Crash-landed on a strange new world, astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) finds himself at the bottom of the food chain in a world run by humanlike apes.
Will he survive long enough to learn the terrifying secret of this world?
In the central role, Charlton Heston is magnificent - cynical, disenchanted and completely at ease with being the biggest asshole in any century.
The apotheosis of space age optimism, Taylor’s worldview is reflected back by the world he finds himself in.
Planet of the Apes is more concerned with unpicking all too familiar cruelties of human, and more specifically western civilisation.
With Taylor as the surrogate, the film reframes human beings through the same process and language used on animals, and the way Western societies regarded other civilisations.
In every aspect of the apes’ society, humans are othered as violent, primitive, and morally abject.
Taylor - and the viewer - are forced to look at themselves as the object of a gaze.
A troop of apes grin and joke while having their photo taken over a pile of human corpses, like hunters with their prizes. In a later scene, Taylor comes face to face with a dead compatriot, fellow astronaut Dodge (Jeff Burton) whose body has been stuffed and displayed at a museum.
Zira and Cornelius (Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall) are such strong figures of the series, it is surprising to go back to their original appearance. They are only slightly more empathetic toward Taylor than the religiously xenophobic Zaius.
Their dynamic with Taylor is uneasy, filtered with condescension, xenophobia and an ethnographic distance.
They are willing to help Taylor, but there is an underlying tension as they slowly come to view Taylor as a person, rather than a unique specimen, or a site for theoretical argument.
Heston’s performances also key - his warmth toward them is tempered. He is constantly having to remind them of his own agency and personhood.
The conflict between Zaius and Taylor over science is essentially re-running the debate over evolution, and is essentially a fight between dogma and progress.
This conflict also reflects the end of the sixties - the battle between a younger generation and an older establishment unwilling to let go.
Even knowing all the film’s surprises, there is such an assured, deliberate pace to the way the story unfolds, and the slow reveal of the world, the film is still an effective thriller.
It is a testament to its considerable strengths that Planet of the Apes power has not been dimmed by time or the sequels which continue to draw from it to this day.
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