Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

After the thrilling conclusion to "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes", it seemed as if the Apes tale had come full circle. Yet, for whatever reason, a final sequel was made on a shoe-string budget, featuring a plot that, while still interesting, was not worthy to end such an epic series. Sadly, then, "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" sends the series out with a whimper, not a bang.For a basic plot summary, "Battle" sees a society some years down the road where Caesar (Roddy McDowell) rules a rather primitive Ape City. Humans are basically just workers in this society, yet are treated generally kindly by Caesar. As usual, however, gorilla General Aldo (Claude Akins) proves to be a war-monger who challenges the "ape must not kill ape" supreme law. When a pocket of human survivors (after the fallout of their first usage of nuclear weapons against the apes) decide to challenge Ape City in one final duel, the future of human/ape relations lies in the balance.There are many people who think that "Battle" is a terrible entry into this series and not even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the others. I won't go so far as to say that. It is easily the weakest sequel, but that isn't to say that it doesn't have some redeeming value. McDowell gives another marvelous performance as Caesar, while the "ape politics" stuff is pretty good as well.The trouble with "Battle", however, is that it is just so cheaply made. Whereas the other films had an "epic" feel to them, this one (right from the very beginning) seems not so much a labor of love as just a plain labor. There are no interesting visuals, the cinematography is dark/bleak, and the plot is stretched thin even with just an hour-and-a-half runtime. Like many other reviewers have said, "Battle" seems like a TV pilot more than something one is used to seeing up on the big screen.Thus, "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" is a very conflicted film. It deals with many vital themes central to the "Apes" canon, yet at the same time does not provide nearly the type of heading that Ape-heads (the only ones watching by this point) were looking for. Watch it for what it is, but expect to be let down after the emotional high of "Conquest".

As a child of the 70's my imagination was ignited by the Planet of the Apes series. I saw Battle at a drive in...and when my parents refused to take me back for a second viewing I behaved in a way that makes me cringe to remember. But this is extent the film had on my young mind. It was only until recent that I learned of the negative response which seems a little extreme. It is obvious that the budget made the film look a little cheap and the story is a bit thin but the characters still make up for these flaws and still has plenty of dramatic moments.I don't hold the opinion that Battle is the worst of the series. I am of the opinion that Beneath is my least favorite and one I rarely re watched and seems like a rehash of the first with only a few slight variations. It is the one that captures my imagination the least. It is Conquest which I think is by far the best and the most satirical.Battle should not be so quickly dismissed because of it's limitations. The performances are pretty solid and everyone gets a chance to have a dramatic moment. Perhaps the message of the film can be seen as bit heavy handed by a modern audience and certainly could have been explored deeper had it not been for those limitations. It can come across as just a routine action flick between the survivors of a greater war and now just beginning to rebuild their own cultures. The human mutants are very superficial and one-dimensional. They are the bad guys of the story with the obligatory final confrontation. Over all it is a satisfying conclusion ending to the original series---warts and all.

The last in the original Planet of the Apes film series and easily the worst and least interesting of the lot. Surprisingly, they still managed to draw in much of the same actors, including Roddy McDowall as Caesar, the original smart ape in this timeline.This movie suffers largely from the same problems as its immediate predecessor, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It tries to bridge the time gap between the third and the original film, explaining how the events and the world of the original film could have come to be, but it does so wanting to use the characters from the two previous films, which forces the timeline to be too compressed, thus not allowing it to make any sense. Things have happened unrealistically fast, destroying the illusion and making you question the whole thing.But, whereas the fourth film at least had some good characters and a grand ending, this one is just boring. Caesar is barely in it, the villains are boring iterations of characters we've already seen in the previous films and even the battle scenes lack the intensity and scope of the ones before them.Watching the series, you can also really see how the budgets kept getting smaller and smaller with each subsequent film. So you can only imagine how this, the last one, looks. Like so often happens with long-running series, this one ends as well, not in triumph but with a whimper.

If you're this far in the franchise you know how campy and dated these films are, but if you liked the first 4 films, there's no reason to not at least enjoy the final film in the series. 'Battle' is definitely not one of the better ones. It's probably the second worst, next to 'Beneath', but there are some redeeming qualities. Of course, now being it 2015, we have seen Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which is the best Apes film to date, but it also is a loose remake of this film. A lot of the same plot points and story arcs, just executed far better.It's told as a flashback from 600 years in the future by the 'lawgiver' and explains the anguish that the world was in at the time. Apes and humans had split off after the downtown explosion. But even some apes have split off from one another as they have grown tired of Caesar's reign as leader. This is evidently the last time we see Roddy McDowall brilliantly play an ape and it was nice to see his arc come full circle. Humans and apes back in ape city are technically working alongside each other and Caesar, played by McDowall, serves as the link between the two groups. Aldo is an ape who despises the humans no matter their agendas. The fact that some humans survived the radiation back downtown is ridiculous. And the fact that they maintained the cameras and weapons is so far fetched, so I understand if some people cant get by that. The human villain is also very straightforward without any layers so it's difficult to get into the conflict at times. But to me, these movies will always be more guilty pleasure films than anything else. If you don't take them too seriously, they can be a joy to watch.The film doesn't do much to address what's happening globally but it does give us a sense at the future for apes and humans after the film. I found that aspect to be the most rewarding. It's the one thing that the new apes films do so well, is the relationships between humans and apes, and whether or not it's possible to live alongside one another. So even if 'Battle' was a weaker film to end the series on, I think it did the films that came before it justice. It concluded a lot of what was proposed in the first films and even suggested new ideas going forward.+McDowall's last ride +Cool ideas +Concludes the series on a profound note -Battle scenes are dated -Contrived human plot -What's going on globally? 6.0/10