![]() ![]() Jacobs who, at the time, held all cinematic rights to Planet of the Apes, deemed Serling’s first treatment to be unsatisfactory as it lacked the “visual shock and the surprise” of its predecessor (meaning, no half-buried Statue of Liberty to make audiences go “Hmmmmm!”). How much would you pay to see Heston go through the same exact same thing a second time and deliver lines like “Take your new stinking paws off me you alternate damn dirty ape!”, “It’s still a Madhouse! This, too, is a Madhouse all over again!”, “An additional planet where apes also evolved from men just like the last one? There’s got to be the exact same answer.” or “Ah, damn you also! God damn you all to hell again!”? Serling’s third idea also had Taylor finding yet another space ship (because apparently they grow on trees on Ape World if you know where to look) in which he and a band of intelligent humans take off to a completely different Earth-like planet that they are dismayed to find also is dominated by ruling apes. Planet of the Giant Spider Soldiers? Planet of the Jerks? Planet of the Lizard People? Planet of the Never Ending Frat Party? Planet of the Barry Goldwater Clones? Planet of the Talking Tina Dolls Who Don’t Think They Like You? This is Rod Serling, after all. In the subsequent treatment, Serling has Taylor and Nova (played in the first film by Linda Harrison) finding an intact Earth ship and traveling through time to yet another, unrelated future (or past) to find that Earth is no longer ruled by apes… but perhaps something worse. Hey, the man started out the first movie claiming he hated Earth anyway. In the climax, the hero is given a chance to return to his own time (courtesy of a spaceship piloted by non-crashing human astronauts), but Taylor rejects this opportunity in order to remain and, he hopes, resurrect humanity. Holing up in an abandoned city, Taylor fights off the remaining apes that dogged his trail and attempts to save humanity in this new bastion of (retroactive) civilization. ![]() In Serling’s first version, Taylor (played in the first film by Charlton Heston) becomes a defender of humanity, deeming himself mankind’s last hope. ![]() Serling actually came up with three bold ideas for the screenplay-to-be, each one hairier than the last. However, when Planet of the Apes became the monster hit that it was (critically and commercially), both Serling and Boulle stepped forward to offer their suggestions for a big sequel. Wilson’s changes were mostly due to the fact that Serling’s script was too close to Pierre Boulle’s original novel with technological apes in a post-modern society (all of which would have been prohibitively expensive to film). Most every fan knows that The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling had written the original screenplay that was later polished by Michael Wilson into Planet of the Apes (1968). Rod Serling’s Planet of the Apes II (1968 – 1969) ![]()
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