How did New York become a desert?
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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. -
joekiddlouischama — 9 years ago(July 31, 2016 12:23 AM)
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?
Yes, I know that film takes place two millenniums into the future.
Planet of the Apes
never explicitly states that a nuclear war took place, although one can certainly and reasonably make that inference. But a nuclear war would have destroyed the human race, not necessarily "most of the planet" itself. And even if nuclear bombs had turned the landscapes around New York into a desolate wasteland, that wasteland would not have reasonably resembled the majestic American Southwest, with its its beautiful, haunting, and idiosyncratic rock formations that developed over thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Instead, we would be talking a blackened, radioactive dystopia (or its aftermath), not an iconic landscape that looks like it came out of a John Ford Western. (Yes, I know that the filmmakers did not shoot
Planet of the Apes
in Ford's favorite locale, Monument Valley, but the rock formations are relatively similar and the basic region is the same.)
Obviously,
Planet of the Apes
'fudges' the difference, and given that it is a science-fiction film about
walking and talking apes
, that 'fudging' is acceptable. In this context, iconic and iconographic values trump realism. But since realism was the subject of the thread, the idea that this landscapewhich is icongraphically idiosyncratic and indelibly identifiable with the American Southwestwould be near New York is unrealistic, even preposterous. A nuclear holocaust may well have turned New York into a desert of sorts, but not this kind of desertthe kind, as I said, that is reminiscent of a classic Western.
Realistically, the astronauts in this scenario might have also wondered if they were not
back on planet Earth very quickly.
They would have recognizedespecially given that they are Americansthat the landscapes, however eerie and almost moon-like in places, were reminiscent of their own country's Southwest. Taylor would have also thought that he might
be back on planet Earth when he found the 'evolved' apes not just speaking, but speaking English, of all languages. What are the chances that in some faraway galaxy the inhabitants are speaking English? The fact that the atmosphere is full of oxygen and they could all breathe the air with no difficulty whatsoever would also have been a giveaway.
But all these dramatic licenses are acceptable because the genre is "science fiction," not "science" itself. The goal is just to use science extremely loosely and casually to create an entertaining commentary on human society. If one were to miss that motivation and aesthetic context and scrutinize
Planet of the Apes
more severely on a scientific basis, the film would fall apart constantly. -
JamesA-1102 — 9 years ago(July 31, 2016 05:09 AM)
You're sooo smart. Thank you for explaining to those of us who've enjoyed this film how stupid and foolish we are for doing so. As well as how careless the filmmakers were for not using CGI to create a realistic alien landscape when they made this film back in the '60s.
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roland-rockerfella — 9 years ago(December 15, 2016 11:42 AM)
That's true. Planets operate in vast time cycles so even 2-3 thousand years would not change the terrain or climate that much. Some unnatural element must have contributed to the change like a nuke war or massive bombardment of meteors as Taylor surmised about.