Re: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

On Tue, 14 May 2024 08:35:13 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:

I remember the original Planet of the Apes movie quite well, despite
having only seen it on teleevision. That movie was justly praised...
and then its many sequels were justly execrated.

I saw it in the Army. One of the sequels had some sort of rocket
launch at the end. It didn't happen, which is good because it would
have destroyed the Earth or the last refuge of Man or something (my
memory is vague). I saw this in a theater that used carbon-arc
lighting for its projector. The carbon rod [1] had a wet spot at this
point, so we never got to see how it was stopped. A Babylon 5 movie
(ie, not part of the series) did the same thing when I saw it on TV,
but that was probably a really bad DVD effect (ie, the dummies who
scanned it didn't catch it when their equipment failed).

The surprise isn't that Army Post Theater projection equipment was old
or that the projectionists were incompetent. The surprise a few years
later, back in Seattle, when the same level of incompetence was seen
in an actual theater. Presumably, the projectionist had learned his
trade in the Army. Just not very well.

In the Army, of course, this sort of thing was protected by Military
Discipline, which forbids rioting in this situation. But in real life
... these guys were definitely potentially in danger.

[1] If there were two, then one of them.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth movie in the reboot of
the Planet of the Apes series, which started from a different basic
premise than the originals.
>
A friend of mine took me with him to see the movie, out of gratitude
for my having heled him with his computer.
>
I enjoyed this movie. It's been praised for lovable chasracters and
lush visual effects; that praise is spot on. It has... a twist ending
that naturally I must not spoil.
>
But one thing I can speak of, since it is present right from the
beginning of this movie: it has achieved something rare, making it
reminiscent of the movie Avatar. It's a blockbuster movie that was
actually _improved_ by being "woke", a characteristic which has ruined
several other movies.

Sadly, being reminiscent -- in any way -- of /Avatar/ is not a
positive feature for me.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"