In a surprising departure for the series, the new Planet of the Apes film – Mall of the Planet of the Apes will be a light-hearted romp about high-school apes going shopping, hanging out with friends at the mall, and getting in sexy scrapes with each other.
The new film comes hot on the heels of War of the Planet of the Apes which featured a number of grumpy apes being grumpy with each other.
“Yeah, I felt that we’d taken the whole ‘grumpy ape’ thing too far,” said director Seth Hawthorne.
“I mean, the movies were getting bleaker and bleaker, if we’d have stuck on the same trajectory, the next film would just be an ape screaming into the camera for two hours.”
“No one wants to see that, and we’ve got the test-screen results to prove it.”
However, it wasn’t just audience reaction that shaped the decision to move to a more light-hearted tone.
“It’s just logic. If the actual planet of the apes was that relentlessly grim, then the apes would all go and live on other planets and it wouldn’t be a planet of the apes anymore but a planet of the, I don’t know, dogs and cats.”
“Which is less dramatically satisfying.”
Mall of the Planet of the Apes is the first in a new, more fun, ‘Apes’ trilogy, the next being Planet of the Apes: Getting some and concluding with Planet of the Apes: Electric Boogaloo.
Some links to other bits of the blog that you’ll love*…
*Alright, perhaps ‘love’ is pushing it, maybe ‘be mildly diverted by’
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