Monday, February 17, 2014

Planet of the Apes







Heaven on Earth.




Planet of the Cavies






And that completes my final report until we reach touchdown. In less than an hour we will finish our sixth month out of Cape Kennedy.
According to Dr Hesslein's theory of time in a vehicle travelling at nearly the speed of light, the Earth has aged nearly 700 years since we left it. While we've aged hardly at all. The men who sent us on this journey are long since dead and gone. I leave the 20th Century with no regrets. That's about it. Tell me though, does man still make war against his brother, keep his children starving?



Scene: March through forbidden zone.

Scene: Astronaut plants Canadian flag. Heston laughter.

If this is the best they got around here, in six months we'll be running this planet.




Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty cavie!









Youre a natural born killer. The forbidden zone was once a paradise. Your kind has turned it into a ruin. Man's ingenuity and his capacity to destroy go hand in hand.


What will he find out there?


His destiny.






I'm back. I'm home. All this time. You really did it this time! You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!





Oh no! I was wrong! It was Earth all along! You finally made a monkey.

Yes we finally made a monkey.

Yes you finally made a monkey out of me!



_____________________________________________________


La Planet des Singes


Planet of the Apes


From the Pierre Boulle


Pierre Boulle's La Planet des Singes complete video from Dean Noble on Vimeo.







Jinn and Phyllis were interstellar tourists. They had reserved a flight aboard a sphere which sent travelers to distant stars like Sirius, Arcturus and Aldebaraan. They sailed aboard a spaceship with a rectractable sail. Traveling at near the speed of light, time dilated so that a hundred years was only a few weeks on Earth time. One day, lying together on their sides, they saw a glimmer of light in the window. Putting on a space suit, Phyllis left out a double trap door holding onto a rope in one hand and a net in the other. She had used the net before collecting things that travelers in faster rockets missed out on like remnants of planets, fragments of meteorites and satellite fragments. She pawed the ground franctically, urging Jinn to open the bottle. Less impatient,Jinn carefully pried off the top of the bottle. Seeing that the paper within was stuck in the bottle, Jinn heeded his wife's suggestion and smashed the bottle with a hammer. The manuscript within was many pieces of paper with small handwriting. Jinn knew the Earth language, having partly been educated on Earth. Phyllis, did not know how to read and begged Jinn to read the manuscript. He rectracted the sail so the ship could travel slower and lying down again beside his wife, he started reading:


"In hopes of averting a disaster to the human race."
"Human race?" Phyllis said.
"Yes, please don't interrupt." Jinn said."







....complete with a poultry farm...




The professor had brought along his chimp Hector.


"In the year 2500 we sailed in a ship complete with a vegetable, fruit, and poultry farm. We were travelling to Betelgeuse which is a huge blue star in the Constellation of Orion, the hunter. Placed in our solar system, it's radius would extend to the orbit of Mars. The ship would take a year to accelerate to near the speed of light and it would be necessary for it to take a year for the deceleration process. We were not bored for we learned from Professor Antelle more in that year than in all my previous years of existence. The professor had brought along his chimp Hector. We had three passengers, the professor, Arthur Levain, a young physician with a great future, and myself, Ulysee Merou, a journalist who the professor decided to hire for the journey as a result of an interview. It helped that I told the professor that I was a former chess champion.
Even if my story is not published for another 800 years.


The feeling of awe produced by such a sight cannot be described as we drew closer to Betelgeuse. Professor Antelle discovered the existence of four planets revolving around the central star. One of these resembled Earth. We landed on a planet whose dimensions approximated that of Earth. Our ship was not equipped for a landing but we landed on the planet using one of the launches. Our ship remained moored in orbit.




....reminded us of our meadows in Normandy.


We departed in one of the launches. Professor Antelle took some samples of the outside air and analyzed them. He found that they had the same composition as the atmosphere on Earth. I could discern the outline of continents. The form of the coastline was very different and nothing in the geography recalled anything from home. We flew over a town. I could make out the general architecture, broad streets and white houses with straight lines. Two years after leaving Earth, we landed in green grass which reminded us of our meadows in Normandy. We landed along with Hector at the edge of a lush green jungle.The trees were much larger than those on Earth. We landed in the middle of an Asiatic jungle.
It was a waterfall!





The trees were much larger than those on Earth.




Professor Antelle scooped a little up in his hand and said, "It can't be anything but water." He gave an exclamation of surprise. There, beneath Betelgeuse above our heads like an enormous red balloon was the print of a human foot. "It's a woman's foot." said Arthur Levain. I held my breath at the marvelous beauty of this creature from Soror, illuminated by the blood red beams of Betelgeuse. I named her 'Nova' in comparison to a brilliant star.We heard a noise in the forest and our friend Hector came into view.
As he passed, without noticing her, she sprang out. She seized him by the throat and closed her hands around his neck while she held the poor creature firm between her thighs. Her attack was so swift the monkey hardly struggled. He fell dead when she let go of him. The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. At dawn the next day, we heard her approach. She was not alone. A man was with her. It was her father. They led us to an area where there were many wild primitive humans.


Note: In the movie The Planet of the Apes, they made it a primitive city because of money worries. However, in the novel, the ape planet was extremely futuristic. I'll have to portray that but I already have an idea in mind. The Ape planet was even more futuristic than the World Jinn and Phyllis departed from, which is futuristic enough.



Note: The Planet Soror, since it has a red sun, would never have even a trace of blue in the sky. In the 'year 2500 scene' as the space ship was taking off from Earth, it had a red sky as a foreshadowing of Soror.
The flowers in the forest foreshadow the appearance of Nova.
The green plastic cups in Jinn and Phyllis' space ship are the same that the civilized apes will be drinking out of.



Note: My intention is not to slavishly depict every minutia in the story. That is not a priority.



Unnarrated segment, foley effects throughout: Apes arrive on helicopters to the crowd of primitive humans. They fire from their guns. Arthur Levain is shot dead as he runs. Shot in the throat.


Narrated: His dark brown jacket seemed to be made by the best Paris tailor and revealed underneath a check shirt of the kind our sportsmen wear. His breeches, flaring out slightly above his calves, terminated in a pair of leggings. There the resemblance ended: instead of boots he wore big black gloves.


Narrated: The house, with its red tiled roof, green shutters and an inscription on a panel at the entrance, looked like an inn. I realized at once it was a meeting place for the hunt. It was a classical hunting scene.


The humans are marched into the ultra advanced futuristic city. columns 500 storeys high extend into the stratosphere like human hands reaching up to touch the legs of a flying ghost, the towers are the hands and the stratospheric clouds are the flying ghost. To avoid the hands the ghost has to fly higher.
Anyways, getting back to the story, presumably from what I read in Wikipedia and other places, Ulysee Merou is placed with Nova in a cage in a scene with other humanoids. Over time, Professor Antelle has regressed to a primitive state.



Music segment: ELO Strange Magic: Various shots of the futuristic city. The old city with the wide promenade, the Ministry of Justice where Dr Zais the ape works is seen.
A Central Park New York scene is depicted with flying cars like in the future. A multistorey airport is depicted. Some buildings with wrought iron ape characters depicted in the architecture, and finally a close up shot of the Ministry of Justice.



Narrated: The town, which I had barely glimpsed upon my arrival was peopled by monkey pedestrians, monkey shopkeepers, monkey businessmen and monkeys in uniform whose job it was to maintain law and order. What struck me most of all was the way the pedestrians crossed the street. There were no marked-out crossings only overhead passages consisting of metal frames to which they clung with their hands.




Narrated segment: Ulysee Merou and Nova make friends with Dr Zira and Cornelius who are senior surgeons at the planet of the apes answer to Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Dr Cornelius: I am Dr Cornelius, senior surgeon at this hospital. This is Dr Zira, my fiancee. Tell me about yourself.
Merou: I am from another planet, another time. My ship landed here.



Narrated: Ulysee Merou is led to a trial room. Many apes are sitting around at tables, male and female apes are the judges. Instead of a formal courtroom like with humans, the apes have their courtroom tables copiously stacked with fine food and they are drinking from green cups seen on Jinn and Phyllis' ship.



Dr Zaius: And now the Tribunal has placed you in my custody for...final disposition. Do you know what that means?
Merou: No.
Dr. Zaius: Experimental surgery,on the speech centers; on the brain. Ultimately, a kind of living death.




Narrated: Determined to spare Ulysee the indignity of further trials, Dr Zira and Cornelius spirit me away. We set off a week later. A special plane had been put at our disposal. We climbed to a height of about 30 thousand feet. My only thought was to enjoy the view and the spectacular sight of Betelgeuse rising.
This prehistoric city itself is not very different from those of the present day. We have discovered remnants of cars and traces of houses and airplanes.
Although for some reason, it does not occur to Ulysee it is Times Square in New York, but a fucked up version of it.
They encounter a man wandering through the rubble. The apes commandeer him and strap him to a chair and hook electrodes to his head making him look like a patient undergoing Ludevecho Therapy as seen in A Clockwork Orange.
Under hypnotherapy, he admits that he once licked his sisters pussy. Note: Soror means sister.
The apes shake their head and regard this as irrelevant and pry him further. He then elaborates on the story of the past when apes in masses emerged from zoos and also the jungle and took over the human civilization.




Note: In this This telepathic depiction I chose to go with the full colour version of the telepathic serpent versus the transparent version of the telepathic serpent, similar to the one in the movie The Abyss from director James Cameron. The telepathic serpent typically shows the big thoughts and the little thoughts, ulterior motives and thoughts you might not even be aware that you have.
There are short telepathic thought tubes and long telepathic thought tubes, depending on the distance of the person you are telepathing to whether they are close or farther away.













Narrated: Ulysee and Nova make it back to the launch and it lifts off back to the ship. The trip back to Earth takes about two years. Nova is pregnant and delivers a child they name Sirius. In the two years, Nova and even Sirius learn to talk well enough to form basic sentences. The launch arrives on Earth. In the daylight, they see the Eiffel Tower of Paris. Then they see the familiar sight of Orly airport in Paris where they plan to land. The ship stops in the middle of the tarmac. In the distance, they see a jeep. Using the binocular aspect of their vision, Ulysee and Nova look again and see that emerging from the jeep is an army general. He, and his friends are gorillas.



Narrated: Jinn looked at Phyllis and said, "It's time we turned back." Unfurling the sails again, started for Earth. As they looked out the window at the stars, Jinn touched Phyllis's nose. They are apes.





I sure hope that Hollywood one day, does a movie that's faithful to the novel. This is a promotional ad trailer for my cartoon. Made on Sunday, April 17, 2017.