Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Reviewing now one of the original films feels like a travel trough time and when watching an older film or series I believe it is essential to know a bit of back ground of watch you watching to judge it accordingly.So in battle we meet the original Ceasar who now is the ruler of a society in which Apes and Humans co-exist, but unlike the previous film the Apes are in charge, however under to magnanimous Ceasar peace exist. But this peace may not last as some Apes start to believe that maybe it is better to kill the humans. Also there are and some humans outside the society of Ceasar, and so I think we have battle, even though we see that the war ended, whatever.In general though the title sounds cool, we don't get a lot of combat and what we see is a half asked message about how personal bias and blind anger can treat a society and conclude to a war. Clearly inspired by the Vietnam War of the era ,who was at its last days. Now why this one is the the weakest is due to budget cuts, angry parents why said the previous film was too violent (stupid parents always ruin everything) and inconsistencies in the plot with the rest of the franchise. As for the message well the manner it is presented is too on the noise and in way a class teacher may presented so is a interesting as it sounds.If something good came out of this one and Conquest is that about four decades latter when they wanted to remake the Ape films the used the ideas from this one and presto Rise, Dawn and War came out, which are excellent.

This fifth and final entry in the initial theatrical "Apes" series is the weakest of the bunch. It seems as if it was limited by budgetary considerations. After "Conquest" set up the rise of the simians, this story is rather small in its scale, focusing on one ape / human community, the woodsy "Ape City", that doesn't seem to have that many residents. The apes and the people peaceably co-exist, but trouble is on the horizon. First, ape leader Caesar (the always great Roddy McDowall) decides on an expedition to the "Forbidden City" to seek out audio and video of his long deceased parents, incurring the wrath of humans suffering radiation sickness. Second, a fanatical, aggressive gorilla general, Aldo (Claude Akins), is just itching to start something.Even at its worst, this series was never completely without interest, and this entry does have some good dialogue and moments. It also has some pretty decent action sequences towards the end, with lots of gunfire (but virtually no gore) and lots of explosions. Unfortunately, story author Paul Dehn and screenwriters John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington just couldn't come up with a tale that was particularly compelling. Still, director J. Lee Thompson, who'd also directed "Conquest", keeps things watchable and reasonably entertaining. The main value lies in the performances of old pros like McDowall and Akins. They're ably supported by Lew Ayres, Paul Williams, Natalie Trundy (who was in four of the "Apes" films), Severn Darden (as the crazed villain, Governor Kolp), Austin Stoker (who plays the brother of the Hari Rhodes character in "Conquest"), France Nuyen, and Paul Stevens. A young John Landis has an acting role as one of the apes; the great actor-filmmaker John Huston appears in wraparound segments as the wise old Lawgiver.Watchable for its duration, but it has to rate as something of a disappointment.Available in both a theatrical version and an extended version which runs about 10 minutes longer.Followed by a TV series.Six out of 10.

I see the point here is that Ceasar knows from his parents that the earth is going to get destroyed. The only positive note here is that he wants to prevent that. The trouble is this film totally screws up the time line and muddies up the results of a nuke war. The only thing consistent is the ruins of NYC.After the earlier films, it is difficult to explain where of a sudden all these human survivors and the jeeps, school bus, and guns are coming from? You get the feeling watching this one that the mess with the time line is just being done to make a movie and make money. The only part of this film that makes sense is the beginning flashbacks. After that all I can say is MASH mash, what a mess. The doomsday bomb from the earlier film magically turns into a missile. The ape city changes appearance. The apes suddenly know more about the forbidden zone than earlier films. Ape kills Ape message does parallel with the human kills human still happening on Earth Today.While it tries to end on a positive note, that is the only thing to be thankful for at the end. This film should have remained as studio out takes at FOX. Even the Simpsons have better scripts than this one.

Made it Ma! After the disappointment of previous instalment #4 me and me Mum didn't bother going to the pictures to see this final part at all, but 40 years later I felt I had to complete the circle now (some circle!) and just saw Battle for the first - and last - time. I was expecting worse, but there are plenty of crappier films than this clinker.Caesar, the King of Ape City - which is apparently a rather sparse collection of trees and tree houses and random twigs strewn about – is encouraged to go on a few seconds arduous trek to the Forbidden City (the radioactive remnants of New York, which is apparently some rather dark boiler rooms and random bits of metal strewn about) by his pair of advisors to view an old videotape of his Mum and Dad talking. He gets to see a couple of clips of it, but the cost of it is that a train of events is initiated leading to a deadly war between mutant (and mad) humans and the apes spurred on by impatient gorillas. Except that the Battle with everyone shouting "Kill" and "Guns" is more akin to a tightly packed affray from a Monty Python film or a Monogram mob scene. A key part is the attempted murder and the subsequent death of Caesar's son – this is poignantly portrayed for 10 minutes but is utterly jettisoned giving the outrageous impression the attention span of chimpanzees must be minimal! The entire film would probably have made a convincing episode from the TV series this incredibly spawned just afterwards, as it is it's almost unbearably drawn out. Maybe a more coherent timeline would have helped those of us ordinary people who had made it this far – as it stands the convoluted chronology is only comprehensible to dedicated geeks. Did MST3K or Rifftrax ever get round to this one?There are occasional good moments amongst the irritating laughable dross: good photography maybe, or some surprising subtlety or acting – but definitely nowhere near enough for me to recommend you waste a part of your life you might end up wishing you hadn't.