Thread by @RadioFreeTom

So, this is a tweetstorm unrelated to politics. It's about the Planet of the Apes movies, which I was unraveling with a friend tonight. You might want to mute this thread, but I and some of my friends have questions even @SonnyBunch can't answer. [SPOILERS] /1

The first two movies are a perfect 1 and 2, like an Ape Godfather. The story lines are wrapped up - definitively, because Earth blows up - and Heston wisely insisted his death scene be filmed first so that he would never be dragged into another ape movie. But then. Um. WTF. /2

Apparently, just before Earth dies, two chimps - who live in clay *huts* - go to a random spot in the desert and pull a spaceship out of a LAKE, and FIGURE OUT HOW IT WORKS.
EVEN THE SUITS FIT.
Even though, until now, they've had no high tech and lived, in, um, huts. /3

So, fine, we just have to accept that apes whose idea of technology was "a saddle on a horse" clearly had a different language and alphabet rehabbed an Earth SPACESHIP. "Maybe Taylor flooded the engine," they said, as they waxed it up and replaced a spark plug with asparagus. /4

They go back in time and have a talking baby and set up the Great Time Loop. A gummint scientist wants to kill the baby, because he's figured it out! Apes Will Replace Us! (Pardon the expression.) He has the hardest time killing anything any government guy ever had, and fails. /5

In the next film, all the dogs and cats caught a cold and died in 1983. What's that got to do with the Talking Ape Baby? Well, he's hiding, because the human reaction to losing their pets was to become a dictatorship and turn apes into waiters and shoeshine boys. As one does. /6

Now, I don't know about you, but if all the dogs and cats died, my first thought would not be to say: "Gosh, I miss my cat. I wonder if incredibly strong primates could be trained to be janitors and to make espresso. Also, I now hate democracy." /7

The Talking Ape Baby who survived the Most Inept Government Bad Guy Ever now leads an insurrection, with all the apes who were taught to pour mimosas learning in just days how to make Molotov cocktails.
The apes win control of the campus of an ugly state university somewhere. /8

Now, you'd think all the humans would immediately euthanize all the dangerously strong apes who have now graduated Basic Combat Training faster than any human boot ever did, and maybe pick new pets like bunnies, or maybe ferrets who can bring them cupcakes. But no. /9

Instead, the humans react to one ape insurrection in one city by nuking each other into oblivion. Why didn't they nuke the one city with the talking ape, you ask? That is an excellent question. Please be quiet. You got two good films before this dreck. Let us press on. /10

After Earth is destroyed, Talking Ape Baby becomes the leader of an ape-human commune. Amazingly, *all* the apes can talk now, including Paul Williams. This is not centuries of Ape Evolution. It's like, a few years later. Nuclear war apparently teaches apes to talk. /11

But how, you might ask? Wasn't the point in the first film that it took 2500 years? "Shut up," the writers answered, "it's more people in ape costumes, including John Huston, who ate our whole budget for ten minutes of screen time, but who at least didn't need much makeup." /12

So, blah blah blah, the mutants are mad about the apes being apes, even though they didn't launch the nukes, and even though it's only been a few years, they're all somehow instant mutants, because anyone who ever saw The Hulk knows that gamma rays can mess you up instantly. /13

Also, for some reason, the mutants wear hats and goggles. Other humans don't. Why? Maybe they lost their hair. Except their leader has a beard.
Look, nuclear war broke all the mirrors, so you never know what you're wearing at any given time. Now shut up, again. Moving on. /14

Anyway, the apes have an inter-ape spat because gorillas are militaristic and violent, chimpanzees are smart and tolerant, and orangutans are intellectual pacifists, and I am not making this up to say that one of the lessons of this movie is NEVER TO STEREOTYPE ANYONE. /15

The mutants get killed by The Commune. Centuries later, the Big Name Monkey Suited Actor explains how this led to ape and human children living together, even though this directly contradicts ALL THE THINGS THAT MUST HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO THE FIRST TWO MOVIES. /16

And do the human kids listening to the Lawgiver know his books, according to the first movies, include "beware the beast Man, shun him?"
Then, a statue cries. Because it knows that all these apes and humans die when the Earth goes poof; also, he knows these sequels sucked. /17

So to recap, everything that happened from the first minutes of the third movie to the last seconds of the fifth movie make no sense at all, except to vindicate the very important point that Heston and his agent knew what they were doing back in 1970. /18

These movies are guilty pleasures, and I would watch them all again rather than sit through ten minutes of any of the reboots, especially Tim Burton's, which makes these seem like a pristine Godel-Escher-Bach exercise in cinematic logic.
Thank you for coming to my Ape Talk. /19x