Planet of the Apes

Corrected entry: The purpose of the four astronauts leaving Earth was to find a new planet and repopulate it - with just one woman? The next generation would consist of siblings and half-siblings marrying each other.

Correction: The mission was to explore the planet, not to repopulate it. Taylor only mentions the girl because they lost their ship.

Grumpy Scot

Corrected entry: After the three astronauts woke up, they notice that they have large beards due to the time they spend in suspended animation. However, their hair hasn't grown an inch.

Correction: Facial hair (beards and moustaches) grow much faster than head hair. The three astronauts were probably shaved almost to the scalp before entering suspended animation.

Grumpy Scot

Corrected entry: In the final scene, Charlton Heston and the girl are heading south and the ocean is on their right, (and the lake they crashed in is out west), so we know they are on the west coast. So how does the Statue of Liberty wash up over there? Maybe the Apes kept the Panama Canal open.

Correction: You're assuming they are on the North American continent as it exists today. But they could be be on land that has risen from the Atlantic and are looking west over the ocean that used to be North America, the changes having been wrought by the same disasters that buried the Statue of Liberty in sand.

Corrected entry: An essential plot device is that the talking human doll proves humans were productive and creative before the ascent and takeover of the apes. This is absurd. We are shown repeatedly that the apes' entire society is based heavily upon the previous human one - this is a sneaky buildup to the end scene when we find out exactly why that is! So, in human society we have talking mice, ducks, rabbits, pigs, cats, dogs, snakes, elephants, fish, crabs: name the species, we have given them the ability to speak, walk upright, drive cars, in fact to adopt every human characteristic there is. Surely the logical assumption upon finding the talking human doll is that an ape toymaker created a talking human for the same reason humans created talking apes?

Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. The talking human doll is not a plot device; just something that Taylor uses to help prove his point. Dr. Zaius already knows that humans once ruled the planet; he was just stuck for an explaination of why the doll talked when he first saw it. Given time he would have postulated that apes created it, but was interrupted by the attack on the cave.

BocaDavie

Continuity mistake: When the spaceship first springs a leak and begins to sink, the interior shots show it tilting to starboard; Taylor falls against the starboard bulkhead and the other two survivors need to brace themselves from slipping. All of the exterior shots of the ship show it level from port to starboard.

BocaDavie

More mistakes in Planet of the Apes

George Taylor: You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

More quotes from Planet of the Apes

Trivia: To help keep Heston from hurting his feet when running, he was fitted with rubber soles molded to look like bare feet.

Nicki

More trivia for Planet of the Apes

Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?

Socks1000

Answer: I think that this is meant to be a mystery. Taylor/Charlton Heston, an astronaut, leaves a world set somewhat in the future after 1968 (when the movie was made) but still recognisable to cinema-goers at the time, to travel through a "time vortex" to arrive in a world in a distant future, which has changed beyond recognition. Taylor meets the orangutan Zaius/Maurice Evans, and Zaius hints that he has some idea of what had happened, but Zaius' knowledge is either limited, or else Zaius is not going to tell Taylor (or his fellow apes) the full story. At the end of the movie Taylor discovers that, at some point between his leaving his own time and arriving in the "Planet Of The Apes", the world had been devastated by a nuclear war, but I think that the exact time, causes of, and course of this nuclear war are deliberately left as a mystery. Sometimes I think a bit of unresolved mystery actually improves a story, and I think this is the case here.

Rob Halliday

Chosen answer: World War III.

Grumpy Scot

More questions & answers from Planet of the Apes

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