what is the appeal of the Planet of the Apes concept anyway? can someone explain it to me?

[edenfalling]

Apropos of nothing in particular:

I realized just now that when I summarized my reactions to the trailers I saw yesterday -- for Green Lantern, the new Transformers flick, the travesty claiming to be Mr. Popper's Penguins, and the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- I completely forgot that there was a fifth trailer. It fell clean through my mind leaving almost no impression behind.

This is because I find the whole Planet of the Apes saga baffling. I just don't get what people find interesting about it, so much that there have been sequels and remakes and now a prequel. I mean, if I want stories about humans giving great apes human-style intelligence, I will be over here reading David Brin's Uplift saga, okay? Because that universe is a story about humans doing something awesome that works out and creates potential equals for us to be friends with, instead of a story about humans being stupid, shortsighted, bigoted assholes who create a race of "monsters" who hate and destroy us. I choose to think that both humanity and any potential intelligent apes are... human enough, I guess, to find a compromise instead of going right to genocide.

...

Obviously that is just my opinion, since those sequels, remakes, and now prequel do exist. Fortunately, I don't have to watch them. :-)

Comments

[branchandroot]

Yeah, I think The Uplift War is one of Brin's very best books ever, purely on the power of Fiben. The thing with Robert and Athaclena suffered from Brin's annoying biological determinism in re gender, but Fiben totally rocks.

[edenfalling]

Robert and Athaclena's little romantic dance thing was annoying, yeah. And then at the end of the book Athaclena is suddenly paired off in a nice, tidy heterosexual relationship with an unnamed Tymbrimi guy we've never seen before, just because everyone must be tidily paired off at the end of Brin's stories... but yeah, the chimps and the gorillas and all the rest of it is so awesome that (for me) it outweighs almost any annoyance. :-)

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I suppose the interest is solely from the twist at the end of the first movie -- the 'alien' planet is Earth, omg. All the rest of it is people who don't know when to leave a story be. Which is perhaps one of the most hypocritical a/o ironic things a fanauthor can ever say, but there you go. Sometimes the questions need to go unanswered and the possibilities left unfulfilled.

[edenfalling]

Or, alternatively, the rest of the saga should have stayed as somebody's fanfic continuation of the movie instead of getting made into actual films of their own. :-)

I see what you mean, though. A twist ending is neat and makes you think, but it's not necessarily something that needs to be explored in depth -- its power is mostly in its surprise, and details remove that jolt effect.