The start of the movie gets things moving quickly. Recapping previous events, showing a boxer rebellion of the apes and including a narration by John Huston as the Lawgiver. If you are a certain age, Huston's voice immediately invokes Gandalf from the Rankin Bass production of the Hobbit. So the bookending pieces with Huston lends one a bit of hope that this might, despite being such a late installment in the series of sequels, actually be good.
It keeps the hope alive through the next few scenes. Characters are introduced, the present state of things is established through exposition and a few slice of life vignettes.
The sfx makeup is not up to the quality of previous Apes movies. It works really well for a few characters but for the gorillas it's just terrible.
You are able to keep the hope alive (and the suspension of disbelief engaged) until we are introduced to the bad guys.
How do I put this. It's as if the bad guy segments are shot by Republic pictures back in the Buster Crabbe era of Flash Gordon. The bad guy is Ming the merciless. But minus the pointy shoulder pads and boots. Keep the skullcap and high collar though! Most of the bad guy scenes are even shot Dutch angle. I was surprised he didnt fly a rocket ship with a sparkler for the exhaust.
After this point the movie unravels quickly. Massive plot holes. Pathetic action scenes. Really, really bad makeup effects on the 'mutants'. Compared to this movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is Oscar material in that department alone.
Though strangely the long shot of the melted city looks better in this movie? It's like they lost the footage for "Beneath..." and had to sub a4th gen 16mm reel, but "Battle..." has the exact same shot, full color crystal clear. Very strange.
This movie seems like it started as a competent production. About a third of the movie seems to have been made with intention of purpose. The production quality is high. There is a very good score throughout that is interesting and compelling. Though even that drops out during some of the worst scenes when the movie could have used some help. By the time you are past the halfway point of the film you are in it. This movie sucks, but for completeness sake I'll finish it. And they do not make it easy. The SFX get worse. The plot gets stupider. The bad guys lines go to lower echelons of Republic Films era bad. And the whole sequence of events makes no sense in linear time. How are people alive from before WWIII but then people standing next to them are talking about knowledge handed down generations? It's almost like they were going to try to make a ring cycle where the beginning and end wrap around to each other and overlap. But this movie isn't that deep. Its just messy.
I'm still positively shocked that John Huston was involved. He did voice overs for a lot of cartoons and silly stuff. But he actually appears in this movie, in ape makeup!
It's really a shame how this one is so far downhill from the first 3. Beneath the Planet of the Apes has it's flaws. But those mutants were legitimately terrifying to see in the 70s. That story had something to say about the cold war terror we all lived in back then and a few other things besides made it memorable and compelling. Escape has some warts as well, but is overall a charming movie.
This movie just kind of fizzles out.
It keeps the hope alive through the next few scenes. Characters are introduced, the present state of things is established through exposition and a few slice of life vignettes.
The sfx makeup is not up to the quality of previous Apes movies. It works really well for a few characters but for the gorillas it's just terrible.
You are able to keep the hope alive (and the suspension of disbelief engaged) until we are introduced to the bad guys.
How do I put this. It's as if the bad guy segments are shot by Republic pictures back in the Buster Crabbe era of Flash Gordon. The bad guy is Ming the merciless. But minus the pointy shoulder pads and boots. Keep the skullcap and high collar though! Most of the bad guy scenes are even shot Dutch angle. I was surprised he didnt fly a rocket ship with a sparkler for the exhaust.
After this point the movie unravels quickly. Massive plot holes. Pathetic action scenes. Really, really bad makeup effects on the 'mutants'. Compared to this movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is Oscar material in that department alone.
Though strangely the long shot of the melted city looks better in this movie? It's like they lost the footage for "Beneath..." and had to sub a4th gen 16mm reel, but "Battle..." has the exact same shot, full color crystal clear. Very strange.
This movie seems like it started as a competent production. About a third of the movie seems to have been made with intention of purpose. The production quality is high. There is a very good score throughout that is interesting and compelling. Though even that drops out during some of the worst scenes when the movie could have used some help. By the time you are past the halfway point of the film you are in it. This movie sucks, but for completeness sake I'll finish it. And they do not make it easy. The SFX get worse. The plot gets stupider. The bad guys lines go to lower echelons of Republic Films era bad. And the whole sequence of events makes no sense in linear time. How are people alive from before WWIII but then people standing next to them are talking about knowledge handed down generations? It's almost like they were going to try to make a ring cycle where the beginning and end wrap around to each other and overlap. But this movie isn't that deep. Its just messy.
I'm still positively shocked that John Huston was involved. He did voice overs for a lot of cartoons and silly stuff. But he actually appears in this movie, in ape makeup!
It's really a shame how this one is so far downhill from the first 3. Beneath the Planet of the Apes has it's flaws. But those mutants were legitimately terrifying to see in the 70s. That story had something to say about the cold war terror we all lived in back then and a few other things besides made it memorable and compelling. Escape has some warts as well, but is overall a charming movie.
This movie just kind of fizzles out.
