The original Planet of the Apes had the hardest sequels to write.

The original 1968 Planet of the Apes has the quintessential twist ending that totally floored audience back in the day, it was the perfect ending to an excellent movie, but where do you go from there if you want to cash in on the success of that movie?

Charlton Heston had no interest in doing a sequel so James Franciscus was hired to play a astronaut Brent who was searching for Heston's character of Taylor, but due to the laws of physics established in the first film Taylor wasn't to return to Earth long after everyone he knew was dead. This begs the question, "Why was he ever reported missing?" Adding to the writers grief is that Heston would only return for his cameo if there was no chance of further movies, that they would literally blow up the planet at the end.

Then comes Escape from the Planet of the Apes where writers had the task of coming up with a sequel that follows the Earth being blown up. Not an easy thing to do. Well they jumped on the "time travel" angle with three apes having some how got Taylor's spacecraft operational, launched it into space and then where thrown through time when the planet exploded. How a race of apes, that are clearly in pre-industrial times, managed to get a space-ship from the bottom of a lake, fix it and launch it into space is beyond ludicrous. Not to mention that all that crashed on the planet was the capsule and the apes would need to build a booster rocket and a gantry, all in the time between the end of the first movie and the end of the second one.

The writers of the time must of been banging their heads against the wall every time a studio head walked in the door demanding another impossible sequel.

Submitted November 02, 2017 at 11:39PM by MovieMike007 http://ift.tt/2irkGQy