Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Khoi Vinh

Review by Khoi Vinh Patron

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes 1972

★★★

Watched 26 May 2024

This sequel’s immediate predecessor, “Escape from the Planet of the Apes,” was so dishearteningly chintzy that I didn’t know if I could bring myself to watch this fourth installment in the original pentalogy. Before I could decide, Hulu autoplayed the first few minutes and I was shaken out of my disaffection by the abrupt change in tone and style—this one actually has style. It’s much darker than what came before, both its tone and its cinematography. Maybe Hulu has a bad transfer but the picture is really, really dark; not just the night scenes in the third act, which are practically pitch black, but even the inky shadows all over the day scenes suggest a sci-if Gordon Willis project. The location photography, shot at the hellishly modernist campus of the University of California at Irvine in an obvious ripoff of Godard’s “Alphaville” strategy (hey, at least it’s stealing from the best) very effectively if cheaply evokes a futuristic world that has lost its humanistic compass—essentially a fascist utopia, with apes as its slave class. It’s a pretty morbid riff on the themes from the original, and even if the perfunctory inciting incidents that set the plot in motion don’t make a ton of sense, by the time we get to the rage-filled third act, it’s clear that what the movie is best at is reflecting its turbulent times with uncommonly visceral clarity. The last line, which puts a bow on the entire franchise with perhaps too much tidiness is nevertheless a worthy capper to the franchise. The original run should have ended with this installment.

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