After a ship crash lands on the planet Earth, Brent (James Franciscus) is the sole survivor of a mission to rescue Taylor (Charlton Heston) and his crew. Brent eventually comes across Nova (Linda Harrison), Taylor's companion who is wearing his dog tags and leads Brent to the ape city where they find help from Taylor's chimpanzee allies Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (David Watson). As Nova and Taylor attempt to venture into the Forbidden Zone intent on finding Taylor, General Ursus (James Gergory) and his legion of Gorilla soldiers are ramping up for a military invasion into the Forbidden Zone as Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) and the citizen's council attempt to maintain order.
After the success of Planet of the Apes, 20th Century Fox became interested in making a sequel. After original film's co-writing Rod Serling proved unavailable to deliver a treatment in time for when Fox wanted it, and a concept called Planet of the Men by author of the original Planet of the Apes source novel Pierre Boulle was rejected, producer Mort Abrahams came up with the story elements that would become Beneath the Planet of the Apes and entrusted screenwriting duties to Paul Dehn who at the time was best known for Goldfinger and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. While the film enjoyed healthy box office (though not matching the longevity of its predecessor) critical reception tended to skew negative with many lamenting the focus on large scale action over the atmosphere and social commentary of the original. While elements of Beneath the Planet of the Apes have worked their way into popular consciousness (regular viewers of Futurama will notice one or two references), the film just doesn't have the novelty or ideas needed to match its predecessor.
While Beneath the Planet of the Apes features a larger number of apes on display at any given point with a major selling point being the Gorilla army, the story begins to crumble following the abridged recap of the original's iconic ending. While James Franciscus had been a staple of TV with Beneath the Planet of the Apes his "big break", Franciscus' character is such a hollow placeholder for Taylor that there's nothing about him aside from serving as an audience proxy (for information we're already aware of). While I may have had my issues with Heston's over the top performance in parts of the original, at least he had a fully developed character as a misanthropic cynic with an acerbic sense of humor that made him compelling. I'll admit I'm not all that familiar with Franciscus' body of work so I can speak to his abilities as an actor, but I just never resonated with Brent in any way. Structurally speaking the first 45 minutes is basically a mini-remake of the first film with Brent going through a heavily abridged arc of everything Taylor went through (including discovering it was Earth along which has a "so what?" feeling to it.). Once we do get something new with traversing into the Forbidden Zone and actually going "beneath" as the title promised us we do get some new elements but they're not all that interesting or developed. While there are attempts at doing social commentary in the vein of the original film, most of it either feels like half-hearted lip service or "been there, done that" with the most prominent placement being a scene where protesting chimpanzees (the society's intellectuals) are rousted by the more thuggish and war hungry gorillas. There's certainly plenty of action on display in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but there's so little structure or stakes to the plot that you end up not really caring all the way up to a bleak ending the movie really doesn't earn.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes has everything that made the 1968 film a classic, only without the structure, intrigue or humor as it instead opts more for showing off a greater number of apes on screen and neglecting to make them interesting in favor of more battle sequences. While the second half almost has some inspired moments, it ultimately never delivers a satisfying experience.
