It’s about time! Planet Of The Apes gets a re-boot.
Artistic imagination officially dead with announcement of new Planet Of The Apes film.
Ten years ago the world was introduced to a term that was to strike terror into the hearts of movie fans for an age to come. Tim Burton, the acclaimed director of Batman, Batman Returns and Edward Scissorhands, was to turn his keen eye onto the source material for a once popular film franchise. Not wanting to use the term “remake”, the production notes for Burton’s Planet Of The Apes feature referred to the film, rather infamously, as a “re-imagining”. The film, much like the term “re-imagining” itself tanked, and the Planet Of The Apes franchise was left to rest. Or so we thought…
Now, in the age of the “re-boot”, it seems that the property is once again going to be resurrected. This time, reports New York Magazine, a new film will be based on Conquest of the Planet of The Apes re- scripted from a draft by Scott Frank by Jamie Moss, the scribe of Street Kings and Ghost in the Shell. On board also is producer Peter Cherrin who as far back as 1992 attempted to make his own Apes movie.
Having been far too neutral on another idiotic idea I intend to “re-boot” this article for one final paragraph in which I intend to state how ridiculous another re-boot to a franchise that, aside from one critically acclaimed film, consists of a universally hated television series, a forgotten novel and five features that range from mediocre to rancid actually is:
Whilst Burton’s film proved to be far from a match from the iconic Chuck Heston original and featured a very strange retake on the famous ending, the franchise has lived to breath another day as it seems, with increasing regularity, Hollywood are running out of vision and gumption to allow for original stories and ideas that aren’t based on existing properties. Studio execs must be aware of the need for a new film in the series despite there being so signs of Planet Of The Apes fever sweeping the nation’s avaricious youth – why else would a “reboot” on this property be considered a good idea? At least the franchise has seen a decade in between re-boots and also allows Hollywood executives a nice vacation from commissioning beloved Korean films for culturally vanilla remakes, adapting “graphic novels” and sculpting triumph-over-adversity biopics about diabled musicians.
