Planet of the Apes Original vs Reboot: Three Runs Compared

The original planet of the apes movies are five films that tell one long, looping story about a future Earth ruled by apes. Planet of the Apes (1968), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, stars Charlton Heston as the astronaut George Taylor, with Roddy McDowall as Cornelius, Kim Hunter as Zira and Maurice Evans as Dr. Zaius. It cost $5.8 million and took in about $32.6 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Its closing shot, the half buried Statue of Liberty, reveals that Taylor never left Earth.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), directed by Ted Post, follows the new astronaut Brent (James Franciscus) into the ruins beneath the Forbidden Zone, where telepathic mutants worship an atomic bomb. Taylor detonates it as he dies, and the planet is destroyed. The story carried on regardless, because Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), directed by Don Taylor, sends Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Milo back to 1973 Los Angeles in Taylor's repaired ship. Zira secretly swaps her baby, and the surviving child, Milo, speaks.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), directed by J. Lee Thompson, jumps to 1991. McDowall plays Caesar, the grown son of Cornelius and Zira, who leads an uprising against human owners, with Ricardo Montalban's Armando as his guardian. The studio reworked the ending after a poor preview so that Caesar spares Governor Breck. Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), also directed by Thompson, shows Caesar leading a village of apes and humans. Aldo, played by Claude Akins, stages a coup, and a mutant attack follows.

The budgets fell from $5.8 million for the first film to $3 million, $2.5 million and $1.7 million, before Battle edged back up to $1.8 million. The worldwide grosses fell with every film, ending at about $8.8 million for Battle. Together the five films earned about $82 million.

Planet of the Apes (2001) is a loose remake of the 1968 film, and it stands alone. Planet of the Apes (2001), directed by Tim Burton and released on July 27, 2001 in the US, keeps the idea of an astronaut stranded among talking apes but changes almost everything else. Some readers call it the first reboot, and that is a fair shorthand, although it never launched a series of its own.

Mark Wahlberg plays Captain Leo Davidson, a space station pilot who follows a lost test chimpanzee into an electromagnetic storm. Tim Roth plays the brutal chimpanzee General Thade, Helena Bonham Carter plays Ari, who sympathizes with humans, Michael Clarke Duncan plays Attar and Paul Giamatti plays Limbo. Danny Elfman wrote the score.

The film cost $100 million and earned about $362 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, so it was a commercial success. Its route to an ape ruled world is also its own: Leo discovers that the forbidden temple Calima is his own crashed station, the Oberon, and a pod carrying the chimpanzee Pericles stops the final battle. Back on Earth, he lands in Washington, D.C. and finds the Lincoln Memorial now honors Thade. The 1968 film ended on despair about the human past, while this one ends on a surprise about a changed present.

The modern series is four films, and the first three form a trilogy about Caesar, played by Andy Serkis through performance capture. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), directed by Rupert Wyatt, begins in San Francisco, where the chemist Will Rodman (James Franco) tests ALZ-112 on chimpanzees. It cost $93 million and earned about $481.8 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Weta Digital was the sole visual effects house.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), directed by Matt Reeves, is set ten years after the Simian Flu. Toby Kebbell plays Koba, whose hatred of humans splits the colony, and Nick Thurston plays Caesar's son Blue Eyes. It was the biggest earner of the run at about $710.6 million on a $170 million budget. War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), also directed by Reeves, pits Caesar against Woody Harrelson's Colonel and introduces the mute girl Nova and the lonely chimp Bad Ape. It closes Caesar's story with his death at the refuge.

The fourth film is a new chapter rather than a final one. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), directed by Wes Ball, takes place generations after Caesar. Owen Teague plays Noa, a young chimpanzee whose clan is taken by the followers of Kevin Durand's Proximus Caesar, and Freya Allan plays Nova, also called Mae. It earned about $397.4 million on a $160 million budget. Together the four films earned about $2.08 billion, adding the Box Office Mojo worldwide figures. The studio has since hired Matt Shakman to direct an untitled film, a new original story that TheWrap says is not a sequel to Kingdom, so the status of any direct follow up is covered on the kingdom of the planet of the apes sequel page.

The reboot is connected to the original by homage and by shared names, not by a continuing story. Rise gives Caesar a new origin: he is the son of a lab chimpanzee called Bright Eyes, raised by Will Rodman, and the world ends through a virus. In the original series, Caesar is the son of Cornelius and Zira, who arrive from the future in Escape. Those two histories cannot both be true at once without a retcon, and the modern films never attempt one.

The echoes are plentiful, though. The modern films reuse the names Nova, Cornelius, Landon and Dodge, and Kingdom's Wes Ball has described Jerry Goldsmith's score and other homages as part of his approach. The Cornelius named at the close of War is Caesar's son, just as Battle has Caesar's son Cornelius, played by Bobby Porter. In my opinion, the safest reading is that the modern series is a parallel telling of the same myth. Our planet of the apes timeline page lays out how the site orders the films chronologically.

That raises a question that appears in search results: why is Caesar's son called Blue Eyes? No studio or trade source has given a reason. The name sits alongside Bright Eyes, Caesar's mother, and it could be argued that the family pattern is deliberate, but that remains a reading and not a stated fact.

In my opinion, the modern series is the better saga and the 1968 film is the better single film. The modern films give Caesar a complete arc across three films, from a baby taken home and raised by Will Rodman in Rise to a dying leader in War, and they keep the ape characters as the emotional center. The original sequels spend most of their time changing the premise: Beneath blows up the planet, Escape relocates to 1973 Los Angeles, and Conquest and Battle then run on much smaller budgets of $1.7 million and $1.8 million.

That being said, the first film is hard to beat. Taylor's collapse before the Statue of Liberty is one of the great reveals in science fiction, and Schaffner holds it back until the last minute. The modern run has nothing quite like it, because the audience already knows where the story is heading.

Perhaps the fairest summary is a split. If you want one film, watch Planet of the Apes (1968). If you want a story, watch Rise, Dawn and War. I place Burton's 2001 film third among the three runs: it has the strongest cast list of the lot, with Tim Roth and Paul Giamatti, but its ending raises more questions than it answers. If you are still deciding where to begin, our planet of the apes movies ranked page gives a film by film order.