It’s pretty hard to defend the 2001 Planet of the Apes reboot. In both style and aesthetics, this Tim Burton film hasn’t aged that well, and if you fire it up today on streaming, it feels like a direct-to-cable sci-fi movie from the 1990s. And yet, when I saw Planet of the Apes in the theater on July 27, 2001, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Specifically, I couldn’t stop thinking about the ending of the film, which, superficially, is a huge homage to the 1961 Pierre Boulle novel of the same name. This ending — spoiler alert — doesn’t reveal that the titular planet of the apes was Earth all along, but instead, upon returning to Earth, one astronaut discovers contemporary Earth is now ruled by apes.
I’ve been thinking about this twist ending for 25 years, and apparently, I’m not alone. If you dip into Reddit, you’ll find a discussion thread that’s been going on for at least 13 years. And those of us who saw the film in the theater back in the year 2001 have been dealing with this gorilla-sized headache for much longer.
