Saw Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the next installment in the Apes series. This one follows the events of The Escape. Dogs and Cats have died and apes have taken their place as a sort of slave-class who shops and makes beds for the humans and forth. This is a bit absurd but then again many science fiction stories about super-AI start out with them being domestic servants or toys. The ape-ish training center has rows of neat little tables, evoking the image of the registry tables from the holocaust although obviously the African slave trade is much more on the film's mind. Anyway, it's up to super-intelligent talking ape Caesar to lead the slave revolt that will ultimately result in the planet of the apes.
The film is deeply troubling. It's very much on the side of the apes and evokes the struggles of black slaves at every turn. The person who most sympathizes with the apes is a black dude. While this comparison is (perhaps) not directly made by the film, the usage of actual apes as black-people stand-ins is pretty creepy. The film is, at any rate, on their side at least, depicting the humans as unspeakably cruel and callously indifferent. We know they will overcome and are happy when they do, but again creepy race-politics rears its ugly head.
The film undercuts its own message by virtue of its established universe. We know that the ape-revolt must result in the humans being subjugated. If this is supposed to be a metaphor for the civil-rights struggle (and it clearly is,) then under scrutiny surely it becomes a warning that the black man will enslave his white oppressors. This is not exactly a popular message and it's daringly spelled out pretty explicitly in the climax. Test-audiences rebelled however and a lame-ass can't-we-all-just-get-along coda was added to the ending which is incongruously delivered against a backdrop of flames and amid close-ups on Caesar's malevolent eyes. And still, even this half measure only saves this particular film. The prequels set in the future still exist! The apes will inevitably crush the humans! We know how this will end, you guys. What message are you trying to send exactly?
Social politics aside, it's a very crowd-pleasing film so long as the message is not examined too closely. The future is fairly well-constructed. There's the fanciful ape-slave thing, but there's also geometric, concrete plazas and a perpetually black-clad citizen class, and all the trappings of a fun little dystopia (which is frankly fairly utopic for the humans (up until the end.)) Its a bit dated, what with everything looking kind of Kirk-era-Star-Trek-tier, but also a crowd pleaser. I wouldn't really recommend it. Even without the race thing, it's kind of predictable and goofy. I was never once surprised, for example. The climax is pretty great, but I had to kind of endure it up to that point.
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