This might be a good time to link to the excellent
Red Letter Media discussion on Ed Wood. It is also interesting to think of the time in the 1990s when the Burton-Depp partnership was an extremely strong draw, and that the Tim Burton films were strange and eccentric but successfully so, with a lot of heart to their strangeness. Plus they were often
not Johnny Depp's very strangest roles of the time (Cry-Baby, Arizona Dream, Benny & Joon, Dead Man, Don Juan DeMarco all come to mind!)
I'm actually finding his remake of Planet of the Apes is growing on me a bit. Especially now that we have the later 'realistic, CGI' Planet of the Apes films to compare it to, the 2001 film feels like it occupies an interesting middle ground, between the original and modern series. It also takes the subversive notion from the original films that the apes were a bit more humanitarian (or at least wrestling with human ethics and moral quandaries over animal testing) than the humans were and sort of made it bluntly explicit. Whilst the humans can talk in the Burton film they are strangely much blander for that, and probably intentionally so (I often think they're versions of the Eloi in The Time Machine, most obviously so in the beautiful mute love interest in the 1967 film. Which makes the apes the Morlocks, I suppose). I occasionally feel a bit sorry for the beautiful but blank and sidelined 'love interest' played by Estella Warren (who if she were in films a decade later would be perfect for headlining a Young Adult property, doing some Maze Running, Hunger Gaming or Twilighting), for being in a film where the filmmaker was far more interested in the potential bestiality angle with Helena Bonham Carter's ape activist!
I also really like the way the Tim Roth villain character is used at the end:
when he is trapped behind a kind of plexiglass barrier in the reactivated spaceship and goes wild (or 'reverts' to his ape nature), shooting his pistol pointlessly at the barrier only for the bullets to bounce off and chase him around the small room, and we end his character on a shot of him cowering beneath one of the ancient control panels, which works both as a bringing low comeuppance of the pompous villain of the piece, but also underlines that sense of a fearful and dangerous animal once again rightly caged for the safety of all. More than any of the activist metaphors of earlier in the film, that brief shot suggests the cycle of exploitation has come full circle, adding a bitter tinge to the victory.
A cycle which turns yet again with the twist ending (which I don't really have trouble with, and like the time dilation aspect to the twist. Although it cannot be anywhere near as impactful as the ending of the 1967 film, and despite just being a tossed away zinger weirdly suggests a much more interesting and intriguing sequel than the playing it safe film we have just watched! It is like all the creativity and imagination went into the punchline!), which suggests a kind of symbiotic relationship between ape and man, going through endless cycles of dominance and submission. Though all of the Planet of the Apes films are much more interesting when that battle between human and animal nature is fought out internally and morally wrestled with, rather than bluntly literalised!
That probably plays into why the film feels strangely unsatisfying as it seems to have all of the beats of a standard but straightforward and unsurprising sci-fi action piece but also keeps strangely undermining those aspects as with the subversion of the love interest, the rather dull lunk hero compared to some of the eccentric characters in the Burton filmography before that (though Mark Whalberg looks positively charismatic here compared to future sci-fi fantasy leading men to come in the future such as a Sam Worthington or Taylor Lautner!) or the stupidity of diving into a wormhole to recover your experimental monkey (which dooms everyone). All of the interesting aspects about it are the subversive elements that prevent it from working as a straightforward summer blockbuster. The perverse darkness with a sense of black humour works for something revelling in that perversity like the Batman films or the wonderful Mars Attacks! (which felt as if it came along at a perfect time to stand in stark counterpoint to the straightforward gung ho jingoism of Independence Day), not quite so much when everything is playing out to a standard template that grates against the strangeness. But now that we have the 'straightforward summer blockbuster' Planet of the Apes films, the Burton one belatedly now has the material to kick against!
I suppose the one thing that everyone can agree on though is that the
excellent main title sequence and Danny Elfman score is the standout aspect of the film!