Redeeming the Planet of the Apes
Redeeming the Planet of the Apes
What is heritage?
That’s a question asked by Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the latest installment of the longest-running sci-fi film franchise in history, playing now in theaters.
In 1968 the first Apes movie, starring Charlton Heston and co-written by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, featured astronauts crash-landing on a seemingly distant planet ruled by super-intelligent apes. In one of the most iconic scenes of the 1960s, at the end of the movie Heston’s character sees a half-destroyed Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand, realizes he’s been on earth all along, and cries: “You finally, really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up!”
Heston wasn’t talking about the apes. He was talking about human beings, who had destroyed their planet through nuclear war.