The original: Charlton Heston goes to space, has a snooze, wants some damn dirty apes to to take their filthy paws off of them (is that racist?), kisses a monkey, cries at the Statue Of Liberty and beats up some sand, yadda yadda yadda. The Planet Of The Apes franchise has been revitalised by some surprisingly decent new prequels, but back in the day before motion capture, audiences were captivated by the original. Even with all the people wearing silly suits. It's still an sort of eerie dystopian sci-fi flick. The sequel: Something that was ripe for a sequel. Which will be why they produced, like, a zillion of them back in the day, of varying quality (Escape From The Planet Of The Apes is actually really upsetting, mind). After they fell victim to the law of diminishing returns 20th Century Fox cooled on the franchise, before attempting an earlier resurrection in 1993. Oliver Stone was all set to direct Return of the Apes - Planet of the Apes: The Sacred Scrolls. And yes, it was as insane as that sounds. Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to star, all the apes were going to be named after Lord Of The Rings characters, a virus threatening humanity was to be carried on a CD-ROM, there was time travel, and there was an ape circumcision.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
