“I’m loving how different each sequel has been. Most franchises suffer from sequel fatigue. The next one mirrors the first too closely, doesn’t add anything to the story, and the audience gets bored. With Apes, each one is very different, but always the next logically progression of the story. We land on the ape planet and then find out what it is. Someone else follows our pioneer and then the planet is destroyed. Apes escape and return to our world where they’re misunderstood and killed. Now their hidden child has grown up in a world that treats apes as slaves and he leads a revolution.
I hadn’t realized until I saw the end credits role that Roddy MacDowall was back, but this time playing Caesar, son of Cornelius. Hard to tell under all that makeup, which has also improved with each film. At the end of the previous film, when we thought we saw Zira sacrifice her child, she had actually switched him beforehand with a baby chimp at the circus. The baby grows up while the rest of the planet slowly starts to adopt non-evolved apes as servants. Once Caesar ends up among them, we know an ape of his intelligence is not gonna stand for that for long.
I wasn’t following this as closely, but I still appreciate where the story went. None of these follow ups have had the same impact as the original, but I haven’t lost interest yet. Really excited to see it all come together with the prequel, although it’s already becoming apparent that the prequels ignore the sequels”