Producer Arthur P. Jacobs optioned Pierre Boulle’s novel before it had even been published and noted comedy director Blake Edwards came on board very early on to help bring the adaptation into a filmable shape. Edwards’ primary contribution to the finished product, however, was convincing legendary television writer Rod Serling to write the screenplay. That job would wind up resulting in nearly 50 different drafts. Serling ultimately would much credit to co-credited screenwriter Michael G. Wilson for the script that was eventually filmed.
Edwards never did get around to actually directing the film and the job eventually landed in the hands of Franklin J. Schaffner who just two years later would go on to take home his only Oscar for directing Patton. Prior to that, Schaffner’s career was primarily limited to directing live dramas during the first Golden Age of Television, including his Emmy-award winning work on the original version of 12 Angry Men. That difference may have been vital in crafting the very mythology of the Planet of the Apes franchise which continues into the 21st century reboot. His work in television taught Schaffner the value of cutting costs and one of the biggest cuts in production costs that allowed the film to get made at all was at least half economic and half artistic.
The original vision of the novel informed the setting of the film: the apes had not only evolved, but had built a modern society and civilization. The apes in the most of the original screenplays lived in a high-tech and even futuristic world. In the novel, the apes themselves have achieved interplanetary travel. Such a civilization would necessitate a far bigger budget to realize visually than the more primitive simian culture ultimately portrayed in the movie. While budget constraints may have been the stimulus for making this change, it proven to be an economy of artistic genius. By situation the culture of the planet of the apes closer to the Stone Age than the technological age, the ultimate revelation that the planet is actually a future version of Earth is all the more striking. Nowhere are seen the modern conveniences of humankind that could lead either Taylor or the viewer to suspect the horrifying disclosure that awaits everyone as the film draws to a close.
That final image of the obliterated Statue of Liberty situated in the ruins of centuries of passing time becomes one of the most successfully shocking plot twists in cinematic history. Trying to find even one reviewer or viewer who saw that ending coming upon the viewing during the film’s initial release is practically impossible. Few last minute shocks have enjoyed the widespread impact that arrives when the camera jarringly zooms back to reveal the shadow of Lady Liberty’s crown on a beach that Taylor may well have swam in himself back when he was this planet an epoch or two ago. That successful manipulating of audience expectations may not be entirely due to Schaffner’s influential decision to retard the rate of ape evolution, but it certainly owes a tremendous debt to that prescience.
