Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

The full plot of Battle for the Planet of the Apes runs from a peaceful settlement to a coup and then a battle, and it ends 600 years later. Everything below gives away the story.

Caesar is troubled by what the future holds, and he believes the archived recordings of his parents are stored in the ruined Forbidden City. He travels there with a small party and finds that mutant humans live in the ruins under Governor Kolp. Kolp learns that apes are nearby and decides to attack their home.

Meanwhile, Aldo grows more hostile toward the humans and plots to take over from Caesar. Aldo seizes power in a coup, and Caesar's son Cornelius is killed. Mutant forces then arrive, and a hard battle follows between the mutants and the apes and their human allies. Caesar's side holds off the attackers, helped by the surviving humans.

Aldo breaks the apes' most sacred law by killing another ape, and Caesar confronts him. Aldo dies, and the mutants are beaten back. Caesar then accepts that apes and humans must share the land as equals, though the apes keep their weapons. The film ends 600 years later, with the Lawgiver telling the story to a mixed group of human and ape children.

The ending of Battle for the Planet of the Apes says that apes and humans will live together as equals, and it frames that choice as a story told 600 years later. Everything below gives away the ending, and the reading is mine.

Why does Aldo die? He breaks the apes' most sacred law by killing another ape, so the film lets the apes' own code decide his fate and not Caesar's anger. That is a deliberate choice. Caesar has just lost his son Cornelius in Aldo's coup, and a quick revenge would have made him the same kind of leader as the gorilla he is confronting. Is Caesar the winner, then? In this film, yes: he survives, the mutant attack led by Governor Kolp is beaten back and his decision stands.

Caesar settles on equality, though the apes remain armed. In my opinion that detail is the most honest line in the script, because it admits that trust is not complete. Compare it with conquest of the planet of the apes, where Caesar first meets a city that buys, sells and enslaves apes. Here the village has humans working as servants, so the equality he accepts at the end is a real reversal of the order he started with. It could be argued that the later films make the same bargain harder: in dawn of the planet of the apes, Caesar only lets Malcolm repair the dam on the condition that the humans give up their guns.

The closing jump matters most. The Lawgiver tells the history to a mixed audience of human and ape children, which closes the original series on a hopeful note. It sits uneasily beside planet of the apes 1968, where apes rule and humans are mute and primitive. The film does not explain how a shared future turned into that world, and it would be a guess to say it does.

On the question people ask, Caesar does not die here. Kingdom of the planet of the apes is set many generations after the death of Caesar, and rise of the planet of the apes retells his origin from scratch. For how the two runs relate, see planet of the apes original vs reboot.