Planet of the Apes -- the film that is a face of 1968!

1968 was special also for the movies. We have shown in this blog that "2001 - A Space Odyssey" was launched at that year and became one of the best pictures ever made. It was classified at first as science fiction, but later we could see that it was a lot more than this.

Something similar happened with another masterpiece launched at 1968. It was called "Planet of the Apes", labeled as science fiction in the beginning but later was considered one of the most important movies in cinema's history.

Some critics consider that Planet of the Apes was superior to 2001. We can discuss it on and on but doesn't matter. What is important is the launching of two great movies at the same year.

The plot of Planet of the Apes was not extraordinary. An astronaut who believed in nothing had a problem in one of his trips and the spaceship landed in a strange planet, where apes were the dominants and treated humans like slaves. Even with a story that seemed so simple, the movie was sensational. It put us to think, and think about fundamental matters of the mainkind and its future.

And the end of the movie was fantastic. Some say that it was predictible. Could be, but the final image is unforgettable. No doubt, it is until today one of the strongest images in history of the cinema. Fantastic.

After this peculiar movie there were, let's call, sequences that do not deserve neither to have the same title. There was also a TV series, equally poor. And recently a good movie was launched "explaining" what happened in the 1968 movie.

If you want to understand at least a little 1968 you have to watch Planet of the Apes (the original). It was original, sensational, surprising, amazing. In short, it was just like 1968!