Ninja Monkeys

"The Monkey's Paw" is an antique tale of terror that teaches us that sometimes what we don't see is what we really should be afraid of, because what we didn't see what we never got closure on is what haunts are imaginations and stays with us throughout our lives. This simple lesson in story telling provides invaluable advice for writers, playwrights, and filmmakers. Clearly this is a teaching the team behind the original "Planet of the Apes" had in mind when they gave us the iconic tale of an astronaut who finds himself in a world where savage humans are enslaved by superior apes. As the film progresses we find out that what we once though was an alien world or a parallel universe is actually just Earth in the future. This comes to light in the scene where we find the ruins of New York and we hear the iconic line "You maniacs! You blew it up!" This suggest to us that a planet ruled by hyper evolved apes came about because man ultimately destroyed itself. How exactly this happened we can only infer but the evidence seems to suggest war. So we didn't see how this horrifying world came to be but we were left to imagine the horrific events that lead to it's inception. Now the problem is the new movie "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" tries to recreate for us the events that resulted in the ape ruled world we saw in the original film. We are to learn that man created these hyper-evolved apes and ultimately doomed itself. While this adheres to the original themes of self-destruction it does so by replacing the far more intelligent method of telling the story by letting our imaginations fill in the banks creating a more mysterious mythology and compelling story with a lame brained half assed action movie about people fighting super intelligent apes. From now on when people watch "The Planet of the Apes" they won't be left speculating just how the hapless homosapiens seceded their domination of the planet to their secondaries in evolution. They will have that story neatly packaged for them by a Hollywood summer block buster. This movie is a big middle finger to everything the first movie tried to do. don't see it. All it is is a lame attempt to cash in on a classic title as well as the the macabre fascination our dying society has with the bethusian. There's nothing worse when Hollywood tries to cash in on the power of a cultural icon in such a crass a cynical manner. By doing so they not only make a piece of commercial garbage they cheapen the already well done piece of art. Like Terminator 3 and how it completely negated the principle theme of Terminator 2 "no fate but what we make" by saying judgement day was "inevitable" Ok so then that means everything that happened in T2 was pointless...thanks!