13 Planet Of The Apes Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
8. It Dealt With Human Rights
It's symptomatic of its time that, when Pierre Boulle was invited to write his own screenplay for the second film in the series, he included a Vietnam-style draft calling up gorillas, chimps and orangs alike: 'THE SACRED DUTY OF THE YOUNG IS TO FIGHT' reads a recruitment poster, resisted by radical chimpanzees. Boulle was living in Paris at the time of the May 1968 student riots, and can't have failed to be aware of the era's radicalism. His screenplay, which wasn't overly cinematic, was never produced but the peacenik ape image survived into Beneath TheĀ with the chimps who carry placards reading 'FREE THE HUMANS!' and 'UNITE IN PEACE!', in defiance of gorilla General Ursus's campaign to invade the Forbidden Zone. It all looks very hokey now, but in the late 60s/early 70s, student antiwar protests were a life-and-death issue.
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