Animal Planet Part XVII

Planet of the Apes Movie

Well we watched the end of Planet of the Apes.

Oy.

The 2001 version ends, as you may know, in a massive battle scene, like some simian Braveheart.

Huh?

This is how a Tim Burton film (almost) ends? Not with a weirdness but a boom? Then there’s the whole Lincoln Memorial (actual) end.

Huh? Huh?

But nothing could prepare us for the 2011 version, with so many demands for our disbelief that one simply … tires.

Only briefly …

That’s not how drug testing starts and stops, on a dime, with no oversight, on the say-so of one guy and his private medical laboratory …
No, you’re not allowed to own apes, and the sexy zookeeper would be aghast at this, not intrigued, or (de)panting for the perpetrator …
Five years after they start visiting that forest, more convenient than a local 7-Eleven, he tells her how Caesar came to live with him …
Earthquake proof buildings, required in California, do not have plate glass windows apes can 1) leap through and 2) unharmed …
Why would zoo apes, who had not received the drug, know immediately, intuitively what to do if the smart ones set them free …

Well, because (of course) all animals want freedom … and no doubt justice, equality, and medical marijuana.

Have these people ever even been in a jungle?

I have not, but I would bet there is precious little freedom, justice, equality, or decent dope.  In fact, that is the paramount problem with this whole modern newly enfranchised of the Planet of the Apes moviesdamned if they aren’t … exactly like humans. But if they are exactly like humans, those same humans who enslaved their simian cousins in the first place, then why should we be even remotely glad they are now free to remake the society along their lines … which would actually be very much like ours.

The original — I mean the actually original 1968 version — was a commentary on racism, not animal rights. We weren’t meant to elevate the apes but to recognize that they were playing the parts of the humans in our actual world, unfairly subjugating humans in the movie just as we were doing to an entire race (blacks) in the real world.

When you make it a denotatively pro-ape dealio from the get-go, you lose that entirely. And frankly I say this as someone who carries more than a passing notion that we have certain responsibilities as regards animals and the environment. A book from a few years back discussed this — quite well.

Unlike these atrocious movies.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Missing Dinner

The common phrasing phor life today offers one and sundry the common counsel, Live, Laugh, Love. Jesus responds — preempts if you prefer it precise — with semi-characteristic frankness Love Love Love I say semi-characteristic since only half the time is he blunt, while the other half he’s maddeningly opaque — like the dork in high

Read More »

Out of You and Me

An important decision Zig Ziglar … Wendell Berry … or James Lee Burke? The book one brings to morning coffee out is not unlike the t-shirt options one has later that evening SpongeBob … Arsenal F.C. … or Feel the Bern? Managing our reputations, as the LinkedInFluencers say. Wouldn’t wanna cross those guys. It’s usually

Read More »

Columbo: Why It Matters

This is part two of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, Columbo still matters. Part one is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * I now have the entire collection, all 35 years, nearly 70 episodes in all, and I’ve seen each

Read More »

Closer

Norm’s is the kind of restaurant where across the street there is a long car wash, a 12-unit apartment building, a donut shop open most of the hours Norm’s is open, a strip mall with a “Luxury Day Spa” between the cigarette store and the cut-rate auto insurance broker: “Free SR-22 Filings!” the sign says. It’s

Read More »

Related

Total Recall

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one … There was a woman who claimed to talk with God — not to Him, but with Him. The tale was well-told around town, in which there was also a priest. The priest one day after Mass asked to speak with the woman and when they’d settled

Read More »

All You Can Eat Adultery

I get all the adultery I want. It’s true. Ask Michele. Thing is, I don’t want any. You may have guessed this, but others may have thought Wha — ? Aye, and there is the (naked back) rub. I don’t want any adultery because I love my wife. This is true, and it’s the main,

Read More »

The Walmart Fairy

Want to know when you can be sure the economy is in the turlet? It’s when even Walmart’s not hiring. According to this item, the company has hired essentially nobody for the last six years. Nobody says it’s since the bankers ripped us off again and the government let them, and all the oceans stopped

Read More »