Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Tim Roth On Burton's "Apes" Ending

In my opinion Tim Burton's 2001 attempt to reboot the "Planet Of The Apes" franchise was a disappointing mess--thanks in part to its scratch your head WTF ending.

In the film Mark Wahlberg's astronaut hero Captain Leo Davidson took off in an escape pod, passed back through the time-shifting electromagnetic storm he went through in the first place and ended up back on Earth - an Earth where a monument to the villain General Thade (Tim Roth) stood in the place where the Lincoln Memorial used to be, with apes now running society.



On the stump promoting the historical drama Selma Roth was asked by Crave about General Thade and that ending, which can only be explained if Thade went back in time to Earth at an earlier point than when Wahlberg arrived:

"I think it was he took over, he took control. [Laughs] I think the idea was when they shunted in time that way, he was the President of the Planet of the Apes. [Laughs] Brilliant, I thought. It's crazy stuff. I liked it. I had a good time making it. It was in the old style. It wasn't too much CG trickery."

Negative's aside Burton's "Apes" made a very solid $362 million at the global box office, but the perception that it was a disappointment followed it and so Fox opted not to make a sequel.

 A decade later, thank goodness the studio tried again with "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" which became a critical and financial success leading to the awesomeness of  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

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