There is a new Planet of the Apes movie that opened at theaters this weekend. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes pulled in $73 million including the box office from Thursday previews. It is billed as a sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes that came out in 2011.
Meanwhile, somebody – I think it was TNT, but I wasn’t really paying attention – was showing Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Sunday afternoon. We watched it because it was just about your only choice if you didn’t want to watch Soccer or Golf.
It didn’t occur to me while I was watching, but it is remarkable how many parallels exist between Rise and Charly, the 1968 movie that won Cliff Robertson the Oscar for best actor.
Quality of the acting wasn’t one of them, but there are a lot of similarities in the story.
Charly, Flowers for Algernon (the Daniel Keyes short story Charly was based on) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes all deal with what happens when intelligence/brain function/cognitive ability are greatly enhanced in laboratory animals and in humans. All seem to say that such growth can only lead to disaster.
It is a story at least as old as Genesis and the story of the Tower of Babel, and I can’t think of a single story that predicts positive results.
It seems to be a part of our collective psyche that too much intelligence and/or knowledge is a bad thing. I wonder why.
No comments:
Post a Comment