With the seventh addition to the Planet of the Apes franchise around the corner, it's time to take a minute and revisit the original Apes films. Which one is your favorite? And what does that reveal about your personality?
Here's what your favorite Planet of the Apes movie says about you.
Planet of The Apes
You like your heroes like you like your loincloths — sassy but sturdy. You can not and will not tolerate injustice (or whatever you happen to perceive injustice to be), and you'll be one hell of a prick about it. Even if that endangers your own life and the lives of those around you, you'll get your way. FOR JUSTICE. But your hot-headedness makes you fast on your feet. You're a survivor, you refused to get tripped up by a few talking monkeys, no matter how amazing it all looks. And it does look amazing, doesn't it? Forget flashy performance capture, you can appreciate groundbreaking ape faces the dazzled the screens so long ago, no matter how the years date their wobbly lips. Perhaps this is what fuels your anger, you're the last lover of ancient cinematic race. It's all gone, and that pisses you off.
And yet you protest that you're a dreamer, but we all know better. All you really want is to be held by a woman (or man) in a fur bikini, desperately hoping that Nova's kisses can fill the soul annihilation you know awaits you, just buried just a few inches below the sand.
Beneath The Planet of The Apes
You're not satisfied. You need answers! Life is a day-to-day struggle of lies and deception, and you want to get to the bottom of it. You demand that everybody around you peel back their flesh masks and bare their secrets to you. And if the answers aren't satisfactory, blow it all straight to hell!
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
You believe that fame and fortune will be our undoing. The highs of excess will only push us all over the edge and crack open the cruel monsters we are underneath. That being said, you can still justify any personal cruelty with elaborate references to fate, god and alternate futures. But first: monkey fashion shows!
You believe that miracles can happen. That apes who were afraid of a paper airplane can rebuild a damaged spaceship and escape a doomsday device, thus rocketing them into the future. You can distill your own sense of reality enough to just let the drama happen. Don't sweat the small stuff guys — look, monkeys in space!
But under it all beats the black heart of a person who doesn't look away when a mother and ape child are shot repeatedly at point blank range. These are the horrors of our real world. You look stare down death straight in the face while quietly sipping on your grape juice-plus. Take off your golden masks, people, and embrace the darkness within. Only then will we know how to become better animals.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
When the world burns, you'll be the one sitting atop a tall skyscraper and laughing. You'll smile as the MacDonald's beneath your feet is engulfed with fire, while the flames lick the faces of mascara-ed ladies, melting them into a horrid human puddle. They have brought this upon themselves. You've known the end was coming, humanity is getting its comeuppance and you find it hilarious.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Give a gorilla a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a gorilla to fish, and he'll strangle you with the fishing line. HA HA HA HA — the apes don't eat meat in this movie, which is a fact you gleefully point out during arduous film debates.
You believe that a person can actually be bred to hate. There's just no reasoning with some gorillas and mutant people. But that doesn't mean we should give up on love, peace and harmony. Perhaps if we all just Ishmael ourselves in the wilderness and return to the days of tribal living we can find peace at last? You want to think that, but alas you can not, because of the gorillas. No matter how hard we try to co-exist peacefully on this planet, the gorillas or mutant people of a destroyed area will be there, ready to suck out our eyes for supper.
So while you're a bit of a dreamer, it's all just a silver lining around a dark cloud of inevitable doom. "Ape must not kill Ape" is not a reality. We're all hideous mutants on the inside. You are the crying Caesar statue, looking out into the horizon awaiting the next apocalypse.
Also if Battle is truly your favorite, it's possible that sometimes you just like being different for the sake of being different. Even if you can't defend your irrational love for all things outsider you can always fall back on the message from the film said by the Lawgiver: "Who really knows the future?" "Perhaps ...only the dead." Heck, it sounds deep, doesn't it?
Meanwhile all of your friends hate you.
Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes
Style over substance, this is your motto. Who needs elaborate metaphors, biting dialog, and riveting lead actors when there's heaps of fancy wire-work to stare at? Sure you could spend hours arguing how a race of talking human beings managed to be enslaved by a pack of chimps, but OMG look at those fancy new monkey hats! Nothing will quench your insatiable thirst to have the biggest, bestest next new widget! By the way, how is that white iphone working out for you?
But, as much as we chide your short attention span and ability to detach from Mark Wahlberg and his vast collection of O-faces (acting!), you're our favorite person to go to the movies with. You take pleasure in the splodey and fun. You fill this tired old flesh-sack full of hope and energy. You're not afraid to try new things! Who needs years of canon? To hell with it, let's try something different. Even if it doesn't all work out, it was still a beautiful ride. You just don't get to have beers with us afterwards to talk about it.