Like, if they had, like, rated, like, trailer parks and, like, brought in, like, mobile homes and stuff and, like, mixed it in with tree house.

02:30:30
Seth
Exactly.

02:30:31
Case Aiken
Could have been really cool. They weren't going to do that. They didn't have the money. Like, the production values we got are actually kind of impressive. Like, you, like, you can tell the people that they spent a lot of time on for makeup versus the ones. There's some shots where I'm like, ooh, why'd you cut to a close for that one like that? That was not the person to do that for. But, you know, it. It's functional. And this movie made 8.8 million, so it. No matter what.

02:30:57
Seth
Yeah. Money hand over.

02:30:58
Case Aiken
And the franchise is beloved for all the weirdness of it. And, like, even if it's tied for worst, it still part of a franchise that I love, and I'm really glad we're talking about it.

02:31:10
Seth
I have a hard time disliking movies that swing for the fences like this.

02:31:13
Case Aiken
Yeah. Like, you can't get that mad about it because they're still doing something fucking wild to bring it back to dune. It's kind of like the David James Dune.

02:31:20
Seth
Right?

02:31:21
Case Aiken
Like, oh, you took a real hard swing there. That ended up real weird, guys.

02:31:26
Seth
I feel like we've done a great job setting the table of, like, the films to come in this series because it really is going touch on everything.

02:31:35
Case Aiken
Yeah. Oh, man. And they're all so weird and different and fun in different ways. I think the challenge that this movie had, which I don't think it fully got over, is that the battle part of it, like, this. Sort of, like, this final conclusion of.

02:31:47
Seth
The war for the Planet of the.

02:31:50
Case Aiken
Apes, but the war for the soul, because, like, the end of conquest, that could have been the end of the franchise. And it's just like, shit's gotten dark. We're going into a bad place. Like, everything's gonna be the way it was. This movie had to be, like, an actual, like, argument about, like, knowing that the future might end poorly. Can you fix it or are you stuck with it? And they just didn't have the. Enough to get over that hump because I think that is the interesting part there because otherwise, you're. You basically are just, like, you know, doing a second round for the. For the rebellion that happened in the movie prior. But I look, like I said, I love this franchise. I'm really glad we're talking about it. Seth, thank you for coming on the show.

02:32:29
Case Aiken
It has been way too long of us, like, passing in the night as two gorillas that just didn't have torches.

02:32:36
Sam
Got to get those torches.

02:32:37
Case Aiken
Yeah. So give longer plugs. Who are you? Where can people find all the things you're working on?

02:32:42
Seth
Yeah, so the spiel is, I run a media company called Monchester Media. We are just trying to make a little bit of everything. Currently, my dream is to get a feature film created. We were able to shoot a really cool treatment for it up in Salem over the summer. Case was able to stop through and is in the background of one of the shots himself. That's kind of the project that's occupying all my time right now. If you want to follow the adventures on that, I'm on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram eth decker, you can follow me there and ontressermedia on those platforms as well if you want to follow the more production end of things. But I tweet about how things are going more often than I tweet about it from the business account, if I'm going to be honest. Yeah.

02:33:33
Seth
We make podcasts on our own network as well. That sub network is called Jaguar Sharks, where we make podcasts about movies. I host one very similar to the show where we pitch rewrites and fixes for movies. We have split the difference where we talk about movies and their remakes and kind of compare and contrast where the world was at the time and why we got the movies that we got when we got them. And then our last one is called Mindbrain movies, where we take a psychological look at film and psychology and mental health in film. You can check all those out on anywhere you get podcasts. They're on all your major streaming ones.

02:34:14
Case Aiken
Yeah, everyone should check out all of those. You know, I'm so excited for the progress that you guys have been making on. On just everything and, like, actually expanding beyond just, like, podcasts, like that stuff that we've talked about and want to do at some point. And, you know, we're doing some stuff with our YouTube channel. But it's. It's great to. It's great to see, you know, like minded people, like, sticking to their guns and actually, like, making.

02:34:35
Seth
Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's been fun learning about film so deeply over the last few years of making the podcast that I can even come on a show like this and. And speak at least somewhat intellectually about this kind of stuff and to be able to break off and. And start to make our own movies, that was always the plan, that it was always, we always wanted to kind of make our own things, and the podcasts were just a place to kind of voice that we liked this stuff just to sound off into the voice. It's really exciting watching you guys do the same thing. That's like, recognizing that this isn't. I'm not the only chip out on the water. Just, there's a lot of people out here trying to do this the way that we're doing it, and that's really exciting to me.

02:35:20
Seth
And I get to meet awesome people like you and Sam. It's the best.

02:35:23
Case Aiken
I mean, that's truly been the wonderful thing for us as well. Like, actually getting to interact with so many cool people. And it's been awesome that we've been able to work on this for the last six years. Yeah. Like, it's crazy. What? I mean, the last two years don't count, right. You know?

02:35:37
Seth
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

02:35:39
Sam
Asterisks those.

02:35:40
Seth
Yeah.

02:35:41
Case Aiken
But we did have episodes come out during that, like that, you know, that quantum bubble of no time.

02:35:45
Seth
That's like. That's an accomplishment, too. Anybody that did anything of anything, just existing through that, you did it. Congratulations.

02:35:54
Sam
You're our hero.

02:35:55
Case Aiken
Yeah, that's right. You are our listeners. You're. You're a hero because we stuck with us, right?

02:36:01
Sam
Heroes don't always wear capes. Sometimes they stay at home and they don't wear pants. You're a hero.

02:36:05
Seth
Exactly.

02:36:07
Case Aiken
Sam, if people wanted to find you or follow you, since you are also a hero, where can they do that?

02:36:12
Sam
They can find me here with Ukase, and they can possibly sometimes catch me on the discord if I remember it exists. And then they can't find me anywhere else because I am currently in a traveling circus with my very intelligent little chimp that I am raising to be a proper gentleman and will someday save the world from a fate that is worse than anything. So don't worry, guys. Don't worry. We can change the future with enough love. But if you have any complaints about anything I said or have any comments for me and my chip son, you can find case at.

02:36:47
Case Aiken
Well, you can find me on Twitter ace, you can find me on Instagram at quetzalcoatlato five because I have kept that username since the days of aim. So check that out. I post stuff about this show about other stuff going on at certain POV. You can find work that I've been putting out for the network on our YouTube channel, which is certain POV media. So check all that out. Head back over to certainpov.com, where you can find so many great shows. Let's give a plug to a cast member of your film, Seth, which is Rachel Quirky Schenck, who is one of the hosts of Screensnark on our network and co host to Matt Storm, who is our editor, who we have cited several times in this episode.

02:37:29
Sam
We love Matt.

02:37:30
Case Aiken
We do love Matt. Matt is great.

02:37:31
Seth
As a fellow editor, Matt, homie, I apologize. I know what this beast is.

02:37:36
Case Aiken
Yeah, we are. But we're almost double the length of the movie.

02:37:41
Sam
We're gonna blame case like we always do, so don't worry about it. Seth, you don't have to apologize. It's always case's fault.

02:37:46
Seth
Deal?

02:37:46
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah, totally my fault. This whole thing is my fault. Let's be clear. This whole thing is my fault. And that is why you should tune in next time, Sam. Unlike what we would normally have, which is sort of a surprise kind of episode, I think we've already covered it. But why don't you say out loud what the next movie we're talking about?

02:38:04
Sam
We are not going to do Highlander two.

02:38:06
Case Aiken
The quickening, I know that was on the docket, but we had to make some adjustments because we're working towards episode 150.

02:38:11
Sam
Oh, really? So, yeah, actually, everybody get ready because we are going to do conquest of the planet of the Apes next week. And yeah, we're going to do it. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

02:38:31
Case Aiken
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certain povs.

02:38:45
Sam
Another pass as a certain pov production are hosts are Sam, Alicia and case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo and episode art is by case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri, and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.

02:39:00
Case Aiken
My main pitch for this movie, frankly, would just be more money. More dollars together. Strong.

02:39:06
Sam
Yeah, strong. Very strong. Doctor Zeus. Doctor Zeus. Doctor Zeus. Doctor Zaius. Doctor Zaius.

02:39:13
Case Aiken
Doctor Zaius. Doctor Zeus. What's wrong with me?

02:39:17
Sam
You can't use any of this, Mac.

02:39:19
Case Aiken
You know, there was an episode of certain pov that opened with. Just before we started recording, I just sang the last verse of it, which was, you know, I hate every ape I see, from chimpanzee to chimpanzee. No, you'll never make a monkey out of me. Oh, my God, I was wrong. It was Earth all along. You finally made a monkey. Yes, we finally made a monkey. Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me. I love you, Dr. Zayas CpOV certainpov.com.