Every ‘Planet of the Apes’ Movie, Ranked
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There’s no question that there’s a hierarchy among movie franchises. At the top, of course, are Star Wars and James Bond. At the bottom of the cinematic abyss, you’ll find the Twilights, the Sharknados, the various Revenge of the Nerds romps, and the collected works of Jason Voorhees. But things start to get interesting in the middle of the curve. Because it’s there, slightly above Godzilla and a rung or two below Star Trek, that you’ll find the Planet of the Apes movies.
Loosely adapted from French author Pierre Boulle’s 1963 sci-fi novel, the first Planet of the Apes gave the world the simian sadist Dr. Zaius, a leathery-chested Charlton Heston, and a mind-blowing twist ending that could have only come from the fevered brain of Twilight Zone mastermind Rod Serling. In the 56 years since then, the series has cycled through sequels, sidequels, reboots, and preboots, with wild swings in quality. Still, I’d argue that this is the rare franchise where even the worst installments are pretty great in a Mystery Science Theater sort of way.
Now, with the arrival of the tenth and latest chapter, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, I decided to spend the week rewatching the entire saga (nice work if you can get it!) and ranking the films from best to worst. Where did the latest entry land? Read on to find out…
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Welcome to the bottom of the barrel, where we find another unlikely primate, Mr. Tim Burton. Based on the director’s track record and signature off-kilter Goth style (not to mention getting Rick Baker to do the simian makeup), this should have been a fucking home run. Instead, it’s an absolute jaw-on-the-floor train wreck. Does it qualify as a guilty pleasure? I suppose it depends on your definition of “pleasure.” Whatever the case, it’s a terrible movie. And chief among its offenders is Mark Wahlberg, who’s completely miscast in the Heston role. He’s a total blank, an unlikable cipher who’s wooden and dim. When he attempts to lead a Great Escape-style rescue of the apes’ human prisoners, you root for the apes. The comedy is lame and pun-heavy, the action looks like it was shot in someone’s backyard, and its story leads to a dead end. Weirdest of all, though, is the disconcertingly horny way that Burton’s camera films Helena Bonham Carter’s heavily hair-styled ape, Ari. Yes, I know they were about to become a couple off-screen, but it’s creepy. You don’t know whether to call a shrink or inform the ASPCA.
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Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Okay, we’ve now officially entered a different kind of Forbidden Zone. This is where things get bleak. In the runner-up position for the worst of the bunch is 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the fifth and final chapter of the first wave. By this point, 20th Century-Fox couldn’t be bothered enough to hand director J. Lee Thompson a decent budget, so everything about the film feels threadbare and hand-me-down, including the script. Roddy McDowall’s Caesar (the son of Roddy McDowall’s Cornelius) takes center stage as the peaceful leader of the apes who’s now under threat by a marauding group of gorilla guerillas plotting to overthrow him. There’s more hooey about those human mutants in the subterranean Gotham Forbidden Zone, even though it wasn’t very interesting the first time around. But on the plus side, we are treated to the always-welcome stentorian voice of John Huston as the Lawgiver. What is the great auteur behind The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would Be King doing in a third-rate apes sequel? Those gambling debts aren’t going to pay themselves…
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Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
If you’re determined to enjoy Escape from the Planet of the Apes, it’s important to suspend all disbelief. After painting themselves into a narrative corner with 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes, this third chapter gives the finger to physics and brings Roddy McDowall’s Cornelius and Kim Hunter’s now-pregnant (and daffier) Zira back in time to contemporary L.A. (well, the contemporary L.A. of the ‘70s). But since these future apes know all about how humanity will eventually doom itself, they’re viewed with suspicion. As silly as it is, Escape has a bit of a Terminator time-travel, future-savior logic pretzel going on that I have to admit I dig. Even so, this is the closest the Apes movies come to a sitcom. I kept waiting for Norman Fell to show up and smile straight at the camera.
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Okay, so now you know how I feel about the new one. It’s…fine. But fine is not what I’m looking for in an Apes movie. I want either colossally amazing or colossally awful. I can have a good time with either of those. With meh, what’s the point? But here we go: Picking up with the death of the saintly Caesar and then fast-forwarding several generations, Kingdom takes place in a future where the virus from the prior films has turned mankind into voiceless, dull-witted animals. Meanwhile, the apes have splintered off into separate tribes and Caesar’s gospel of peace has been largely forgotten. Directed by Wes Ball (the Maze Runner movies), this sequel-slash-reboot is about a half-hour too long and suffers from its literal lack of humanity. After a seven-year wait, I expected more.
In theaters
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Ten years after Tim Burton tried to resurrect the franchise and utterly whiffed, the digital mo-cap era was ushered in with Rise. I liked this movie just fine when it came out a dozen or so years ago, but I have to admit that the years haven’t been all that kind to it. After the rollicking actionpaloozas of Dawn and War, hindsight has made this movie look a bit spartan. It’s like a Playhouse 90 version of a Planet of the Apes movie. Yes, Rise successfully establishes a brand-new timeline in the Apes Cinematic Universe, but the relationship between Serkis’s lil’ Caesar and James Franco’s scientist feels slightly static and self-important. Then again, “hasn’t aged well” is how I’d describe a lot of Franco’s movies.
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Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Charlton Heston is back! But don’t get too comfortable—he’s not around much. I hope you like James Franciscus. Directed by Clint Eastwood pal Ted Post (Hang ‘em High, Magnum Force), Beneath features the most obvious premise you could possibly concoct for a sequel. Franciscus’ astronaut heads off on a rescue mission to find the missing Heston. When he winds up in the same place with the same intelligent apes, he flashes the same look of shocked disbelief (although he doesn’t sell it as well as Heston did). Franciscus’s search takes him into the Forbidden Zone (a post-apocalyptic subterranean New York City) where he stumbles onto an doomsday cult of mutant human survivors of a nuclear blast. Beneath has its moments, for sure. But it’s a bargain-basement version of the first film, right down to the tapioca masculinity of Franciscus compared to Heston’s red-meat variety (it would have been interesting to see what first choice for role, Burt Reynolds, would have done with it). The point of the movie is so trite it could fit on the slip of paper you’d find in a fortune cookie: Man is Man’s Worst Enemy. Still, I’ll give Beneath this much, it has guts—guts enough to blow the entire Apes-verse to kingdom come at the end.
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War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves is back behind the camera for the closing chapter of the second wave (and last film he would make before getting mired in Gotham’s quicksand with The Batman). As title suggests, things are about to become more bleak and nihilistic in War, courtesy of Woody Harrelson’s mad-eyed military villain, the Colonel. Another character who is introduced in this installment is Steve Zahn’s “Bad Ape.” I know some critics and moviegoers found Bad Ape to be a bit too saccharine and schematic, but I’m not going to lie, that monkey broke my damn heart. At this point in the timeline, it had become clear to both sides that peaceful coexistence wasn’t in the cards and war was inevitable. And we see just how ugly that tragic conclusion is with some blazing, shock-and-awe action salvos that are goosed along by Michael Giacchino’s magnificent score. This is the closest the franchise will ever come to making its own Apocalypse Now.
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Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
A contrarian choice? Perhaps. But this is the movie for anyone who ever found themselves watching the early Apes flicks and thinking: “You know what this franchise needs? More Montalban!” That’s right, Khan himself swings by for the fourth chapter as Armando, a sympathetic circus owner and friend of the apekind. At this point in the franchise’s knotty timeline, the apes have backslid from onetime rulers to now being human pets and servants in color-coded jumpsuits. And they’ve just about had enough, goddammit! Time to overthrow the humans and their baton-wielding cops. In 1972, Conquest was downright incendiary. It’s hard to believe that the logo of a major studio like 20th Century Fox is stamped on it. Despite its lower budget compared to its predecessors, Conquest’s violent ape uprising looks amazing, thanks to the B-movie know-how of gutter auteur J. Lee Thompson (who would go on to direct several of Charles Bronson’s grimy love letters to violence in the early ‘80s). Roddy McDowall gives a hell of a performance as Cornelius’s insurrectionist son, Caesar. He’s the closest thing the Apes franchise ever gave us to Hamlet. If you’re planning on watching Conquest (and I suggest you do), make sure to track down the director’s cut.
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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
The franchise entered its second-wave era with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But Dawn is where it truly achieved lift off and became capital-A Art. The latex prosthetics and cheap felt cloaks of yore were now history. We were now in the age of motion-capture, for better and for worse. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the first era’s analog, handmade quality, but the CG on display here is pretty breathtaking, thanks to Andy Serkis’s Caesar, the now-grown chimp that was raised by a human James Franco in Rise. Directed by Matt Reeves, who has yet to top (or even come close to) this film, Dawn is the story of what happens when the fragile balance between mankind and apekind begins to shift: The humans are in decline, the apes’ day is just dawning. The humans need electricity; the apes have set up camp where the on/off switch is. Gary Oldman hates apes; Toby Kebbel’s Koba hates humans. The battle lines are drawn. Thankfully, there are sane primates on both sides (Jason Clarke and Serkis’s Caesar). The action is first-rate, the f/x never get in the way of emotion, and the mossy forests and redwoods outside of San Francisco have never looked more like Eden. It won’t last. This is the quiet before the storm.
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Planet of the Apes (1968)
This is where it all begins. But I won't hand out bonus points for being first, because the inaugural Planet of the Apes doesn’t need ‘em. Why? Well, for starters, the world-building is impeccable, as are Jerry Goldsmith’s score and John Chambers’s prosthetics. Charlton Heston’s gung-ho astronaut, Taylor, and a pair of expendably bland crewmates crash-land on a planet ruled by intelligent, talking apes (although Taylor never quite puts together why they’re speaking English….the clues were right in front of you all along!). Our homo sapien hero quickly becomes the loin-clothed prisoner (along with a mute woman, Linda Harrison’s Nova) of the wise apes running the show, including Maurice Evans’ Dr. Zaius—an orangutan leader with the judgment of Solomon, a belief in law-and-order second only to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and a mad scientist’s impulse to castrate his human captives. Behind pounds of putty, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter play the sympathetic chimps, Cornelius and Zira. Heston, over the top even for him, makes a four-course meal out of his dialogue (“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”).
Serling’s rug-pulling, sting-in-the-tail ending is, of course, iconic. As Taylor and Nova stand on the beach, the camera pulls back to reveal the Statue of Liberty in ruins. This is not the past. This is not another planet. This is a post-Armageddon Earth. “You blew it up!” yells NRA Moses in his greatest For Your Consideration moment. Then silence, despair, the sound of waves, and end credits. God, the late ‘60s really knew how to close a movie. Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes was released the same year as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—two trippy sci-fi parables with religious overtones and apes smashing shit up. You could make the argument that Planet of the Apes is the better movie (although I won’t), but I will suggest that it’s way more fun to watch with nachos on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
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