How did New York become a desert?
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BobbyDupea — 11 years ago(November 20, 2014 08:47 AM)
It doesn't matter what we know NOW about how nuclear war would change the landscape or not change the landscape. In the movie, it is literally true that Taylor knew immediately when he saw what he saw at the end that humans had destroyed the landscape (and human civilization) through nuclear war. The Forbidden Zone was off limits primarily because it was radioactive, not to keep apes from discoving that humans had a more advanced civilization earlier. That's why the Zone covered a wide area - which the movie makes clear. It covered an area much larger than the area where the object Taylor saw at the end was located.
Dr. Zadius' statements to Taylor about what happened to humans in the past strongly suggest that the area bacame a desert through nuclear war - and/or other catastrophic events caused by humans that degraded the environment.
My real name is Jeff -
joekiddlouischama — 9 years ago(July 24, 2016 10:57 PM)
What the subject says. I can see the landscape changing over the course of a few hundred thousand years, but in only 2,000 years? What happened to change the landscape so fast?
Realistically, the issue is less that
New York became a desert
and more that Taylor comes across the
Statue of Liberty's ruins
in any event. The film is obviously shot in the American Southwestno other landscape on earth features those exact types of rock formations, and they are iconographically identified with that region regardless. Thus they would have been nowhere near New York.
But there is no greater American icon than the Statue of Liberty, and the fatalism suggested by its fall is symbolically powerful. Therefore, what we have is a classic case of artistic imperatives trumping realism, in terms of locations as well as landscapes. Given that we are talking about a film featuring
talking-and-walking apes
, those artistic licenses are acceptable.
From the perspective of location and region, running into the ruins of the iconic "Hollywood" sign would have been a little more plausible, but that usage would have seemed more like an in-joke, and it would not have fit the film's serious-straight tone, sober mood, and sophisticated themes.
Realistically, how does an
astronaut like Taylor prove to be a crack shot with a semiautomatic rifle, picking off a gorilla at far range and from a low, upward angle with barely any time to aim, just turning and firing accurately?
That act also represents dramatic license, although one that constitutes a very commonplace movie convention (one that evidently informs pro-gun advocates who believe that if we were all carrying guns like in movies, we would instantly and cleanly kill any mass shooter that we come across, thus resolving the matter).
Even if Taylor possessed a military background and happened to be an elite marksman, he at least would have needed to duck down behind a ridge and spend several seconds aiming in order to
nail that gorilla from such a long distance
.
But it is a movie -
JamesA-1102 — 9 years ago(July 25, 2016 03:35 PM)
The film is obviously shot in the American Southwestno other landscape on earth features those exact types of rock formations, and they are iconographically identified with that region regardless. Thus they would have been nowhere near New York.
Except the film takes place 2,000 years in the future after a nuclear war has destroyed most of the planet. Or did you miss that part? -
JoeKarlosi — 9 years ago(July 27, 2016 03:52 PM)
I can fully suspend disbelief to accept that - in 2000 years time after a nuclear devastation - New York could turn into what it looked like in POTA (a Southwestern desert appearance). It does not matter how many "millions" of years it took to create the (real) landscape in the first place; what matters is what a nuclear war did for the purposes in the film. Maybe whatever super-bomb(s) was utilized had a result the likes of which present day science would not realize. It's a movie, and you have to go with it.
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wears-alan — 9 years ago(July 30, 2016 03:32 AM)
Don't forget the possibility of earthquakes!
Who knows what damage hundreds of nukes going off would do to the planet. Certainly not those sci-fi writers back in the paranoid 60's where every day people expected the world to end at any moment.
If those pen pushers up at city hall don't like it,well, they swivel on this middle digit! -
joekiddlouischama — 9 years ago(July 31, 2016 12:28 AM)
Certainly not those sci-fi writers back in the paranoid 60's where every day people expected the world to end at any moment.
I was not alive during the 1960s, but I do not believe that "every day people expected the world to end at any moment." There was a general fear of nuclear war (one that kept the US and USSR from ever engaging in a direct shooting war), and that nuclear anxiety naturally became acute during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. But outside of that two-week passage, most people were not looking at their watches every day wondering when the world would end.
That said, I do understand your point.