Project 1 Draft 3

Tommy Jimenez

Mat Wenzel

ENC2135 24

10 July 2017

Damn Them. Damn Them All to Hell

There is one defining characteristic that makes me who I am and that is the passionate love I have for cinema and film. It is a part of me for better or worse whether it’s time for relaxing and watching my favorite movies or needing to get my mind off something to unbearable, time to turn on an episode of television or when I have any leisure time and I’m not doing anything, click! There goes some YouTube video discussing my anticipated upcoming films. More than a decade of my life has been devoted to sitting or lying in a theater or couch or bed and simply watching. The cinema is a place where for an hour and half to two and a half hours you can forget about what’s happening in life and take a break, learn a lesson, behold amazing visual effects, and be entertained. I remember being a child snuggled in bed intently watching The Incredibles, The Lion King, and Toy Story; I really did enjoy my Disney animations as a kid. I remember going to Blockbuster every Friday of the Month with my brother and father to rent out the movies we were going to watch that night. It was a tradition we would never break. My brother would get a horror movie like The Ring or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while I grabbed a comedy, the likes of The 40-Year-Old and Superbad, and my father would grab some obscure eighties action flick none of had ever heard of, such as Die Hard, The Terminator, and Rocky. The tradition was always the same never changing not one detail: Go to the local blockbuster grab the movies we would watch for the night, then head over next store to grab the pepperoni pizza pie that would be dinner for the night, and finally buy some Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies from Publix which was in the same plaza; this is one of my most cherished memories and it was those long nights that I remember staying up all night to finish every movie as my family passed out beside me.

As I got older things changed; my brother was older, went out on the weekends, and our tradition became less of one. Our monthly viewings between the three of us was now with my dad and I, then with myself because my dad would always fall asleep during the first movie and I was up by myself analyzing and watching and re-watching. Everything changed when blockbuster closed their doors and I saw the big blue banner say “Out of Business” my film Fridays were no more. This wasn’t the end of my watching movies but the opposite I watched more of them. Blockbusters replacement Turner Classic Movies; I watched some of the greatest pieces of art ever to be put to screen such as Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Ben-Hur, and The Ten Commandments. None affected me quite the same way as did the original 1968 science fiction classic Planet of the Apes.

Being about the age of ten I was a kid and the movie was a sight to behold with this world of apes the makeup was phenomenal and had been like nothing I had seen before at least at the time. As I got older and I continued to re-watch the film it was almost as though it was changing before my eyes and of course the movie wasn’t really changing but I was picking up on details I’d never once seen as a kid simply watching the film through the eyes of a child enamored with Charlton Heston going to battle against giant apes. Every year they had a marathon of all the movies in the series, there was five in all and it was re-watching the films every year that had me stay in love with them seeing deeper meanings and deeper political context of the films; they were fun family films but they offered something more. They show a society that is controlled by the ruling class keeping everyone in line through ignorance. There are very striking scenes within the movie that themselves could be analyzed with men specifically white men being chained up, locked in cages and hosed down with water being oppressed by in any other time period would be a lesser race. Coming out in 1968 during the heart of the civil rights movement the racial message of Planet of the Apes was heard all throughout movie theaters taking a stance showing that Apes and Humans were not equal in the film; it’s this message that through so many sittings of Planet of the Apes that I saw and that many other people saw sitting in the theater in 1968 and beyond with so many others loving the film. While I may like to believe I’m the only one to have seen these deeper meanings and have such a place in my heart for this film the simple truth is that other people see the movie the same way I do and it’s through these people who review and analyze movies that I share a connection and love for The Planet of the Apes.

Charlton Heston’s Col. George Taylor is brought to his knees coming to the realization that the “Alien World” he crash landed on is the sad result of Earth succumbing to some atomic fallout and that it was the humans who brought upon themselves their own extinction. It’s this moment of so many that stood out to me because in the nihilistic view of the planet of the apes movies we can’t change anything and that were doomed to befell our fellow man but in our world the film and this scene offers hope that we can change things and make things better. In one moment, there is so much to unpack and the filmmakers don’t need a full page expressing the thoughts of the main character but instead one line exemplifying his anger and sadness “Damn them, damn them all to hell!”

I wasn’t the only one who loved Planet of the Apes: there were groups of fans all over the internet that made reviews on the movie and made video analysis on movies that I loved and some that I didn’t. I’ve been a part of this collective group of people for so many years now maybe seven now where we talk about movies on websites like collider movies, rotten tomatoes, IMDb, and on YouTube channels like beyond the trailer with Grace Randolph and I’ve had many discussions with people that I have disagreed with and they were great because even if we didn’t agree we respected each other’s thoughts and ideas. My tradition with my family may have been lost but in spite of that loss I found another community, this time of online fans that share in the same love for the cinema as I do and it’s this avid group of fans that still have me going to the theater and enjoying and watching.