Updated: April 17, 2026

Then there’s the battle between dogma and scientific inquiry. In a memorable scene, an ape prosecutor proves that Heston’s Taylor lacks the capacity to reason by showing that Taylor doesn’t know any Scripture. The film has some memorable action sequences, but a lot of it is dialogue, and a lot of that dialogue is about serious religious and political issues.

Like I say, a film to talk about after you watch it. Supposedly, other entries in the series ( Haven’t seen them, don’t intend to, one’s enough ) touch on issues of racism, religion, and revolution. But you can’t get a more idea packed film than the 1968 original.

Planet of the Apes has its flaws. It’s not just that the ape costumes are cheesy and their mouths don’t really move. The gender politics aren’t great. Dr. Zira is a brilliant female psychologist, but the other female lead ( Nova, played by Linda Harrison ) doesn’t get to say a word, and exists mostly to follow Heston around and mate with him. ( Heston also has some gross dialogue about how he and his crewmates were bringing a woman with them on the ship so she could be the new Eve, who was the most precious cargo we brought along. Perhaps fortunately for her, she went down with the ship. ) Planet of the Apes is also an early entry in the list of Black guy dies first movies, with crew member Dodge being the first killed by the apes. Some of the ideas in the film are presented in a less than subtle manner, too, although I’ve always felt that hitting people over the head with the point can be okay if it’s a really important point.

One thing I like about Planet of the Apes is that it’s not actually that unrealistic. Could humanity mostly destroy itself in a huge nuclear war? Of course we could. Could our closest living relatives eventually develop a rudimentary civilization themselves? I don’t see why not. We evolved a language capacity at a certain point, so it’s not inconceivable that given enough time, another species could undergo the same transformation, although probably not on the short time-scale of the film. Could that new civilization replicate some of the worst features of human societies, like brutalizing populations perceived to be lesser and refusing to confront uncomfortable truths when they conflict with prevailing dogma? I don’t see why not. The spaceship is the most unlikely part of the story, and it crashes in the first five minutes and is never seen again.

I’m on the record believing that we need more films that address the very real risk of major global conflict that will destroy civilization as we know it. The threat posed by nuclear weapons is serious and growing, though it’s very difficult to talk about it or confront it. 1968’s Planet of the Apes delivers exactly the right kind of warning. Dr. Zaius tells Taylor that the evidence suggests that humankind is a species whose wisdom must walk hand in hand with his idiocy, and a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him. One reason the apes regard the humans as uncivilized, Zaius suggests, is that when given power, we destroyed everything we touched. That’s not a particularly pro-human message, but the challenge Planet of the Apes issues us is to prove it wrong. Are we maniacs who will ultimately blow it all up? Will human civilization be a blip that ultimately extinguishes itself through war and the destruction of our own habitat? I am not a cynic like Heston’s character, who became an astronaut out of a bitter belief that somewhere in the Universe, there has to be something better than man. But I do take the chilling ending of Planet of the Apes seriously, and hope that the people of the future don’t find themselves cursing our folly like Heston on the beach.