Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
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Battle for the Planet of the Apes Movie Review
Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a 1973 science fiction film that is the fifth and weakest entry in the original Apes franchise.
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“All knowledge is for good.
Only the use to which you put it can be good or evil“
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This is by far the weakest of the original five Apes movies and thankfully they stopped here and made no more Apes movies in the seventies. Here we follow the ultimate war between apekind and mankind and eventually the two learn to peacefully coexist. I loved the ending and it was a sweet way to end the franchise, but the plot is otherwise badly told and the movie is boring and cheap as hell.
Yes, by this time the franchise totally shrank its budget. And here it was obviously noticeable as the ape costumes are pale comparisons to the original, very cheap and mediocre. The entire movie is as dreary and cheap looking in visuals as ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ looked which is why these two are the only admittedly weak films in this franchise.
But Battle for the Planet of the Apes isn’t even passable as the characters are dull and uninspired and the acting is so bad. The actors here speak their lines with utmost boredom and the end result is hard to listen to. The plot had potential and it could have been an awesome conclusion to this story, but because of some plot holes and inconsistencies in plot details, I was frustrated with it.
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It has a couple of good moments such as the ending and when Caesar looks at the recordings of his parents for the first time. Those two scenes were moving, but other than those two, the film is boring and too action oriented plus that action is very weakly executed and the titular battle definitely needed a bigger budget as it looked uninspired and not exciting at all. For all of those reasons, this sequel is the only Apes sequel that is mediocre and not even okay which was very frustrating to witness.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes has a couple of nice, moving scenes and the ending is good, but this sequel is easily the worst in the original Apes franchise with weaker costumes, mediocre acting, weakly executed battle scenes and such a poor execution of a promising story.
My Rating – 2.5
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