Son was watching tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" remake, so I watched pieces of it including the last 30-40 minutes.
Shockingly bad for someone like Tim Burton, honestly. Most of the ape stars are talented (Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter) but the film is just poorly conceived and not well-written, and the directing feels lackadaisical in most respects almost as if Burton just handed it off to a 2nd or 3rd unit director with little experience. Marky-Mark keeps making these goofy confused facial expressions, much of the cast just stands around rather than actually feeling alive outside of their shots, most of the shots are not dynamic, and it's got to be one of the most films to look at in the history of cinema. Like, Burton has never been this non-interesting.
Who the hell is that outraged intense twiggy kid who ineffectually gets involved in everything?
The fight scenes are goofy AF, you can definitely recognize when they are bunji-jumping around and it all looks unnatural, but even the big battle in the end is pretty dumb. The battle starts with Marky-Mark running out to the field of battle to help a kid pinned by his horse (couldn't he just cut the strap himself with a pocket knife?), then said horse stands with no issue -- and the kid rides away, leaving the LEADER OF THEIR REBELLION sprinting Back to to his army with an army of screaming monkies on his heels, when he could have just let him hop on back.
The war stops for a dumb reason (not even as great as the "we're gods, let us prove it with this eclipse!" trope), and then it should have continued but didn't? And then the leader is caged up and has one of those amazing guns with about 60 bullets in its clip, while managing to not shoot himself with any of the richochetting shots. I'm confused.
In fact the whole end was confusing, when there's an attempt to return to the way things were and.... we're going back into the past but the past is affected by something that happened way in the future? Or maybe he wasn't in the future at all but the past? But then how did the ship crash there...? Oh eff it all. The whole thing was just so bad, on a laughter level -- especially after how great the original is even with technical effects not being great at the time.
While Helena Bonham Carter's character is too demure for her and kind of boring in that respect, she manages to outact everyone in the film despite having much of her face covered by ape make-up. As if no one saw that coming.
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Then of course I suppose we must discuss why the prequel trilogy is actually pretty well done and well acted, yet ten years later or less no one talks about it and the 4K trilogy pack is only $25.