Brilliant and touching

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Continuing our journey back to the past we now reach the one of the two good sequels of the original film, conquest and I have to say when I first saw it I like it more than any other of the rest of the series apart from the original. So here we follow the child of Zera and Cornelius, Maylo/Ceasar who during the 88 minutes of the film he becomes the leading figure of the Ape resistance in a dystopian version of the nineties,in which people rule and use Apes as slaves and pets. Even if your historical knowledge is average you can clearly see who the problems that rocked the American society to its core in the late sixties and early seventies with the riots and the violence on the streets as the segregation between white and African-American came to a close. Is it a perfect translation? Well, no actual the film is at times to fast pace and things take place a bit to quickly in order to get full invested to the characters and the start of the Ape revolt, but at least we have no slow moment to weight down the film. To add to that this speed keeps the interest about hat is happening.Over all it is a product of its time and though heavy handed and a light campy nowadays, it is has a punch and if you are a fan of these films you should definitely watch.

While watching the original Apes film for the first time, one of the thoughts I remember having was "wouldn't it be cool to see exactly HOW the apes revolted against the humans?". Well, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" gives us exactly that.For a basic plot summary, "Conquest" continues the story of the offspring of Cornelius and Zira, sheltered on Earth by circus owner Armando (Ricardo Montalbon). Now branded as Ceasar (Roddy McDowell), the advanced-intelligence chimpanzee bristles at the slave-like treatment of apes in the "future" (1991), eventually leading the revolt that will change the world.The key "drawing card" of this movie is the last half hour, when we actually get to see the apes revolt against their human masters. Worth the price of admission alone is the epic speech given by Ceasar as he leads the apes in their conquest. After all the ape history talked about in the previous three movies, it is exhilarating to actually SEE it transpiring."Conquest" is also strange, though, in that it is unfortunate that it had to come after "Escape", which was, I believe, a commercial failure (because of its satirical nature). This movie gets back to more serious roots, but it seems like the damage had already been done. The budget is paper-thin, and the run-time clocks in at just under 90 minutes. Of all the movies in the Apes franchise, this is the one that could have been expanded into something much more epic. Instead, it gets a rather bland, low-budget treatment.Overall, though, I can still enjoy "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" because of those ape revolt scenes and the great character of Caesar. By this point, if you haven't "bought in" to the series you won't even be watching, so it is for the true Ape-heads.

The problem with these Planet of the Apes sequels seems to be that they get too ambitious or hasty with their stories. In the third film it worked because of great actors and because it actually flowed well with the original film. In this case the story flows well with the original, but not at all with the previous two.What do I mean by that? Well, the events of the second film paved the way for the third film which was supposed to work as a prequel to the original, in its own way. And thus this film is trying to bridge the gap between the third and the original. Explain how the planet of the apes came to be. The only problem is that it insists on using the characters from the third film, and that simply doesn't work timeline-wise. The world has changed a lot between the two movies and not in a realistic manner. It like a magician snapped his fingers and suddenly the world was abruptly changed in the blink of an eye.Not helping the matters is that the film doesn't quite have the scope, the talent or the budget to pull of the story it wants to tell. It has a big climax, but you don't buy it as well as you should.Still, the characters are nice, especially Caesar, played by Roddy McDowall, who also played Caesar's father Cornelius in two of the previous films. It's shame that they couldn't work Kim Hunter back in some way, but McDowall is nice as well.Still, if you've liked the films so far, I don't think you should stop at this point. It's nowhere near as good as the original, or even the third one, but it's worth watching in order to get the full experience.

Based on the strong positive response to Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Fox ordered Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, though it provided a comparatively low budget of $1.7 million. Paul Dehn returned as the scriptwriters and the producers hired J. Lee Thompson to direct.Thompson had worked with Jacobs during the planning stages of the first film, but scheduling conflicts had made him unavailable to participate in the series. For this film, Thompson and Dehn focused heavily on the racial associated the apes with African-Americans and modeled the plot after the 1966 Watts Riots and other episodes from the Civil Rights Movement.Following the events of the third film, this film is set in a near future where humans have turned apes into slaves, Caesar rises from bondage to lead an ape rebellion.The story is amazing and confusing as well, but I like it because it is like that. The action is over-the-top, but it works and is really fantastic. The music is really good as well and the other films musical scores' were amazing, well, with exception of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes".The acting is just amazing and dreadful at the same time. Roddy McDowall plays Caesar again, the son of his previous character Cornelieus.The late Ricardo Montalban returned as Armando and he does a good job as well. The new members including Don Murray, Severn Darden and Hari Rhodes playing new roles and they are really amazing in this film and the acting could have never been better.The music in the film is just stupid, but a few themes are amazingly well done and the make-up / visuals are really good and fantastic.Overall, CONQUEST OF THE PLANET of the APES is a little confusing, but spectacular in a few areas and I give this film a 6/10.