Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me How Good the ‘Planet of the Apes’ Trilogy Is?

When I was little my father showed me the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston saying the iconic line (“Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!) and that chill-inducing conclusion when we see the Statue of Liberty jutting half-buried from decades of sand on the horizon. That last shot still haunts me.

Then, eight years ago, my father took me and my sister to see The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in theaters. I watched it, I didn’t like it, and I forgot 98% of the movie.

Fast forward to 2017 and War for the Planet of the Apes has come out and is getting a bunch of rave reviews. Curious, we bought it on Prime Video and were absolutely gobsmacked by how good it was. It became my favorite film of 2017 and is a film I still watch every once in a while to this day.

However, there was always this notion in the back of my mind that it was the only good Planet of the Apes movie. Especially when I knew there was a film that had Mark Wahlberg (I thought it was the first of the new era of Planet of the Apes movies) and I knew people didn’t like it. Then I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes and I was changed.

Looking Back: The Movies I’ve Seen of 2017; Ranked from Worst to Best

Two years ago it was a year full of movies, good and bad. So, with no further delay, here’s my list. Enjoy!

16. The Mummy

When I heard they were remaking The Mummy I was kind of skeptical at first but then I heard that Tom Cruise was playing the lead and I got excited. Tom Cruise has been making fantastic movies for decades. There was no way he could star in a film about some explorers who run into real-life mummies and the movie end up becoming a fail. How terribly wrong I was. From the first trailer, I saw I knew this film wasn’t going to be as good as I had hoped but this movie wasn’t just boring or corny. It was poorly written, the plot was terrible, and it was painful watching Tom Cruise and Russel Crowe, who are both great actors, stoop down to the level of this horrid film.

I was hoping I was going to enjoy this movie but I ended up disliking nearly everything about it. This is undoubtedly the worst movie I’ve seen this year.

Looking Back: The Movies I’ve Seen of 2017; Ranked from Worst to Best

It’s been a year full of movies, good and bad, and while I haven’t seen all of the films this year I have seen a whole lot of them and so because it’s the last day of the year I figured I might as well rank them. So, here’s my list. Enjoy!

16. The Mummy

When I heard they were remaking The Mummy I was kind of skeptical at first but then I heard that Tom Cruise was playing the lead and I got excited. Tom Cruise has been making fantastic movies for decades. There was no way he could star in a film about some explorers who run into real life mummies and the movie end up becoming a fail. How terribly wrong I was. From the first trailer, I saw I knew this film wasn’t going to be as good as I had hoped but this movie wasn’t just boring or corny. It was poorly written, the plot was terrible, and it was painful watching Tom Cruise and Russel Crowe, who are both great actors, stoop down to the level of this horrid film.

I was hoping I was going to enjoy this movie but I ended up disliking nearly everything about it. This is undoubtedly the worst movie I’ve seen this year.

The Movies I’ve Seen of 2017; Ranked from Worst to Best

It’s been a year full of movies, good and bad, and while I haven’t seen all of the films this year I have seen a whole lot of them and so because it’s the last day of the year I figured I might as well rank them. So, here’s my list. Enjoy!

14. The Mummy

When I heard they were remaking The Mummy I was kind of skeptical at first but then I heard that Tom Cruise was playing the lead and I got excited. Tom Cruise has been making fantastic movies for decades. There was no way he could star in a film about some explorers who run into real life mummies and the movie end up becoming a fail. How terribly wrong I was. From the first trailer, I saw I knew this film wasn’t going to be as good as I had hoped but this movie wasn’t just boring or corny. It was poorly written, the plot was terrible, and it was painful watching Tom Cruise and Russel Crowe, who are both great actors, stoop down to the level of this horrid film.

I was hoping I was going to enjoy this movie but I ended up disliking nearly everything about it. This is undoubtedly the worst movie I’ve seen this year.

A Spoiler-Free Review of War for the Planet of the Apes

When War for the Planet of the Apes was coming out in July I actually didn’t want to see it. I had seen the last one and it wasn’t that great so I figured this movie wouldn’t be too good either. Then I heard so many fantastic reviews about it that I just decided maybe I should watch it after all. So it became available on Digital and I finally watched it. Here’s what I have to say about it.

This is hands down the best Planet of the Apes movie that has ever been made. First of all, the CGI was mindblowing. I mean look at this picture. This is Caesar, played by the legendary Andy Serkis, and he’s a CGI character, yet he looks about as real as the humans in the movie. There were so many close-up shots of monkeys’ faces in the movie, mainly Caesar, that I was just watching the movie stunned. The CGI never wavered, the apes never began to look fake, it really was impressive and downright stunning to see all of these expressions and actions the apes made and it just never felt artificial.