Tim Burton Said Remaking ‘Planet of the Apes’ Was a ‘Perverse Challenge’
Tim Burton has given us many classic movies, but his Planet of the Apes isn’t one of them. He explained why he took up the challenge of remaking the original film. Burton’s remake had a minimal effect on subsequent Planet of the Apes films.
Tim Burton said his ‘Planet of the Apes’ would look better with time
During a 2007 interview with Total Film, the Batman director was asked what he was trying to accomplish with his remake of Planet of the Apes. “Well, that was more of a perverse challenge,” he said. “I mean, Planet of the Apes was a classic movie and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the original, then they made five other movies and the TV series and lunchboxes.’
“So it’s not like it’s just the original and this,” he said. “That would have been a real mistake. I knew I was going to be in trouble for it, but you know, something about talking apes [Laughs]. It’s always a weird challenge! With this, the more time goes by, the better I’ll like it.”
A reporter asked Burton asked how he would feel if one of his films inspired a remake. “Yikes!” he replied. “I don’t know about that. I mean, I’ve often resisted re-visiting. Like in the case of [The Nightmare Before Christmas] and Beetlejuice, they asked me to do sequels and I just said no… I wanted to keep the integrity of those particular things. Those movies were special to me.”
The director looked at the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ differently than his movies
It’s interesting that Burton views his own movies as special creations that should be left alone. Meanwhile, he’s remade classic movies like Planet of the Apes, Walt Disney’s Dumbo, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. However, he appears to have changed his position on sequels, as his follow-up to Beetlejuice will come out next month.
Burton’s Planet of the Apes ends with Mark Wahlberg finding himself in an alternate Washington, D.C., where the Lincoln Memorial is replaced with a statue of an anthropomorphic ape. Many viewers left the theater scratching their heads.
Tim Burton refused to explain the end of the remake
During a 2001 interview with the BBC, a reporter told Burton that the ending was nonsense. Burton was asked to explain it, but he refused, saying that he liked the movie’s ambiguity. Love or hate his Planet of the Apes, he took the correct approach to this interview. There’s no good reason for an artist to explain every facet of their creative process or spell out all the themes of their art for other people.
However, he gave fans a little bit of insight into his remake. Burton said the film was about the conflict between Darwinism and religion. He said the ending of the film encapsulated some of life’s unanswerable questions. What a simian Abraham Lincoln has to do with Christian creationism is beyond me.
Burton’s Planet of the Apes didn’t do much for him. While its story left plenty of room for a sequel (or 10), it never inspired a follow-up. Instead, the franchise got rebooted, and the newer Planet of the Apes films have nothing to do with Burton’s odd detour.
Burton took on a perverse challenge and he got a perverse result.
