10 Biggest Downer Endings In Major Movies

Fifty years on from the release of the original film, Planet of the Apes has proved to be one of the most enduring franchises in Hollywood. Strange to note, then, that the very first sequel seemed specifically designed to ensure it ended the series once and for all.

1970's Beneath the Planet of the Apes casts James Franciscus as Brent, another astronaut who was sent out to space in search of the first film's team led by Charlton Heston's Taylor. The increasingly bizarre circumstances see Brent not only crossing paths with the intelligent apes of the original, but also discovering a race of radioactive mutants with psychic powers, living in the subterranean ruins of New York.

The mutants worship the last remnant of human civilisation, a mighty nuclear device powerful enough to wipe out the world; and in the bloody final conflict between the apes and the mutants, in which almost every key character is fatally wounded, Taylor collapses forward onto the device and pushes down on the handle, willingly destroying what remains of the Earth.

It seems this ultra-bleak conclusion was at least in part down to the former 20th Century Fox head of production Richard Zanuck, who was fired midway through production, and hoped to kill off the franchise as a last act of revenge.

This obviously didn't work, as - courtesy of a convenient, if somewhat unconvincing time travel twist - three further Planet of the Apes movies followed over the next three years, with Tim Burton's botched reboot following in 2001, and finally the more successful reboot trilogy from 2011 to 2017.