10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings No One Understands
4. Planet Of The Apes (2001) - How Did The Apes Change Reality?
It’s pretty much impossible to overstate the influence of the ending featured in sixties sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes. The otherwise solid Charlton Heston vehicle became instantly iconic and spawned an entire (actually pretty solid) franchise thanks to its killer twist.
The reveal that, as The Simpsons put it, “we’ve been on Earth all along” was an unheralded and dazzling ending which would still make the likes of Hitchcock and M Night Shyamalan proud.
So the oddly-chosen director Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of the classic had pretty sizeable shoes to fill in this regard.
The film attempted to outdo the original bombshell twist, but instead left viewers with a brain-melting time twisting paradox of alternate histories to untangle.
By the time this version reaches its close, our hero has returned to his own time, but the apes have gotten there first somehow. Not only that, they've gone and replaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln with... the villainous future ape?
Well, presumably they’ve done more than that whilst rewriting history. But good luck working out how they managed it on first viewing.