In the 2001 movie, space comes into play once again: Davidson escapes Ashlar and uses the same geomagnetic storm to bring his ship back to 'present-day' Earth (which is the year 2029 in the film).

In reality, the visible letters are a part of the phrase, 'Caution LIve aniMAls.' They call their temple-ship Calima because those are the visible letters on its surface. His ship, funny enough, becomes an object of worship by the apes, who are convinced it is related to the apes' god. Predictably, Davidson is taken as a slave and has some misadventures as a result. This is no less nasty a place than the 1968 future Earth, as the primates here use human beings as slaves. The pod enters a time-travel warp, and Davidson crash-lands on a planet called Ashlar in the year 5021. After Pericles disappears, Oberon disobeys a direct order and follows her in a second pod. One of the apes, Pericles, goes to the sun in a small space pod to investigate a coming storm. Wahlberg plays an astronaut named Leo Davidson in the year 2029, working with primates on the United States Air Force Space Station Oberon. Although the 2001 movie shares the 1968 movie's name - 'Planet of the Apes' - the plot is pretty different. Hollywood then revisited the franchise in 2001, with Mark Wahlberg starring. This was called 'Return to the Planet of the Apes' and only lasted 13 episodes - not long enough for us to know if the astronauts escaped. Astronauts landed on a future Earth, but in this case, the astronauts were clearly identified as originally going to Alpha Centauri, and they deduced almost right away that they had landed on the wrong planet.Īnother television series, this one animated, took place between 19, with Earth astronauts being hurtled into the future and landing on a planet full of apes. Meanwhile, the franchise spun off a brief 1974 television series, 'Planet of the Apes,' that had pretty much the same premise.

Ending, TV series (1974 to 1976) and reboot (2001)įrom here, the franchise lessened the emphasis on space, focusing instead on conflicts between humans and apes in the movies 'Conquest of the Planet of the Apes' (1972) and 'Battle for the Planet of the Apes' (1973). While the apes agree among themselves not to speak of their origins, a commission is formed to figure out how Taylor's spaceship arrived back on Earth with the apes on board. The shock wave creates a time warp - a familiar plot device in space films - and transports the apes to 1973 Earth, where they are captured and put in the Los Angeles Zoo. Luckily for the franchise, three apes escape in Taylor's spaceship in 'Escape from the Planet of the Apes' (1971). Suffice it to say, the gorillas are no less friendly, and Taylor ends up killing all life on the planet with a 'doomsday' bomb that he discovers. The sequel 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes' (1970) saw another spacecraft crash on a future Earth in a search for Taylor and his crew. From here, we'll skip straight to the end, where Taylor discovers the Statue of Liberty on a beach and realizes this planet is actually Earth … after a nuclear holocaust. They quickly come across some armed and very unhappy gorillas that attack the crew, killing more astronauts and capturing Taylor. The crew members discover that it's the year 3978, about 2,000 years since their 1972 departure. (Just a warning, again - spoilers for these movies ahead.) Their spaceship crash-lands in a lake, killing one of the astronauts and waking up the rest of the crew. 'Planet of the Apes' (1968) kicked off the franchise with astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) and crewmates in deep hibernation they are voyaging for nearly a light-year and need the hibernation to slow down their natural aging processes, since the voyage takes a long time.

Escape from planet earth spaceship