Planet of the Apes Explanation

2001-11-15 12:52:00

In going through the archives researching my writings on the atonement, I came across a question that I never answered. Here is the post:

Fun Question: I have a less serious and possibly fun question for you to consider as we head off to the gathering.

This concerns the movie Planet of the Apes. I will try and word this to avoid spoiling the surprise end, but if you have not seen the movie and are concerned about it then just avoid reading posts about it until you do.

Those who have seen the movie are somewhat perplexed by the end where Marky Mark reads the following on what looks like the Lincoln memorial:

"The memory of General Thade lives on in this temple, as well as in the hearts of the apes he saved."

Now here is the problem. The movie did not take place on planet earth but some mystery planet on the other side of the magnetic storm and the timeline was thousands of years in the future.

But when our hero returned he came back to planet earth in present time and read the memorial to General Thade who was not yet born and had never been to the earth.

Question: How could this be?

See how close you can come to the explanation which will be presented in Planet of the Apes II - and of course my two cents worth.

Belated Response: We didn't receive much comment on this, but I thought I would give you my 2 cents worth before the sequel comes out.

Here is what I think happened: The movie ends with Marky Mark (Mark Walberg) taking off from the Planet of the Apes to return to his home planet, the real earth. It would seem that if he could accomplish this all would return to normal and all would be well, but as we discovered at the end of the movie all was not well. Why?

First we must realize that unlike the first Planet of the Apes, the ape planet in this version was not a future earth but another planet like earth with two moons. At the end Mark was attempting to return to the true earth.

But after Mark took off in the Delta Pod brought back by Pericles (the intelligent monkey) he left behind at least two other pods that could have been used by General Thade. One was the pod that was submerged under water and then there was at least one other pod in the mothership.

Here is what I think happened. General Thade again gained control to some degree and retrieved one of these pods and captured Pericles. He forced this intelligent monkey to teach him to fly the pod and when he was ready he took off into space after Mark Walberg, hoping to overtake him and extract his revenge. He took with him Pericles and computer programs from the mother ship containing knowledge of genetic engineering they did on the monkey.

But instead of landing on present day earth, he broke through the time barrier and landed on earth sometime around the 1850's or possibly earlier. He somehow winds up in the midst of a large number of apes and uses his knowledge to genetically alter them. After a time he has an intelligent army of apes around him and begins to war against and overcome the humans until complete conquest is made and he goes down in history as the Abraham Lincoln of the apes.

When Walberg lands on earth in his present time the conquest is already complete and now in the sequel he will have to overcome this planet of the apes all over again.

We'll have to wait until the next Planet of the Apes comes out to see how accurate my guess is.