Cinema Science PRIMATE PROBABILITIES IN THE PLANET OF THE APES TRILOGY

From one perspective, the financial success of the new Planet of the Apes trilogy – from Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011) through Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2014) to War for the Planet of the Apes (Reeves, 2017) – doesn’t come as a surprise. After all, you’ve got recognisable intellectual property, big budgets and plenty of action: the kind of formula that makes for big bucks at the box office.

Yet the fact that the Apes trilogy raked in over US $1.5 billion dollars worldwide belies the uniqueness of the series. It’s not just that the Planet of the Apes brand was hardly rock-solid after the original film (Franklin J Schaffner, 1968) was followed by an ignominious string of sequels and an underwhelming Tim Burton remake circa 2001; after all, we don’t compare the success of Marvel Studios’ Captain America films (2011–2016) to the disastrous 1990 Captain America (Albert Pyun). Rather, these films – which transform from a small-scale revolution against animal testing into a pseudo-religious reflection on the morality of war in record time – feel a world away from the superheroes and star wars joining them at the upper echelons of box-office rankings.

The Apes trilogy has plenty to offer an enthusiastic teacher looking for a hook for their classroom. The wider narrative of armed revolution draws deeply from human history, providing plenty of subject material for History and Humanities teachers. However, the focus of this column, as always, is Science and Mathematics. While I’ll primarily focus on the first film, which opens up a plethora of questions about animal testing and animal intelligence, opportunities abound across the entire trilogy to incorporate the films – whether seen in their entirety or in clips – into a Science or Mathematics classroom.

SCALING THE LUCAS TOWER

Since this column’s inception over a year