Friday, April 8, 2022

Planet of the Apes

Explorers sleep quietly slumber for millennia while swiftly passing through space, bravely uncertain as to where they might eventually end up, adventurous and daring, expeditionary finesse, they dream civilization incarnate, and sedately persevere. 

Crashing suddenly in a lake roughly 2,000 years after their departure, they have just enough time to escape, boldly paddling unencumbered to the surrounding desert shores, with enough food and water to last three days, and the pioneering spirit to endure and then some.

They trek for quite some time until enthusiastically finding life, a single plant unassumingly declaring the probability of others.

Vegetation is soon abundant and fresh water readily available, they soon jump in to freely bathe, before encountering a disturbance.

Their clothes are gone they wildly dash to catch the entities who stole them, only to discover a race of humans rather primitive and mute.

The humans are raiding crops but from whom remains undetermined, until furious apes lithely riding horseback appear with nets and horns and rifles.

Suddenly shocked and separated the startled travellers quickly flee, one shot in the neck with a non-life threatening wound then brought to a nearby village. 

He can't talk and he swiftly learns that on his newfound world people surge and struggle.

But there are other forms of communication.

To employ before regaining speech.

I can't discuss how this film ends because I'd rather not spoil the fun, it was one of my favourite cinematic surprises in my youth, and I'd hate to spoil the ending for others.

Not that hundreds of people will be madly rushing to see a Planet of the Apes film from 1968 anytime soon, when several new ones have recently been released, nevertheless, it's worth checking out if you haven't seen it (and somehow never heard what happens in the end).

Simultaneously, the film's far off agrarian inhospitable planet includes parts that been devastated by war, and as I've mentioned before,  after choosing this film at random one evening when I was perhaps 10, it seemed like nuclear war would no doubt be an impossibility on our world, if wiser heads historically prevailed.

Which is another reason this war in Ukraine is so horrifically devastating.

If a country's leader is threatening to use nuclear weapons, how does that leader still have a country to lead?, why hasn't he been arrested?, and why is that country still a member of the United Nations?

Baffling.

Perhaps stranger things have happened.

But certainly not within my lifetime. 

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