Le Secret de la planète des singes
- 1970
- Tous publics
- 1h 35min
Taylor et Nova parcourent la «Planète des singes». Un nouveau vaisseau est envoyé sur la planète mais il s'écrase. Le seul survivant rencontre Nova. La planète est dominée par les singes à l... Tout lireTaylor et Nova parcourent la «Planète des singes». Un nouveau vaisseau est envoyé sur la planète mais il s'écrase. Le seul survivant rencontre Nova. La planète est dominée par les singes à l'exception d'une mystérieuse société souterraine.Taylor et Nova parcourent la «Planète des singes». Un nouveau vaisseau est envoyé sur la planète mais il s'écrase. Le seul survivant rencontre Nova. La planète est dominée par les singes à l'exception d'une mystérieuse société souterraine.
- Récompenses
- 1 nomination au total
- Lucius
- (images d'archives)
- Gorilla
- (non crédité)
Histoire
Le saviez-vous
- AnecdotesPierre Boulle, author of the original novel, wrote a screenplay entitled "Planet of the Men" in his native French. It featured a messianic Taylor fourteen years after the events of La planète des singes (1968) and involved a human uprising against the apes, following which they revert back to their primal state. The studio obviously chose to ignore his concept and used a new script for the film instead (which did feature an uprising - the chimpanzees against the other apes, but was changed prior to filming, possibly due to the reduced budget).
- Gaffes(at around 22 mins) In the "steam room" scene, Zaius and Ursus are wearing only towels, yet they seem to have twice as much body mass naked than when they are wearing their costumes.
- Citations
[last lines]
Ending Voiceover: In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.
- Crédits fousThe 20th Century Fox logo does not appear on this film.
- Versions alternativesWhen originally released in the UK, the film was heavily cut to receive a lower certificate from the BBFC. This version excised most of the violent and horrific scenes, most notably from the last third of the film, including both scenes where Brent is forced to attack Nova, the revelation of the underground humans' true appearance, the fight Brent and Taylor are forced to have in the prison cell, the killing of the mutant guard on a spiked door, and much of the shoot-out at the film's climax. This cut version was later shown on British TV, c.1991, even though all UK video and DVD releases have been fully uncut and rated '15' since 1987.
- ConnexionsFeatured in Les Évadés de la planète des singes (1971)
- Bandes originalesAll Things Bright and Beautiful
(uncredited)
Music by Leonard Rosenman
Lyrics by Paul Dehn
sung by choir of mutants
The problems originated from the fact that Charlton Heston gave a flat refusal to starring in the sequel, eventually being talked into working on the film for two weeks total as long as his character of Taylor died. So, the writer and director decided that the best way forward was to give us a new astronaut, Brent, who had followed Taylor into deep space and ended up in the same place at the same time. That means that all of the revelations about the planet need to happen again to a character who's a full movie behind the audience. He finds Nova, follows her to Ape City where he discovers the upside down nature of the place, meets Zira and Cornelius for reasons, and then escapes again. At the movie's halfway point, he ends up in an abandoned New York City subway station and has his revelation in much smaller and less visually impressive environs than Taylor got at the end of the previous film.
Along with this action is some really ill-defined brewing conflict between the apes led by Dr. Zaius and General Ursus, a gorilla, and the Forbidden Zone. There's a line of dialogue about how scouts had gone missing which seems to be the sole motivation for taking an entire army into the Forbidden Zone, and it's thin stuff. The thing is that Dr. Zaius spoke in ways, at the end of the first movie, that seemed to indicate that the ruling class of the ape society knew a lot more about history and the Forbidden Zone than they told everyone else. It would have been easy enough to make the connection that Zaius knew of the mutant humans under the ruins of New York City, but not in any great detail, and assumed that Taylor was part of them, creating the argument that the mutants were expanding into ape territory, providing the impetus for the entire action. As it is, we spend so little time with them and so much time with Brent discovering what the audience already knows, that it all ends up as thin as possible.
The movie doesn't even really feel like a sequel until the second half once Brent and Nova go deeper into New York City through the subway. It feels like that's the actual beginning of the movie, and it should have been Taylor going in instead of this new character Brent. And the second half of the film has a bunch of stuff that I love. The mutants who worship an atomic bomb? Yes, please. I love that. They're wearing masks that look like real skin to hide their mutated selves beneath? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I love it. The religious ritual that's held in the remnants of St. Patrick's Cathedral and uses Catholic prayers with bomb and fallout replacing any mention of God? I love it even more. It's the exact kind of twisted stuff that 60s and 70s science fiction excelled at. Another thing that that era of science fiction loved was nihilism (which made Star Trek stand out because it was hopeful in a sea of nihilistic science fiction), and the movie ending with Taylor blowing up the world because screw it, it all sucks, is something I love.
Not everything in the second half is great, though. The use of Brent requires a late introduction to Taylor that feels out of place. There's a fight scene that doesn't really work for me. And, most important of all, the conflict between ape and mutant was so thinly established that when the gorilla army shows up and attacks, it feels really empty. There are some surprisingly great visuals here like when the gorilla army is marching into St. Patrick's with the sole remaining mutant standing before the golden doomsday bomb, but they're empty because, again, the conflict itself is empty.
And, to top it off, I think that the inclusion of Brent wasn't just unnecessary from a storytelling perspective, but it was unnecessary from a production perspective as well. Some judicious use of body doubles and scheduling could have gotten Charlton Heston to carry his part of the movie completely in just a couple weeks of filming. The thing is that the ape society stuff needed to stand on its own without a human involved, having Taylor get lost in the mutant city early, spending time with Dr. Zaius to convincingly build the conflict with the mutants in the Forbidden Zone, and then leaning into the conflict as a continuation of the damnation of humanity that is the first film. I think it could have worked really quite well if there wasn't a need to remake the film unnecessarily in the first half.
Oh well, it's a mixed bad, but it definitely has stuff that works. Unfortunately, that stuff is outnumbered by the more mediocre material that supports it. It's far from one of the worst sequels to a great film ever made. It has too many interesting ideas and visuals to dismiss it completely, but it could have been better.
- davidmvining
- 30 août 2020
- Permalien
Meilleurs choix
Détails
- Date de sortie
- Pays d’origine
- Sites officiels
- Langue
- Aussi connu sous le nom de
- Beneath the Planet of the Apes
- Lieux de tournage
- Sociétés de production
- Voir plus de crédits d'entreprise sur IMDbPro
Box-office
- Budget
- 3 000 000 $US (estimé)
- Montant brut aux États-Unis et au Canada
- 18 999 718 $US
- Montant brut mondial
- 18 999 718 $US
- Durée1 heure 35 minutes
- Couleur
- Rapport de forme
- 2.35 : 1