Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

(On Blu-ray, September 2020) I expected to dislike the original Planet of the Apes series the more I went into the later much-derided instalments, but on the contrary, I find myself unexpectedly impressed by how much the series was able to put on the table even then—the inspiration for the 2010s remakes is clearly seen in the last few films of the original series. But even I struggle to find anything more to say about the last film of the original series. The fifth instalment Battle for the Planet of the Apes certainly feels like an epilogue looking for something to say—it repeats points of previous episodes, looks as if it was filmed with enthusiastic LARPers on a weekend getaway and tortures itself by staying close to the previous films despite an obvious time skip. It’s worth a look for the material it laid out for the later remake series, but it can be a slog to get through thanks to the slow pacing, rough dialogue and meaningless plotting. There are a few extended battle scenes later on that highlight where the meagre budget has been spent, and it’s hard to stay mad at a film that ends the series with an ambiguous message of interspecies harmony. Still, it’s a whimper of a conclusion rather than a bang: the earlier instalments had much more to say.