#251. 'Planet of the Apes' (1968, Hulu)
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The hosts revisit the 1968 original Planet of the Apes (streaming on Hulu), part of their running habit of watching a classic instead of engaging with a lousy legacy sequel. Sonny gives it a fond, qualified review — a genuine sci-fi touchstone with terrific ape makeup and a nihilistic, joker-laughing Charlton Heston who plays less like a hero than a countercultural antihero in the Easy Rider mold — but stops short of calling it great; JVL agrees it's nearly impossible to judge on pure filmmaking terms given how thoroughly it's seeped into the culture, singling out the ape-church eulogy scene as his favorite bit and noting with surprise that the film beat 2001: A Space Odyssey to theaters by six months; Mike watched it for the first time with his wife, who immediately guessed the "it was Earth all along" twist. The episode opens with a long run of banter: JVL recounts an eleven-minute cab ride in which a Pentecostal Ethiopian taxi-driver-pastor earnestly tried to convert him out of Catholicism, plus a family story about his son "G-Money" confusing Martin Luther King Jr. with Martin Luther; Sonny brushes off questions about his life being "a disaster area"; and Mike previews a childfree wedding weekend in Chattanooga, riffing on Tennessee's split time zones as basically living inside Tenet. Before getting to the apes, the trio also runs down box office numbers — Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes topping The Fall Guy despite a middling B CinemaScore — and closes with dueling hot takes on the wildly polarized early Cannes reactions to Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, which Sonny is thrilled exists precisely because it's too unmarketable for any studio to have greenlit.
From the show notes
Oh my God, I was wrong! It was Earth, all along!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-a to chimpanzee. No, you'll never make a monkey out of me. Oh my god, I was wrong. It was Earth all along. You finally made a monkey. Yes, we finally made a monkey. Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me. I love you, Dr. Zayas!
Mike00:00:58Welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts. Let them not breed in great numbers, for they will make a desert of their homes and yours. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch, join us over at subbeacon.com. Become a patron. Tell your friends and family to become a patron, to become patrons. To become patrons? Yes, yes.
Sonny00:01:22To patronize the Patreon?
Mike00:01:23I know how to speak and write good. Join us over there at subbeacon.com. You can get free, not free, you can get new episodes every Friday. And you can become a part of the conversation, but you can only do that at subbeacon.com. We are going to be talking about Planet of the Apes later in the show. But first, what's going on? JVL, you've got stuff to chat about today.
JVL00:01:54So I'm in a taxi this morning and the taxi driver is very friendly and so we're doing chit-chat. And you know how any two human beings who begin to chit-chat, within 45 seconds it is possible to get to one of the people saying, "Well, life is short." That's an easy thing to get to, right? It's one of those things. And so within the first 45 seconds we get to this gentleman saying, "Well, life is short." And I say, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely." At which point he says, "But what about eternal life?" And I'm just like, "Fuck, this is not... I see where this is going, sort of." So I was like, "Oh yeah, eternal life, super important. Gotta love that. That's why I like me some eternal life." And he says, "Are you a religious man?" I said, "Well, a little bit." He says, "Are you Christian?" I said, "Well, I'm Catholic." At which point, things take a turn, because he's a Pentecostal pastor who happens to drive a... And he does not like Catholicism. That's gonna be a problem. I'm shocked.
Mike00:03:10That's gonna be a real problem.
JVL00:03:11He starts telling me about all, you know, I mean, you guys, you have this all wrong, 'cause you're not saved. Like, you can't go to heaven if you're Catholic. All this with the, you know, you're praying to Mary. Mary's not God. Mary's not a co-God. And I was like, yeah, agree. Mm-hmm. He's like, no, no, you Catholics, you all later, you know, praying to, you can't pray to her, you know. And the statues. I was like, yeah, okay, very good. The purgatory. Purgatory's not in the Bible anywhere. I was like, no, it's in this cab right the fuck now. Question.
Sonny00:03:40Yes. Question. Question. You say you're taking a cab. What, can I, can I ask what possibly led you to the path of being in a cab instead of an Uber or a Lyft or some other civilized conveyance? Yeah.
JVL00:03:53I, uh, I.
Sonny00:03:54You're probably, you probably, I, I'm sorry, I, I should know the answer to this already. You are, you are an anti-Uber person, right? I'm not. Like, do you avoid Uber?
JVL00:04:01I'm not anti-Uber. Uh, but the truth is in, in many situations, it is easier and faster and cheaper to just get a cab. And so I was in DC this morning. I was having an espresso. I needed to get to the train station. Mm-hmm. And, uh, cross the street from my, my little. Mm-hmm. Uh, cafe is a hotel where there were three taxis sitting there lined up waiting to go. So I could go on to Uber and then wait seven minutes for, you know, first for it to find someone. Right. Then for, you know. Right. 30 seconds away is pulling up. Now it's 90 seconds. Anyway, so that's why I took a taxi. All right. Question.
Mike00:04:42Yeah. Knowing what you know now about this taxi ride, would it have been worth it to wait that seven minutes?
JVL00:04:47100%.
Sonny00:04:48Question. Second, third question. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, when you stepped into the cab, when you got into the cab, was there like a little panel where you could tick the no conversation please box? No, but I don't ever see that on Uber.
JVL00:05:04I've never seen that on an Uber.
Sonny00:05:06You've never had that on an Uber? I have that. I have that option on Uber.
JVL00:05:09Believe me. In the app.
Sonny00:05:11In the app. In the app. You can set your preferences.
JVL00:05:14I, look.
Sonny00:05:16Maybe that's only for like Uber Comfort or like Uber Black. Probably. It's probably. It's probably. You know what? It is.
Mike00:05:25You probably have to go like a step above Uber X. It is. I, I, I took an Uber Comfort recently. Uber Silent. Because that, that was the only one that was available and that was the first time I noticed.
Sonny00:05:33Yeah.
Mike00:05:34The button.
Sonny00:05:35I have, interestingly, I have found that Uber Comfort is often more like the, is often the same price. Yes. And, and I will take the Uber Comfort every time because I can check the box. I can check the.
JVL00:05:46Saying don't speak to me.
Sonny00:05:48I can check the.
JVL00:05:49Don't. Make eye contact. Don't. Is there a box you can check to say, don't make eye contact with me?
Sonny00:05:54Can I, can I put up. Hold on. Go ahead, Sonny. No, go ahead. I'm. I just.
Mike00:06:00I'm done. I'm done. I'm done asking questions. I want JVL to finish the story.
JVL00:06:04Yes. Because I feel like this is going somewhere. Somewhere.
Mike00:06:07So we get, we get to, you know, so I'm just hearing all of his complaints.
JVL00:06:09Sure. Sure. Purgatory. As one does. Purgatory is just a made up thing and, and.
Sonny00:06:17Unlike the rest of it categorically proven by science. And.
JVL00:06:21Keep going JVL. You know, they'll, they'll only, there are only three ways, there are three things you have to do to, to have eternal life and you, you gotta, you gotta acknowledge that you're a sinner. I was like, yep. Check. You gotta accept that Jesus Christ came down from heaven and was died on a cross, was resurrected
Sonny00:06:38for your salvation. I was like, yep. Check. Then you gotta grab the snakes.
JVL00:06:42And, and you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have true repentance. I was like, yeah, well we, we do, you know, I mean, we've got this thing that's called reconciliation. Second of reconciliation. No, no, that, that confession stuff is not real. It's like, okay. And you know, you baptize people in their children. They can't know. You can only baptize. This doesn't count. And the confetti, all these things. So he's like really. He's trying to convince you here. He's like, is he, is he though?
Sonny00:07:10Um, or is he just yelling at you?
JVL00:07:13Yelling is too strong. He was, uh, it wasn't hostile.
Sonny00:07:17It wasn't. Oh, that's interesting.
JVL00:07:19It was deeply earnest. Deeply earnest. And I'm like, this is the longest 11 minute cab ride in my life.
Sonny00:07:27Question. Was he, uh, was he, um, I assume he was an African American fellow.
JVL00:07:32Yes.
Sonny00:07:33From Ethiopia. Well, so that was my second question. Is he a, is he an African?
JVL00:07:38Well, he's African, but I assume as an American citizen, I mean, I, if he's probably, yeah. Yeah. Uh, wow. So all of all the complaints and we, I mean, we get to the, you know. You know, the popes aren't even popes and Peter isn't a Peter, you know, P Peter wasn't the Pope. He was, you know, the real Pope was somebody, you know, it was like, do you, and everything is like, you know, and, but then if you go to Romans 52 74 and then Ecclesiastes 13 dash
Mike00:08:07nine section subparagraph four and I, you know, I'm just like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JVL00:08:14So as you get it, as we get into the, like the little circle around, uh, around the front of union station, he's like, you know, if you're ready to repent, I can pray with you.
Mike00:08:25Wow.
JVL00:08:26Right in the cab, right there, right there in the cab. He's like, cause your whole life will be different. Your whole life. You just, you'll be on fire, but it has to be real. I was like, you know what, buddy, I, again, we stand before the, the actual embodiment of Christ. Every single time we go to mass, he's like, no, no, you don't. I was like, oh, well, yes we do at which point he then says to me, you know, the problem with Catholics. I was like, oh, there's only one because I'm a Catholic and let me tell you, I, I have a list. I say, say we, we are pulling up to union station.
Mike00:09:01We do not have time to, uh, to go through all.
JVL00:09:03No, he explains. There's only one problem. Where do we start? That's right. One. One. That, uh, you don't actually read the scripture. Okay. He's, he's right about that one. No. Well, he's right that we don't read the scripture. He's wrong that that's a problem. I, so what I came away is that this is all actually, it's all just populism. This is what populism is. This gentleman from Ethiopia who drives a cab and has a pastor and his Pentecostal church believes that he over his, I don't know, 40, 45, 55 years of life on earth. In addition to everything else he's done with himself, has read the Bible. Plumbed all of the mysteries of salvation and taken in a good three to 4,000 years worth of theological thinking and writing, uh, throughout the Abrahamic faiths and leanings. And that he's come up with the real solution. And this is like fucking Bill Maher going on the show and saying like, I know how to solve peace in the middle East. And I don't think you saw this with Bill Burr was like, you're like that asshole who like, you know, came in third in his fantasy football league. And it was like, I should be the general manager of the, of the, the Patriots.
Mike00:10:24And I, I was just like, no, and this is why I didn't say this.
JVL00:10:27I was like, yeah, thank you so much. Here's your tip. Right. Um, but like this, this is, this is why we Catholics like to keep the scripture out of the hands of the people, people like me, because it is fucking complicated. And people, there are people who have spent literally thousands of years wrestling with all these questions and the idea of like, you're just going to. Hand this gigantic book, which is full of contradictions and subtleties and nuances to people and say, Hey, you, uh, you know, Giuseppe, the, the cobbler, you just look at it and you figure out the real story for yours. You do your own research. This is the same thing, like with ivermectin, right? This is as if it's like if hospitals said, when you go in to get treated, uh, well, you know what? Look here, you just drop like 50,000 pages of. Okay, sir, sir, you're just as qualified as any of us are. Your argument here. You can figure out your own diagnosis.
Sonny00:11:24What you, what you are saying, what I'm hearing from this conversation is that it's not really, this isn't a religion problem. The problem is the printing press itself, that Gutenberg, Johannes Gutenberg, all those years ago, sowed the seeds of our own destruction by, by giving the people access to the great, the great works.
JVL00:11:46So I will, I, I want to put a bow on this with, uh. We were down in DC two weekends ago and, uh, with all the whole family and the kids. And as we're going down, we were having a conversation with G money about the national mall as we were like driving through downtown and all of the, all of the, you've heard this story, son. Yes. All, all of the monuments are explaining, you know, there's one for George Washington and there's one for, uh, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and one for Thomas Jefferson, blah, blah, blah. One for Martin Luther King and G money gets very, there's a monument to Martin Luther King. Well, yeah. Yeah. He goes, why?
?00:12:21He's a bad guy.
JVL00:12:22And I hear this and I'm like, what the fuck are they teaching him in this crazy Catholic school? What we have for men. And, uh, we're like, no, no, Martin Luther King is back and he's very insistent. He's a bad guy. And uh, so we, we explained to him Martin Luther King's place in American history and what he did. Let me get G money is looking very dubious about all of this and he goes, I don't think that's right. I think he's the one who said that nobody has to go to confession. And we were like, oh no, no, no, no, no. That's Martin Luther. Different guy, no junior, different guy, very different beliefs. We are teaching them some anti-Protestant bigotry and I'm okay with that.
Sonny00:13:05That's fine. No, that's fine. I mean that, that is the basis of all good faith. Uh, the, uh, not specifically anti-Protestant, but you know, just, uh, the other side is wrong. Um, uh, that's, uh, that's so funny. The, uh, the. The Martin Luther story, because I, uh, when you started telling this story in the slack, I was like, holy shit, where is this? Where is this? Right. Cause I was like, I was like, I was like, is, is JBL moving back to Virginia after hearing this? Because like, if that's what's going on in New Jersey, it can't, it can't possibly be, be any worse down south.
JVL00:13:37We had this happen again, like the school play, he comes home and you know, he had seen the middle school play and was telling, you know, he was recounting to us about what I think they did a wrinkle in time. And he was. Yeah. Shannon asked him, what was your favorite part? And he was like, oh, the black people again.
Mike00:13:53Oh God. Oh God.
JVL00:13:55What's happening. And so we are trying to like interrogate what does he mean? And what he, what he means as it turns out is the stage crew who are dressed all in black, who comes on to move things on and off the set, which made me feel we felt a little bit better. We were like, all right, we've got to figure out ways to phrase, we could just put nomenclature on these things.
Sonny00:14:17Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing.
JVL00:14:35Phrasing.
Sonny00:14:36Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing. Phrasing.
Mike00:14:43Phrasing.
Sonny00:14:44That's, that's even better. That, that, because I, at first I thought he might, you might be, he might be referring to the film version, the Ava DuVernay adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time starring Oprah among others. Anyway, there.
JVL00:14:48There's that. Thus ends Catholic talk. Wow. How are you boys doing? Sonny, what's going on?
Sonny00:14:53Uh, my, my life's a disaster area right now and I don't, I don't really want. You say that every week. I don't really want to talk about that, um, uh, so I'm, I'm gonna respectfully pass the baton to, to Mike, uh, just, just, uh, you take it away, man.
JVL00:15:10Take us home. Mike, you're going away on a, uh, just you and the missus trip and, uh, I asked you before, I'll ask you again while we're on air. We, we, we don't need to tell you have Sophie's choice, right? We'll be, we'll be three children, including a very young child. And suddenly you get a couple nights together. It is Sophie's choice. There are two amazing things that you could pick that you can't do at home.
Mike00:15:33Yeah. We'll be, uh, uh, eating seafood or, uh, no, I have no idea what, no, I'm, I'm not playing this game, Jamie, but all I'll say is. There'll be some, uh, some drinking with old friends, which will be great. Oh, very nice. And there'll be some sleeping in on Saturday. And when I say sleeping in, I mean, sleeping in, uh, nobody waking me up at 6:30 asking
JVL00:16:05food and seafood. That's really, that's a very deep, deep euphemism.
Mike00:16:10No, we are literally, we are going to a landline. No, but my point is, um, uh, no, I always choose sleep, always choose sleep on these things. Like if I go to on a work trip, you know, um, yeah, people are like, oh, come out and
JVL00:16:37go to the bar and have a drink. I'm like, no, this is an opportunity for like an extra hour of sleep.
Mike00:16:42Um, no. So, so that'll be good. We have to, we have the. So we are going to a wedding, which is in Tennessee. It is in, uh, Chattanooga, which is on the Southern kind of Southeastern tip of Tennessee, take the Chattanooga Choo Choo. We're gonna see rock city. We're gonna go to Ruby falls. No, we're not doing any of that. Um, the incline railway, the Tennessee aquarium. Um, so it is, so Tennessee is an interesting state from a time zone perspective. Yeah. Because, uh, a third of the state is in the Eastern time zone and the rest of the state is in the central times. And, uh, what's the dividing line. So the dividing line is essentially there, there, there is something in the Tennessee constitution called the three grand divisions, and it has a constitutional purpose because members of the state Supreme court, they ha there has to be sort of like at least one from each of the three. Divisions of Tennessee, East Tennessee, middle Tennessee, West Tennessee. And so what is traditionally East Tennessee, which is essentially everything Chattanooga and East of Chattanooga, which includes Knoxville, um, Smoky mountains, all that stuff is, is that's all Eastern time zone. But what's confusing is, so we will be flying into, because flying into Chattanooga is way too expensive, uh, we'll be flying into Nashville and then driving to Chattanooga. Yeah. Which is about two hours away. Um, the other option is to fly into Atlanta and drive two hours north, uh, you know, six and one half to the other. It's just a better time, but, uh, to, to find a Nashville, but Nashville is in the central time zone. And so I'm going to have this, this very weird phenomenon. So it's essentially an, uh, a two hour flight from Washington, DC to Nashville, which means only an hour will have passed. When we get to Nashville on the clock. And then we drive two more hours and jump ahead, jump back ahead an hour. So it'll just be very confusing about what time it is and what we're saying.
JVL00:18:57I feel like we just reconstructed tenant.
Mike00:19:01Basically I'm living in tenant is what I'm trying to say.
JVL00:19:03Don't try to understand it, Michael, just feel it.
Mike00:19:08Did you know tenant is a palindrome? Um, all right. So, uh, so anyway, so that's, what's going on with me. That's about it. I don't really know if there's anything else going on in my life.
JVL00:19:17We've got a lot of hot monkey talk to get to.
Mike00:19:19Yeah, exactly. So let's talk box office very quickly. Uh, number one at the box office kingdom of the planet of the apes coming in at $58 million. Uh, this is, uh, followed by the fall guy, which, uh, had sort of an abysmal fall, so to speak, uh, 13, uh, it's now up, it's just under $50 million of the fall guy. Has earned less total in two weeks than kingdom of the planet of the apes earned in its first weekend. Sonny.
JVL00:19:52How is this even possible? Is the fall guy just suck as a movie because the, when that trailer dropped like eight weeks ago or whatever, I think you and John and I just said on our little text exchange, uh, this is going to make all of the money.
Sonny00:20:07I did. I never said that. I don't think I ever said that, but I, I am, uh, I don't know. The, the problem, the problem with the fall guy is that it is there, there's a, there's a constant debate about who is a movie star, right? Who is a movie star? And so you look at, you look at Ryan Gosling and he certainly has it. He has it. He has it. I think in terms of like, he can do a lot of different things. He's appealing. He works as romantic lead, but also as a comic lead and also as an action lead, he, uh, has had success with movies. Movies like Barbie or La La Land, right? Those are two, those were two pretty big hits and two like unusual genres. Uh, he is, um, the, the ad campaign for this movie I thought was pretty good, but clearly I was wrong. Um, and, and somebody made a very good point about this, which is, uh, you know, it was, it was in a, it was like a Socratic exchange basically. Right. But it, the, the, the long and the short of it was like, tell me what the plot of the plot of this movie is from the ads. And like, that's actually kind of, if you went to the average person and showed them the trailers and we're like, tell me what the plot of the movie is. They'd be like, uh, can I try? Can I try?
JVL00:21:25Yeah.
Mike00:21:26I don't think it's hard. Please. It's easy. Go ahead. Michael. It is a stunt man for the movies who is somehow roped into a real, uh, uh, you know, espionage law enforcement, criminal plot. In which he has to use his skills, uh, as a stunt man to do actual action.
JVL00:21:49Let me, let me take a stab stunt man who has a meet cute kind of not really relationship. Well, they won't, they, with a director on a movie, the actual movie star of the movie is murdered. Then he gets roped into solving the murder while getting into all sorts of adventures with the director and so that they can then fall in love.
Sonny00:22:13Both of those are kind of wrong, but also, but also kind of right, but also like directionally right. Right enough that it, it's, it doesn't, I don't think it makes that big a difference. Uh, and like, again, it, it, I don't know, I thought the ads are pretty good. The movie itself, again, I had my issues with it, but I thought it was pretty good. It was entertaining. It was nice. It was a nice, pleasant thing to watch. Sure. Um, and I, that sort of movie just doesn't, doesn't really do it. Anymore. I guess. I mean, I, you know, I, I look at.
JVL00:22:46And Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which has one of the worst titles I've ever heard.
Sonny00:22:50Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, at least is based, it's, you know, the continuation of a very popular franchise, um, that I P it's IP and that's, and that is movie stars
JVL00:23:02in that.
Sonny00:23:03That's no, well, that's got the monkeys. It's got the, the monkeys are the movie stars. And I will say, and look, I will say the one thing, the one thing this movie does have going for it. It costs, it costs, I don't know, some, it costs some exorbitant amount of money, $150 million or whatever, but you see every penny of it on the screen. You see every penny of it on the screen. It doesn't ever look cheap. And occasionally, uh, you know, the fall guy does look cheap despite costing. It costs $30 million less, but I bet a lot of that money's tied up in Gosling and Blunt. You know, it has actual movie stars. They, they got, they got paid a lot. David Leitch is a named director. He got paid a lot. Um, I, so I, I, I don't know, man. I, uh, the kingdom of the planet of the apes did big numbers. It did. It's a solid opening for a franchise that had kind of sputtered out with the war of the planet of the apes. Um, but his back people, people seem to like this movie, although they don't like the movie actually. And that's another interesting thing here is that the, the, the, all of the data about kingdom of the planet of the apes is very weird if you're, if you're a data nerd. So like, I would just, I will say that the, the box office on this movie. Ticked up all weekend. It was tracking around 50 million. Um, the early numbers came in, it looked like it was going to do 52, 53, then it was going to do 54, 55. It wound up around 58 million for the weekend. And like, that's a solid improvement over the, over the course of the, the weekend. Now you, there are all sorts of factors to take into account here. The, the, the tracking and the projections are only as good as your model. And if your model doesn't account for say lots of families. Going on Saturday because there haven't been any family movies and they, the families decided to show up for this, despite not usually showing up for the sort of movie then like that changes things and maybe that's what happened, but, but, but the data, just looking at the numbers again of the projection as the weekend went along, it was like, oh, audiences are really into this word of mouth is really good. People, people are, people are very into this movie and I wasn't that surprised because it's pretty good. I liked it. It's not, it's not great, but I've always been a little bit. Yeah. Softer on these movies than the general public, the general public has always been very into these movies and I've always been like, these are all replacement level blockbusters as far as I'm concerned. They're fine, but not much better than that. And this is about the same placement level blockbuster, sci-fi spectacle, whatever. Uh, but the, the, the, the cinema score on it is a B and a B cinema score on a movie like this is bad. Like a B plus is the, is like rock bottom. Like if you, if you don't have a B plus on a movie like this. You're in, you're in real trouble. And really you're, you want like an A minus or an A. And like the, the, the B cinema score is just like, that's not good. All four of the pre, all three of the previous, uh, I guess, well, I don't know. I can't remember what the Tim Burton one was. The three previous movies in this version of the franchise all did A minus cinema scores. And that sounds, that feels about right. And this gotta be, which is again, it's like, it's like going from an A minus to a B is in the, in the real world, the equivalent of going from like an A minus to a B. Minus to a D plus like a B is B is a bad score for a movie like this. Um, so I, I, man, I don't, I don't know what audiences want. I don't know. I don't know how to read any of the data anymore. The whole world is falling apart. Nothing makes any sense. Uh, I'm filled with despair and on, on, we, and I just want to, I just want to fly to a distant, distant planet where my ape superiors have taken over your cigarette in the, in the, uh, I want to light up, I want to light up a big fucking stogie in a, in a spaceship while my, my colleagues have fallen asleep and I want to just, I want to ruminate about the fall of humanity and how all of you fuckers will be dead by the time the ship lands. That's what I want to think about. That's what I want to think about.
Mike00:26:59Uh, and that's what brings us to, well, you're in luck, Sonny, because we're talking about the planet of the air. I should say planet of the apes from 1968. That started it all, which is of course based on a novel, French novel, I believe. Uh, do you want to give us a, so that we watch this, this is continuing our series of, uh, boycotting bad remakes or sequels of movies by just watching the original, uh, going far back here to plan of the apes in 1968.
Sonny00:27:34Do you want to give us a big boy review Sonny Bunch planet of the apes stars Charlton Heston as a man who is learning to laugh for the first time is how I, I judge a lot of Charlton Heston's acting in this movie. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, um, it's funny.
JVL00:27:51I took that as he's the joker.
Sonny00:27:54He is basically the joker. He is. He is. Uh, so anyway, the, um, uh, planet of the apes, uh, starring Charlton Heston and, uh, a bunch of really great ape costumes, um, uh, is the story of a team of astronauts who leave Earth, they travel thousands of years, uh, into the future, relativistically. For them, it's only a couple of years for, they're going near the speed of light. So it's, you know, very, very much longer. Um, and, uh, they, they crash land on a planet and they're not sure what's going on on this planet. They can't see the stars cause it's overcast. There's weird lightning. Uh, there's, uh, there are, uh, big, uh, scarecrows that look like apes. Yeah. And then they find some water. They're going to like, well, yeah, we're not going to die. Let's go swim in the water and mute humans, steal their clothes.
JVL00:28:49And they don't think to themselves, this is very important.
Sonny00:28:52They're all naked. They're just, again, you can get, you get away with a lot of stuff in PG movies back in 1968.
JVL00:28:58This is G rated. This is G. This is G. Not even PG.
Sonny00:29:03General audiences can see Charlton Heston's bare ass for all, for all to enjoy. Uh, they go swimming, uh, some, some, uh, primitive humans steal their clothes, which should be clue number one, that something weird is going on. You travel halfway across the galaxy and you show up and there's just like, just dudes with beards and stuff, stealing your clothes, dudes with beards and also supermodels, uh, and like that.
JVL00:29:29A bunch of Cro-Magnon looking motherfuckers and then one absolute smoke show.
Sonny00:29:33Yeah. Who, who is that?
JVL00:29:35It's Linda Harrison.
Sonny00:29:36Linda Harrison. Yeah. She's an attractive. Uh, young lady. And they, uh, they, uh, as they're, as they're doing the skinny dipping, they get out and they chase their clothes down and they start wrapping themselves up in saran wrap or whatever. Uh, and then the apes show up, they take them all out and they shoot Charlton Heston in the throat and he can't talk. And so all the apes can talk and they're like, who look at these dumb humans. They're so stupid. We were so much better than them. And then Charlton Heston surprises them by speaking and it throws their whole civilization into turmoil. Yada, yada, yada. Turns out the planet is earth. We blew it up. Those bastards, uh, and it, and it's, it's, it's just, and it's just the irony of, I don't understand why he's so upset. He was, he left the planet cause he wanted, he knew that was going to happen. He wanted that all to happen. So, you know, I've, I've always been a little bit suspect of, of Charlton Heston's performance in this film. I just think that. It's totally all wrong. It's totally all wrong. Uh, but the, uh, but no, this is, look, this is a, this is a class. This is a classic of sci-fi. It has a bunch of reference points, um, that, uh, that, that have become, I don't know, that are like civilizational touchstones, the destroyed, uh, the destroyed statue of Liberty and the closing shot, of course. But then, you know, everything else with the, the, the, you know, ape shall not harm ape. The, the, like it's. It's, it's all, it's all. And also it's very interesting. So there's, there's that whole sequence in the beginning where they're going through space. Right. And I was watching that and I was thinking, oh, this is, uh, I clearly like, uh, the influence of 2001, a space odyssey, right? It's, you know, the, and this movie actually came out six months before that I had forgotten. I'd forgotten that this, this had actually come out, uh, slightly before that, which again, it's like, it's very interesting. The, the, all the stuff that was in the air at the time in 19, 1968. Um, but the, uh. But the, uh, but the, the, it is, it is also interesting the bit that you were riffing on as we started the show, uh, Mike about, um, you know, the, the warning that the apes give that man will.
Mike00:31:51Beware the beast man for he is the devil's pawn.
Sonny00:31:54That man will spread across the world and destroy it and, you know, destroy their territory as well as ours. And it, again, it's this very Malthusian sort of thing. It's this very, this, this idea that, again, very much in the air. In the 1960s that man's overpopulation is the problem and we're going to bring ruin upon ourselves and blah, blah, blah. And it's just a very early example of like environmentalist being, you know, kind of like, it's not really environmentalist make good movie villains, uh, sort of stuff, but it is like very much of that same, same mental framework. You know, Zay, Dr. Zayas wants to kill humanity because a, he, he knows and he doesn't want anyone else to know that apes were not always the, uh, the, the rulers of this, this earth. And also, you know, just, uh, general, general cleansing, general ethnic cleansing. That's, that's what he's into. So I don't know, man, I, I, I, again, I, I like this movie fine. It's obviously very much a reference point, uh, and, and the, the, the special effects work is fascinating in hindsight. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, but it's also just like, so clearly not very good at the same time that like, it's just the, well, well, the makeup, right? Just the makeup, the makeup, the makeup is like amazing for the time.
JVL00:33:22The makeup is amazing. Oh gosh.
Sonny00:33:24Yeah. But, but I mean, compare that to say what you will about the, the, the remake, the Tim Burton directed remake that came out in 2001 or 2000 or whenever, and like the Rick Baker makeup on that. It is better than any of the stuff that was in the CGI movies that came out recently. It's better than this. I like, it's, it's just like, it's, it, we, we reached peak makeup right before the introduction of massive amounts of CGI and everything before and after has looked since, or everything before and after has looked worse, um, as, as a result, like we reached the peak and
Mike00:34:00then it's, it's been, here's what makes, here's what makes the 2001 makeup version of the movie's makeup. The best is because the apes look like the actors played, right? Like it's like seamlessly blends into their faces and like, you cannot recognize Roddy McDowell, right? This movie, like he doesn't look like Roddy McDowell and he looks like an ape and that's very good. No, but I was, I was struck by, sorry, Jamie, I'll get, get to your thoughts on this. But since you mentioned the special effects, like clearly every dime of the budget went into the makeup because like the, the sets. Are all like, they, they look like, like Star Trek TV show sets, like they it's, it's all very cheaply made.
Sonny00:34:44Um, so anyway, so JVL in later, in later installments of the series, the makeup work goes like way downhill. It goes from like, it goes from like, uh, um, they individually did everyone and we're like applying prosthetics and stuff like that to like everyone who's on screen. And then in the fourth and fifth movie in the series, they're just like pulling masks on. They have like one or two people who have prosthetics and then they're just pulling the masks on. Yeah. There was, there's a really good documentary that, that, uh, I think was made for AMC or TCM or somebody that I watched five or six times when I was a kid cause it was always on, but it was like, it was actually really fascinating watching the evolution of the series. It was narrated by Roddy McDowell. It's really good. If, if anyone wants to track it down, um, it's probably in one of the various blue ray DVD sets, but that's fascinating.
JVL00:35:33I, there's so much in it. In it to like, yeah, I mean there's a bunch of stuff in it to laugh about, like the fact that we're on a starship and Charlton Heston is smoking a cigar, which is, you know, I mean it flies in the face of everything anybody has ever thought about high oxygen environments.
Mike00:35:52Um, and then when they will just, we'll just say they invented that thing, right?
JVL00:35:58Who's a magic. My job filter. Right. Um, and then when they crash, this is such a perfect, perfect. Perfect vision of 1968 vision of what space travel would look like because they crash land and their spaceship has with it an inflatable yellow raft and an aluminum paddle, because that's what every starship that is capable of faster than light travel would have. Um, so it's funny like that, but then it's, it's also, there's a bunch of weirdly unexpected stuff in it, namely the, the main character. Charles Heston is kind of a villain like he's an asshole. He is not super competent. Uh, you know, he sort of becomes super competent by the end, uh, but he's not super competent. He doesn't quite know what he's doing. He's a in, and he's like a dick to his crew mates and, and is kind of a nihilist. Yes. Right.
Sonny00:37:03I mean, he is a. Objectively.
JVL00:37:05Yeah. And that's why when, when he, when he does that joker laugh, I actually thought that was like an interesting character and maybe it's just that he was a shitty actor at this point in his career. Um, but I thought that his character, like he's playing this as, as if he's the villain of the piece and he basically, I mean, he doesn't even really become a hero. Maybe he's like an anti-hero cause I don't know about you guys. I'm never particularly rooting for him. I'm rooting against Dr. Zayas. Right. That's like, you know, eight year old me who was watching that movie hated Dr. Zayas, but wasn't anti ape in any way. I liked the apes. I really liked Cornelius and Dr. Zara right now, but, uh, and Julius, but it's also filled with so many funny little bits like the there's, there's a, yeah, there's the, you know, with the, when he's before the tribunal and they do the three apes in the tribunal, the three orangutans do the, you know, hear no evil, see no evil, speak, no evil is funny. There's a scene where you get a couple of like the gorilla guard guys just sitting around talking like they are two guys from Fred Flintstone's quarry, you know, talking about like, ah, you know, that new managers of all real ball buster and like that, and, and I think they're smoking too. Yeah. And like little things like that that are funny, but the other thing that was really interesting to me was the, like, there is some like proto hippie stuff in here too. In addition to like the zero population growth towards the end of the movie, Taylor, who is at this point is like captain America from easy rider or something. Yes. And he says to the youngest day, you know, like they're talking about fads and fashions and beards and stuff. I think he says something like, you know, only young people wear beers where I'm where
Mike00:39:03I came from. Where I came from.
JVL00:39:05And then he says to them, never trust anybody over 30. Right. That was just like, oh, wow, we're in full, full hippie 68, baby.
Sonny00:39:14Yeah. Well, and this is and this is why I don't think he is intentionally being portrayed as a villain. I think he is. I think he's being portrayed as like the cool countercultural guy. He's the reason he laughs at the American flag that the astronaut plants right is because is not. Because we are supposed to say, oh, look at this asshole laughing in America. He's so glad that America is dead. We're supposed to say, yes, America sucks. It's the worst.
JVL00:39:42That's right. And this is so this is so much happening in the in Marvel Comics writer. It's a little bit after this Captain America and this doesn't happen until till Watergate. So it's a few more years away from a decade away, a decade away. Captain America breaks up a thinly veiled. Nixon plot in which the the the Nixon stand in is like trying to take over America or whatever, whatever Captain America stops being Captain America and becomes nomad, a man without a country. And he like gets on a motorcycle and drives across America, like fighting fascists and talking about how the system fooled him and stuff like that is the vibe. And Captain America stops being the Captain America we all know. From the comic books as like a, you know, like an earnest, you know, earnest kind of guy and becomes this intense cynic, right, who just thinks that everybody's a phony. It's like he's like like Holden Caulfield by way of Woodstock or something. And that is kind of the vibe that the Charlton Heston's character has in this. And I guess I read that as antihero at best, but maybe they really did intended. As straight heroes, I mean, I don't know what you think, Michael.
Sonny00:41:08I just think it I mean, I'm sorry, but I just think it's like I think it's straightforward counter countercultural hero in the easy rider mold, right? Yeah.
JVL00:41:17Yes. Yeah.
Mike00:41:19Easy rider with monkeys. Pretty much. I mean, that's the elevator pitch, right? Well, like Rod Serling wrote the original script for this for this movie. And so it's got like, yeah, the ending is classic Serling. Totally. Because that's not in the block. That's Twilight Zone, right? Yeah. That's just straight Twilight Zone. But like, you know, he was also he was also sort of he was like kind of a we call him a beatnik. But, you know, he was definitely like proto hippie. And that attitude comes through. So my lovely wife had not seen Planet of the Apes. So we watched it together. And what did she think? I think she appreciated it. She was like. Because I was like, why didn't you how did you never see Planet of the Apes? She's like, when would I have ever watched Planet of the Apes? Like any time it was raining outside and you turned on cable TV, it was on TV. But she had never seen it. I think she was sort of of the view that. I appreciate it as a movie, I think she thought it was a little silly, a little cheesy, but also compelling and which is. I think probably the fairest assessment of this movie, like a little bit cheesy, but also pretty good too. As I was rewatching it, I was struck by how many things I was expecting that didn't happen because I was conflating them with the the sequels.
JVL00:42:53Oh, yeah.
Mike00:42:54You know, and so like all, you know, escape what was beneath the Planet of the Apes, escape from the Planet of the Apes, you know, what I don't even know what the other ones are like. I admit conquest of the conquest of the Planet of the Apes and and so like I'm like, OK, so when are they going to go down underground? And then I was like, oh, wait, no, that's not in this movie. So so it ended up feeling not like a slight movie, but like, again, I think I've mentioned this before, you know, older movies end when it's over. And this is definitely a movie that ends when the story is over, when he finds it out. Oh, I will say this. My wife. I immediately guessed that the twist that it was Earth.
JVL00:43:38Yeah, well, it's not.
Sonny00:43:39I mean, I feel like I feel like it's I feel like it's hard to exist in the culture without implicitly on some level, knowing that's what happens in this movie.
Mike00:43:49But also I saw it first of all, when I was eleven. So like I didn't pick up on that when I was eleven. I also don't pick up on things like this because I'm so when you saw it when you were eleven,
Sonny00:43:59you were like, why did the monkey planet have a Statue of Liberty?
Mike00:44:03Pretty much. Yeah. Exactly. No, I actually saw it after I saw Spaceballs, which, you know, where were the where the apes? Oh, shit. There goes the planet. I so like I like knew what it was when it was like, oh, yeah, that was the thing for Spaceballs. But yeah, I don't know. Like it it it's it's one of those things where I think if you hadn't seen it, like my wife hadn't seen it, you like watch it and you appreciate what it was. But it doesn't have the same like you can't see it as an adult for the first time and be like, oh, I get it. You know, it's. Yeah.
JVL00:44:43Well, it's not looking at it from a mind blowing, but it is so original. Yes. For the time that it's kind of impossible to judge it qua movie. Right. So it becomes such a as you said, to start Sonny, such a a touchstone of the culture and is, you know, now echoed for 50 years. Half a century. Like we're talking about this movie and everybody knows it and everybody knows what the denouement of is, is it's just sort of too big and too influential to judge. Right. You can look at it and understand things about it, but you can't say good or bad because it just is what one thing I had forgot my my single favorite moment in the entire movie is when Charlton Heston goes into the ape church and interrupts the eulogy, the eulogy for the. The deceased ape is unbelievably funny because they might as well said, you know, and he's a great member of the Elks Lodge. Like, yes, it is like they're talking about somebody in your small town in America in nineteen sixty eight. And I just thought that was hysterical. Like, it was really I don't know, they're like little bits of that which are funny and fun to.
Mike00:45:58Yeah, it has this it has the feel of a movie like that. G rating for general audiences like it does. It does sort of feel like, OK, this is a movie made at a time when they had to make a movie for general audiences. So there's got to be an injection of humor. There's got to be like something for like something more middle brow than what you're going to get from just a straightforward sci fi. Like there is kind of something for everybody. There's there's some fighting for the kids, you know, like, you know, lots of nets.
JVL00:46:32The apes love their net.
Mike00:46:33They love it.
JVL00:46:34Oh, they love their nets.
Mike00:46:35I also love how they they're their grasp of like what what parts of human technology are they are they using? Do they do they have an understanding of what do they not remember?
JVL00:46:46What do we see? Brain surgery? Yes.
Mike00:46:48Yes. The wing photography.
JVL00:46:52Flash photography. Yes. But they have not understood the mechanics of the wing. Nobody. They're basic mechanics are zip are zip. Basically, they're basically like nineteen hundred.
Sonny00:47:04So it's it's very funny, too, because the new the most recent of the the Planet of the Apes movies, the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has essentially the plot is it picks up it picks up like five hundred years after Caesar has died. But the apes have all like totally regressed. They have they have their civilization is regressed. They they like the only reason they have the only reason they have any technology at all is because like there's a traitor human helping. I probably shouldn't spoilers. But like. Like the the the like they don't have guns. They don't know. They don't. And like and that's very weird because in in the dawn of the Planet of the Apes and war for the Planet of the Apes, apes are running around shooting guns, shooting people like it's not it's not like they they don't know. So like that's and that's kind of what's going on here is that like at some point humanity destroyed itself. And yet the apes that rose from the ashes like don't they they aren't. Able to take advantage of the world that humanity had built despite having intelligence, despite having nominal levels of intelligence, which I find which I find interesting and weird.
JVL00:48:15We're still communicating information on scrolls. They haven't even progressed to to to bound books.
Sonny00:48:22Yeah.
JVL00:48:23Right.
Sonny00:48:23Isaiah is just wandering around with like the Torah in his pocket.
JVL00:48:27Yeah, I mean, there is a you do get the sense that there is something that the apes have that is funny. fundamentally a problem concerning technology and developing their own technology. Right. They can pick up pieces. But I mean, this is a classic. Right. I mean, you know, if you gave a monkey a microwave oven, what would they do with it? Right.
Sonny00:48:49And there's I don't know. I think that they lack the divine spark.
JVL00:48:56Oh, it turns out they really are the inferior. Bring it back.
Sonny00:49:00Bring it back. Well, this is my this is my nature. This is my. Well, this is. This is my big thought on the newest of the movies. I want to watch the humans take back the earth from the apes. The apes don't deserve to be rulers of it. They're they're inferior. They're inferior to the humans. I'm a human supremacist.
Mike00:49:16So I will say.
Sonny00:49:18Anyone who isn't a human supremacist can get out, go to a different planet.
JVL00:49:23Are there species hierarchies within in the new movies are like the orangutans, the ruling class and the chimps, the science class.
Sonny00:49:30No, it's it's it's interestingly much more egalitarian. Uh, in terms of the, no, it's, it's totally. Well, so this is what it makes sense for.
Mike00:49:39This is why, like, that's what it is now.
Sonny00:49:41Well, this is, this is the thing I want to drill, uh, drill down on slightly. So you mentioned the smoking, uh, JBL and this, the smoking is interesting to me because again, like the, the, the whole, the whole, my, my whole thinking behind that shot is smoking was so prevalent in the past. So, so ever present. So such like a. Nondistinction of class or whatever that people in the past thought nothing about smoking up in the future. Like that, that was just like a, and you see, you see that, you see that elsewhere too, right? Like in, uh, in the movie alien, right? So when the space truckers wake up, they, they have cigarette on the Nostromo because of course you do. Um, and even, even a little bit later, though, though this is less true, it's, it's, it's noticeable because it's different because nobody else is really doing it when you get to. You remember Battlestar Galactica, the most recent TV show, the, the, the, the doctor, the doctor character, like his, like his defining characteristic was he's like a contrarian. He's smoking in the ship. Right. But that, but that's also doing like a different thing where it's like he is purposefully making himself to be different. And I, I was thinking about this a lot because, uh, Matt Zoller sites writing in vulture wrote this whole piece about how on the show, Palm Royce. Which is this, uh, 1960s period show, uh, that's on Apple TV plus it does none of, none of nothing about it really matters except that you need to know it takes place in the 1960s amongst like the mad men type set. Right. So the, uh, but his, the point of this piece was like, everybody on the show should be smoking all the time. Like everybody should be smoking. Everybody in America smoked then like 60% of the country was, was smoking at some level back then.
JVL00:51:33Well, It had to help with their, it had to aid with their digestion.
Sonny00:51:36They needed to drink 17 liters of coffee a day and smoke three packs of cigarettes and that's how they got America back on its feet. But the, but like his point was like, everybody on the show should be smoking. It is, it feels weird that nobody is smoking. And I was like, you know what? It doesn't feel weird at all because that is a show that is beholden to every single modern ideal. Like all of the heroes believe current principles about, you know, equality amongst gays and like their character literally delivers a lecture about like this one, an African-American feminist tells a white feminist that she is really doing a lot of white feminism with their activism. And it's just like, it's like, it's the, it's a show that is so clearly written by somebody whose consciousness was developed between like 2015 and 2024.
Mike00:52:28So why should they be smoking?
Sonny00:52:30So of course none of them are smoking. Of course. And that's my point here. Like smoking. The smoking is not even a character trait for for Heston's character. It's just like, that's how it was all the time. And I find that fascinating. I find that fast. You can like really track smoking in this regard. Like I've started really paying attention to it and it's everywhere. It's just everywhere. Like you, you, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating and weird. And the absence of it now from period stuff is just as fascinating and just as weird as its presence in the, the, like both period stuff from the time and also stuff set in the future at the time. Right. Like it's, it's just, I don't know. I find this very interesting, but.
JVL00:53:11Doesn't he ring a tang in every which way, but loose smoke?
Sonny00:53:15I think so. I think he smokes a, I don't think he.
JVL00:53:18The, the, the, the monkey that's in the Clint Eastwood movie, I believe smokes in the course of the movie.
Sonny00:53:23Yes. I, I think it, I don't think he's like a chain smoker. I think it's like a joke. Yeah. Once. Right.
Mike00:53:30Right. I believe that. Does he smoke in any which way you can? Sequel.
Sonny00:53:33I don't know. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't watch that sellout shit. I only, I'm a, any which way, but loose purist.
JVL00:53:40Have you ever visited the zoo and watched the orangutans chewing bubble gum? No.
Mike00:53:45I've seen the, I've watched them do lots of things.
JVL00:53:47Cause that is what I could, I could sit in the monkey house and watch the orangutans all day, every day.
Sonny00:53:55The monkeys make me sad, man. The, the, the giant apes, they make me sad to watch. I like, I can't, I just think like, oh, you, you guys are so cute. You're so sad. You're just here and you're cooped up and you got nothing to do. So you want to be in the jungle.
JVL00:54:09Uh, I'm not sad about it. I, I, maybe I'm a little sad. I was, I was at the, the DC zoo once. It's the only time it's ever happened. I was in the monkey house and one of the full size gorillas ran the length of the enclosure, like at, at full speed. And it was the first time. It was the fastest fucking thing I've ever seen.
Sonny00:54:35Terrifying.
JVL00:54:37And seeing the speed at which this enormous thing covered that ground was absolutely terrifying. It was the type of thing that if you, to see in a movie would not track or make any sense because like, oh, it's a special effect. It's just CGI. There's no weight to it. But like watching it, you know exactly how fucking much this thing weighs. Yes. And the speed at which it moves is preternatural. Like, you know, it, it looks basic. It's basically humanoid, but it's moving at like four times our speed. And I just, you know what? It's better. They be in the zoos than out there among us.
Sonny00:55:11Well, now they should be, they should just be in the jungles. Leave them alone. I like, I'm, I, I have more sympathy for the monkeys than I, than I maybe let on earlier because I do. I do. I, I like, I really would be fine with them just having their own little, you know, ape societies where they fashion their own planet.
JVL00:55:29A planet. To fish the termites. Of the apes.
Sonny00:55:32Planet of? I don't want them to have a whole planet because then, you know, you never know what's going to happen there. Things get out of control.
Mike00:55:39Can I, can I bring us back to the text here for just, just a bit? Um, so question I have. The crew that is going out into deep space, they are to find their, their whole point is to find a new place for humanity to live.
Sonny00:56:01Unclear. Unclear. Is that?
Mike00:56:03They're just, I think they're just explorers because they brought up, they brought a lady.
Sonny00:56:09Yeah.
Mike00:56:09I conveniently dies.
Sonny00:56:12Can I just say, can I just say that they had their ratio entirely backwards? If the point was to, that's what I was saying. They did that all wrong.
JVL00:56:21That was, I thought she was just, there's like feminism. Yay. See, we got a female astronaut lady.
Mike00:56:27No, but don't they say something?
Sonny00:56:29There was a line about, she was going to be the mother of a, the mother of a new.
Mike00:56:33New planet or something. Yeah. But like new civilization, uh, so like that, that made no sense to me. And of course what she dies, cause the fricking thing, or how thick is that glass that it just broke in the crash or broke a year before the crash.
JVL00:56:48So, um, yeah, absolutely. No chance that Charlton Heston doesn't bang her while she's in hypersleep. I saw that when, when he sort of looks at her, he's the only, cause again, he's a psychopath and a nihilist. And as he is like giving his monologue about, uh, you know, basically some men want to watch the, the one watch the world burn, uh, and then he looks at her while she's, you know, pretty little girl sleeping there and I was just like, oh shit, he's going to fucking rape her. Isn't he?
Mike00:57:20Oh God. I don't think I know.
JVL00:57:22A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That character does that.
Sonny00:57:26No way. Okay. I don't. Okay. Not really. That's not where my head was.
JVL00:57:31But a guy like that who has no morality. Because, uh, you know, they're just out there when they're, they're going to go back to a world where he has no idea if that's even, uh, even frowned upon.
Mike00:57:42No, that was his old lady, that was his old lady, that was his old lady. There was, there was, it was, it was, it was consensual. Um, all right. So any other thoughts on planet of the apes or the other place? So did you guys like ever, like, again, I watched this movie and these movies like just random, like the cable movie classic when they would show up on UHF
JVL00:58:08as a kid, this was like Saturday morning. Oh, one of the apes movies is on.
Sonny00:58:12I, I probably it's funny. So the first one I actually saw start to finish was the third one, which used to play, you know, escape, escape from the planet of the apes where they go to earth. It's kind of a funny, like, Oh, look at the apes. They're on earth, the blah, blah, blah. And, but it used to play on like the Disney channel all the time and I was like, I w I, I probably watched that movie 20 times as a kid, but it was, but it's, but again, it's very interesting because it's like, look at these funny apes. They're, they're, you know, strangers in a strange land.
JVL00:58:43And it's very, it's like their version of star Trek four kind of, kind of,
Sonny00:58:48it's not, it's not dissimilar. Yeah. The, the plot basically is, so at the end of the second one, they destroy earth, right, they set off the nukes and, uh, destroy, destroy the planet, but the other
Mike00:58:59guy comes to chase after Charlton Heston. Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:59:02But Cornelius. And, uh, uh, zero zero escape on, on the spaceship that the, the Charlton Heston's guy came in, they go, and they go somehow through the magic of science, they go back in time. They don't, they don't do the, they don't go forward.
JVL00:59:22It's time dilation, right? It's a, yeah, nuclear bomb.
Sonny00:59:26You, who knows what happens when a nuclear bomb goes off? Anything could happen.
JVL00:59:29Christopher Nolan could explain this.
Sonny00:59:31Christopher, yeah, this is the original tenant.
Mike00:59:33Um, all right. Well, yeah. So anything else, any other thoughts on the apes?
Sonny00:59:42Mike, have you watched the new ones at all? Not, not the newest one, but any of the new ones?
Mike00:59:46I have not. So here's the thing. Here's the thing about the new ones. What I think I love about this series, the original series, and particularly the first one is the promise or the sort of what I, the promise of the, the promise of the of this fascinating backstory of how things got this way on earth. And it's clear to me that these, this new kind of reboot of the franchise is like somebody creative, you know, a group of creative people had that same kind of spark in their heads that I did. It was like, Oh, how, how did it get here? And there's no way that whatever they come up with is going to meet whatever expectations I have for the, just like the mystery of how did, how did we lose our dominion over earth and how did the apes rise? So I, I've not seen it in part because I don't want to be disappointed. Does that make sense?
Sonny01:00:49Yeah, that's fair.
Mike01:00:52Okay then. All right. Is that all we got for this show? Okay. All right. Let's let's wrap things up. Join us over at subbeacon.com. And, uh, we will talk to you next time.
JVL01:01:13Kim Harrison, one of the most thankless roles of the 1960s just crushes it, crushes it. Just get out of there, get slack jawed, but also you got to stay hot looking.
Mike01:01:29And you got to kind of like jump up and down for Charlton Heston a little bit.
Sonny01:01:33In the, in the future. Yeah. The savages.
JVL01:01:36It's such a weird, again, it's a G movie where they're talking about, we want to watch you to mate. And you've got a whole bunch of dudes running around bare ass. And it's, when that G came on, I just thought to myself, man, it was a different time.
Sonny01:01:52It is fascinating. I think about this all the time. Like the early, the early Spielberg movies, I've mentioned this before on the show, but like Jaws opens with a woman skinny dipping and getting eaten to death. By a shark. And like, she's not like prancing around. It's not showgirls. Right.
JVL01:02:10But you see her boobies.
Sonny01:02:12But you definitely see her boobs. That happens. And that was like, again, PG. It's like, it's, it's, you know, I feel like a lot of, there's a lot of stuff like that. There's a lot. And, you know, eventually they pull in the PG-13 and things, things start to shift to really like frown upon sex as opposed to violence. And blah, blah, blah. But like, man, the, the movie, the whole, the whole, the whole world of filmmaking in the, the, you know, late 60s through early 80s is just the wild west in terms of what they're putting up on screen. It's like, they'll do anything.
JVL01:02:51Before we get out of here, can I get 30 seconds from each of you on the Megalopolis trailer?
Sonny01:02:57Sure.
JVL01:02:58Okay. Go ahead, Sonny. Go.
Sonny01:03:00All right. Well, I don't really have a lot of thoughts on the trailer, which looks kind of interesting. But like judging a film by its trailer, I'm fascinated by the responses from Khan, which started rolling in today. We're taping this on Thursday, which are very strongly divided, like 80% of the reviews.
JVL01:03:16Responses by who?
Sonny01:03:17From the critics, the critics at Khan.
JVL01:03:19Oh, Khan. Sorry. Yes. C-A-N-N-E-S. At Cannes. The Cannes. The Cannes. Fail from Cannes, where it's been. So they've, they've, they've, uh. They've shown it.
Sonny01:03:31They've shown it. I would say, I would say. 75% of the reviews are one star. What the fuck is Francis Ford Coppola doing? Reviews. And 25% are five star masterpiece. He, this is insane. This, what the fuck is he doing? This is awesome. Like, that is like, that's, and that is always my favorite kind of movie. I am, I would rather have a movie where 100% of, I want, instead of the, instead of the bell curve of reviews where like, eh, most people are like, eh, it's fine. And some people really like it for whatever reason. Some people really hate it. I want the you. I want the you curve.
JVL01:04:06Those are the most interesting movies.
Sonny01:04:07I want the people who are like, this movie made me want to light my hair on fire. And I want, I could, I didn't understand a single thing that was going on. And then you got the people over here who are like, this movie lit my hair on fire. I didn't understand anything that was going on. It's great. Those are the movies I like.
JVL01:04:23Do we have any sense as to what it's about? I mean, thinking about the Fall Guy trailer, trying to explain, trying to explain what the movie is about. I looked at that trailer and I was like, I don't know.
Sonny01:04:31It's, it's essentially my understanding. Again, from the various synopses that I've read is that Francis Ford Coppola is positing a middle near semi distant, uh, American future, which, uh, greatly resembles that of ancient Rome. And there's all sorts of stuff about decline and fall of civilizations and, you know, excess and, and that sort of God, I got only knows there's a reason. All I'm saying is that there's a reason that Francis Ford Coppola took that movie to all of the major. Studios and said, I want you to pay a hundred million dollars in advertising and distribution costs. And they looked at him and they said, get the fuck out of our offices. Old man, get the, you are, there's no universe in which we could sell this to anyone. We can't even, I, this isn't even an Oscar movie. We don't know what this is. This is, you, you want us to turn this into, you want us to, you spent $120 million of your wine money on this thing. Good for you. I'm not throwing a hundred million dollars. A Warner brothers. Cash after this, I'm not, I'm not throwing a hundred million dollars of Sony money after this because there is a 0% chance. There's a 0% chance that this movie grosses anywhere close to 20. If this movie grosses $15 million, if this movie does babble on money, I will be shocked. I will be shocked. And I say this, I say this, nobody has yet. It has no distribution in the United States. There, there have been some of the foreign territories. Have picked it up. Some of the foreign territories have picked it up, but nobody wants to pick it up. Nobody wants to pick it up in the United States because again, Coppola was specifically going around like I envision a blockbuster, uh, advertising campaign for this. This is, this is a $120 million movie and you're going to advertise it like a $120 million movie. And every single studio head has said, no, no, we're not doing that. We're, I have shareholders. I will lose my job. If I, if I buy this movie from you, I will lose my job. And that's the other thing is they're not even buying the movie. He wants, he's going to hold onto the rights to it forever. So like basically what he is saying is I want you to spend a hundred million dollars of your money for a project that is unsellable to the masses and which you will own 0% of forever. Like you, you just, I, I, and like, and people on, Oh, people in the critical community are so mad. They're like these Philistines, these Philistines. And I'm just like, what? What universe do you people live in? I'm glad this movie exists. I'm going to go see it day one. I'm going to watch it in IMAX and then I'll probably watch it in Dolby. I want to see what crazy things old man Coppola has put on the screen. This is what my Merlot over all these years has been paying for. But, but, but I, like I, there's, you can't possibly hold it against a studio head saying no to this folly. It's, it's insane. There's a reason they didn't fund it in the first place. You know why they didn't fund it in the first place? Because it's deranged. It's, it's a deranged film that's going to be awesome or terrible or maybe both. Very excited for Megalopolis. That's my 30 seconds on the Megalopolis trailer.
Mike01:07:46No one's going to top that. I'm sure it's fine.
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