The twist ending of "Planet Of The Apes" (2001) explained

Disclosure: I haven't seen this movie in yonks so I don't remember it very well. I am, however, a massive time travel nut. Here is the sentence which makes everything in the entire movie make perfect sense:

Time on Earth and time on the Planet of the Apes run in opposite directions.

  1. Pericles the ape leaves the ship Oberon first and travels through the storm.
  2. Leo follows Pericles through the storm.
  3. Eventually the Oberon follows Leo.

Because time on the other side of the storm is running in the opposite direction, the three travellers arrive in the opposite order to that in which they set out.

  1. The Oberon arrives first and crashes. Its ape cargo swarm out and populate the planet, creating the Planet Of The Apes. Thousands of years pass.
  2. Leo arrives next, eventually locates the ruins of the Oberon.
  3. During the climactic battle scene of the movie, Pericles finally arrives too.

Now we have everybody on the far side of the storm, and we move into hypothesis.

  1. Leo returns to Earth in his pod, through the storm.
  2. Hypothetically, some time later, the apes develop space travel and they themselves follow Leo through the storm.

Because time runs in opposite directions, again the travellers arrive in opposite order:

  1. The space-travelling apes land hundreds or thousands of years before Leo: in fact, hundreds or thousands of years in Earth's past. They conquer Earth and it becomes a new ape planet. HISTORY CHANGES.
  2. Leo arrives much later (but still in what is technically his own past because the movie starts out some time in the future). He discovers a regular Earth but it is now populated by apes.

Because time flows in the opposite direction on the other side of the storm, you can effectively travel through time by going across the storm, waiting around for a while, and then coming back, thereby returning before you left. Leo is back on Earth, but history has been changed and he has no way home.

As a side note, there is no reason why the Planet Of The Apes can't still be Earth-in-the-distant-future, as it is in the original flick. In fact, this makes a great deal of sense: it would mean the storm simply connects two different periods in time rather than two distinct solar systems which both happen to have Earthlike planets in. But this isn't actually relevant to the plot.

Regardless of how good the movie is, this is a pretty cool and sophisticated model of time travel and the final reveal makes complete sense, as well as being a mind-boggler in the best spirit of the original. I am led to believe that nobody involved in its production - even the director - actually understood the twist ending. I believe the only person who actually "got it" was the original script writer, and the twist was simply left in by everybody who looked at the script after him, each reader reasoning that the twist was still good even if he, personally, didn't understand it.

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Discussion (10)

2009-11-03 21:37:05 by YarKramer:

For the record, the 2001 movie has approximately the same twist as the original novel, though there was only one instance of space-travel in that, so it doesn't have the time-travel explanation. (And it also has a framing device, with a fairly predictable "tomato surprise" at the end, which isn't present in either film ...)

2009-11-03 22:08:32 by dankuck:

I hadn't pondered the 2001 Planet of the Apes in a while. I was pretty much satisfied with it, being a time travel nut myself. Instead of opposite directions I assumed the cloud has some sort of "center point" in time such that the further you are from it, the further on the other side of it you'll come out. I supposed it works out the same, because relative to that point, time is moving in opposite directions (even though it's objectively the same direction). Have you needed to explain this to someone in particular?

Now do Primer.

2009-11-03 22:54:43 by Jake:

>there is no reason why the Planet Of The Apes can't still be Earth-in-the-distant-future, as it is in the original flick.

If the Planet of the Apes were the distant past, it would make even more sense. Instead of requiring a hypothetical ape to develop space flight and travel through the storm, the entire Planet of the Apes just sort of sits around and eventually turns into our own.

Seconded on Primer.

2009-11-04 01:37:04 by TJSomething:

He alread did Primer. http://qntm.org/?coffin

2009-11-04 02:02:36 by Vincent:

The script was actually sent to us in this way as a warning by the far future, but fell in the hands of the would-be first script editor.

2009-11-04 03:10:10 by dankuck:

Now I feel dumb, because I already read the post on Primer. Ok, do (...sound of Googling...) Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If that's too easy, contemplate new ways of using time travel to drive a story while maintaining that paradox is strictly impossible (I hypothesize that there are few if any ways besides the comedic usage in Bill and Ted's).

2009-11-04 04:15:18 by Imbenarion:

The chances of a different species on essentially a different planet having exactly the same buildings, cities, monuments, culture etc. is pretty much zero though.

2009-11-10 04:23:31 by Alex:

Because time runs in opposite directions...
The Primer explanation was done because you suggested it.
:þ

2009-11-26 05:35:11 by Ryacko:

I thought the ape astronauts and the human astronauts simply switched places of their respective timelines.

2009-12-15 03:39:39 by Jeff:

Still doesn't make sense; the fact that the apes arrived hundreds of thousands of years in the past doesn't at all explain why they would recreate human society and architecture down to the finest details. Coming back to find Earth populated by the apes? That I'll buy. The idea that they've recreated Washington, D.C.? Not so much.

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