Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (3 Stars)

This is the fourth film in the Planet Of The Apes pentalagy, and in my opinion the weakest. It follows the rise of Caesar as the leader of the ape rebellion. In the third film his parents had named him Milo, but Caesar is the name he's chosen for himself.

The film was made in 1972, and takes place in 1991. That's the film's main problem. Viewers in 1972 might have been able to accept the view of society in 1991 as a possible future. For viewers 20 years later it seems ridiculous, because none of those developments actually happened. The film predicts that in 1991 apes will have been trained to do menial labour like sweeping, pouring drinks or even cutting hair. It's very difficult to take this seriously.

Another example of this is "Until the end of the world", made in 1984 but not released until 1991. The film is set in 1999, and the director makes the assumption that telephones will have been  replaced by video phones. This was an intelligent guess at the time, but he was wrong. The technology was probably in place by then, but he overlooked the fact that people just don't want to be seen by anyone who is calling them.