Monday, August 03, 2009

The experiment

I recently stated that after months of conducting an experiment, I have come to a conclusion that Planet of the Apes may be the best movie ever made. I could have explained this in a comment and it would probably be funnier shorter, or at least less lame, but here it is--how I came to that conclusion.

The environment in which the experiment was conducted was highly controlled. i.e. I sat around and watched television and this movie was on no less than 500 times over a period of months. I watched it all the way one time and realized,
eureka! (<-- italicized. that means important.) This movie is... awesome! Throughout my experiment I would introduce an independent variable in the form of a new show or movie that was on. Even one I had liked, one I knew would tempt me. What I found was startling. I would be watching this independent variable and then there was a quiet whisper, maybe a monkey whisper--i don't know, but something would draw me back to the Planet and though i might not have watched the whole thing through each time it was on, i would watch again for several minutes and i realized that yep, again, it is AWESOME. What makes it awesome? a list.

1. Charlton Heston--HELLO, are you kidding me? this already catapults the movie very near to the top of the list. I love how he looks 80 in this picture, yet is still hot.


2. The story & premise. Humans land on a planet where apes are the supreme species? what?? It is mind boggling, innovative and I want to see more.

3. All the many many monkeys.

4. The dialogue. "Get your paws off me you damn dirty ape!" is one of the best lines ever. I also liked the funny lines like "human see, human do."

5. Charlton Heston.

6. Stubborn Dr. Zaius and his flaming orange hair.



7. The ending--WHAT? I was thrown. I won't give it away, but when Taylor throws himself to the sand in agony and cries, "You maniacs!...." I was moved.

I love that when i first saw it, i hadn't really seen any of it previously and therefore didn't know a lot about it. I had my own special POTA experience awakening and I hope you do too.

5 comments:

Joel said...

Have you ever seen the musical parody of POTA that they did on the Simpsons? It's one of mankind's greatest artistic works.

Alanna said...

I'm sort of ashamed now that I've never seen it.

But having read both these posts, now I'm really curious about what you think of the remake??? (I never saw that one, either, but I'm a huge Tim Roth fan, so I sort of wanted to, although first I'd need to get over my fear of monkeys...)

)en said...

joel, that is vaguely familiar. I may need to check that out.

i actually haven't seen the remake. Maybe i should, but maybe i shouldn't...

Natalie R. said...

I haven't seen the old one, but mostly enjoyed the first one. What a crazy ending, though, huh??? I was shocked!

Our Blog said...

I don't think there is another person in the blogosphere who can make a list quite like you! Seriously - you're amazing!