Has anyone ever figured out the ending of Tim Burton's 'Planet of the Apes'?

If you have then can you please explain it to me? Marky Mark leaves and everybody is human. Marky Mark comes back and everybody is an ape. What did I miss? What's the key? I've watched this movie multiple times and still can't figure out the freakin' ending!!!

Peace

[edit on 27-12-2005 by Dr Love]

he screwed the ending up...the ending he gave is from i think about the third movie maybe.....when they return to earth to find out that the chimps they brought back from the planet had multiplied and taken over the earth...i was pretty upset with the ending too.......i didnt understand why he would skip over the whole plot of the 2nd movie..........

It confused the hell out of me too. Iv seen the original Planet of the Apes many times, and this ending pissed me off. The whole movie was pretty horrible tho.

yeah normaly human should not able to speak

Ok, you all do realize that the movies were based on a original book, The Planet of the Apes by author Pierre Boulle, right?

Have any of you ever read it? Tim Burton's movie has roughly the same ending as the book. It's the other movies that have it wrong. Want an explaination? Try reading the original work by the original author, instead of the Hollywoodized movie versions.

Originally posted by Ambient Sound
..Want an explaination? Try reading the original work by the original author, instead of the Hollywoodized movie versions.

Thanks for the tip but I'm too damned lazy to read a book right now. Can't you just explain it to me here and now?

I really, really, really, really want it explained to me.

Peace

No, I am unable to do that. I don't have the book handy as my copy is in storage, and since it's been over 25 years since I read it, I'm not sure I would be able to give a true and accurate synopsis.

It's a pretty short read, though. Try a public library.

The movies was poor, both the old/new and befor reading about human apes I rather read about ...Flowers they are pretty

I thought he lands on earth in the future. The big ship had crashed and the monkey decendants had eveolved to rule. Then he does another time jump back to his on time and thinks he is home, but it turns out to be an alternate (or changed history) earth where apes rule but during a current time and not a future time.

It's been awhile, but something like that.

I think you are correct Zed. It seems to me that in the book there was actually a mothership in orbit and there was some time travel or at least some relativistic stuff involved on the order of Einstein's time differrential theories.

Thanks guys, now I'm even more confused!!!

You mean the ship at the beginning of the movie, the one where they were training the apes, crashed. Where the hell did that come from? Why did it crash? The crash would have taken place in the time that he had originally came from at the beginning of the movie. That's not enough time for the apes to evolve and take over because the time at the end of the movie is the same time from which he left originally.

Say what now?

Peace

My hazy memory tells me that because the ship was traveling so darn fast it made time different. I think it's called time dilation and has something to do with Einstein theory of special relativity.

In the book, when he gets back to Earth it is several hundred years after he left and the apes have taken over.

Originally posted by Dr Love
You mean the ship at the beginning of the movie, the one where they were training the apes, crashed. Where the hell did that come from? Why did it crash?

Right. Marky Mark went through a black hole or something (I forgot) away from that ship. In the new place he lands on the planet and finds monkeys are in charge.

Then by the end he learns the reason the monkeys are in charge is because that ship he came from had crashed there thousands of years in the past (marky is now in the far future) and the monkeys were decendents of the monkeys on the science ship.

Follow?

So he repairs a ship from his monkey buddy who lands (his was totalled and sunk). The monkey buddy is like the "savior" come back to the apes.

Anyway, so he takes the ship back through the blackhole (wormhole, whatever) and whew...he is home. All is good.

BUT...it seems now the time is right, but reality is wrong and the whole place is also run by apes. The rollercoaster is still in motion.

Does that help?

My take is that he's lived with these apes for a while and 'come to understand' that it doesn't matter if you are an ape or a person, its whats instide that counts. so now he returns to earth, but he can see everyone for the apes that they are. Even the president, I beleive, now has the same name as the bad ape.

Thats what I think the intention was. I've also heard some people say that Burton wanted to have an ending that was shocking and confusing, like that of the original planet of the apes, so he made it like that, despite it not making sense.

Here is a better plot summary:
www.movieprop.com...

It also like to this page that states:

While the Planet of the Apes 2001 movie requires a certain science fiction like leap of faith throughout to swallow, the ending presents an even more peculiar situation to explain. Astronaut Leo crash lands on a planet other than Earth in which Apes dominate human kind due to the crashlanding of his spacestation and its crew of humans and primates. But at the movie's end Leo travels through an electromagnetic storm that leads him back in time to what appears to be his home planet of Earth in the past. While landing he is directed to land and crashes in what resembles Washington, DC the capital of the United States. He then looks up to see the Lincoln Monument is now a monument of a chimpanzee, General Thad whom the statue is dedicated to. If this planet is Earth that Leo landed on then just how did Apes become dominant and assume human culture, while humans appear to have been eradicated. There are a few possibilities, and lots of people are trying to make sense of this ending, which appears to be thrown in just to give a twist inspite of the lack of logic the ending has.

1. Astronaut Leo does not land on Planet Earth even though he thinks he does. Instead he lands on the planet he just left from only arriving farther into its future.

2. Astronaut Leo arrives on a Planet other than the Earth or the Ape world he left from.

3. General Thad escapes his captivity and leads a group of Apes in a pursuit to conquer the Earth before humanity was strong via timetravel. Astronaut Leo then arrives on Earth to see the results of this conquest.

There is much more, but you can read for yourself.

Zedd

I'm with you on the whole first part. It's the end that is still giving me problems.
You say he travels from the future with apes that are less technologically advanced to the past with apes that are more technologically advanced. Something doesn't jive. Why is there an ape Abraham Lincoln?

Peace

edit: I didn't see the two previous posts (Nygdan's and Zedd's) to this one before I posted this. That does help.

[edit on 4-1-2006 by Dr Love]

Zed,
almost correct.
Just as he is coming down for a landing, there is a quick shot of his chronometer which showed that he had again traveled forward into the future. This is why there was a statue of General Thade where (in our time) Lincoln's statue is.
The scuttlebutt is that what most likely happened after Leo left Someone had let General Thade out of the ship. That he most likely put Ari, Attar and the rest of their group in prison or killed them outright.
There are rumours that there is a sequel being worked on. Latest info was last year that the producers were touring England for locations (DarkHorizons).

Something else that I think factors in is the "human weapon", a pistol, that was given to Thade by the old Charlton Heston ape right before he died.

It's all really convoluted if you ask me. Suppositions about the ending are all you can get, nothing definitive. I hate that.

Peace

Why would civilization be exactly the same as humans if they are apes? An ape holding a handgun designed for humans wouldn't work right. Driving cars that look exactly like human cars, or riding bikes exactly like human bikes. Apes have some advantages, like prehensile feet. You'd think they'd put those to use after how many thousand years of social evolution. There was even a Washington Monument!!! Who the hell was George Washington to those Damn Dirty Apes!!!!

[edit on 5-1-2006 by Rasobasi420]