Planet of the Apes

Plot hole: Wouldn't Taylor have suspected he was still on Earth, seeing as all the apes were speaking English?

Continuity mistake: When Julius arrives to escape Taylor from his cell, he gives the guard a note who has a cigar in his mouth. When Julius tackles the guard, the size of the cigar differs between shots. (01:18:50)

Casual Person

Continuity mistake: The American flag on the raft moves from shot to shot. That can't happen, because the raft was tethered to the spaceship while Taylor was throwing the supplies down. (00:10:15)

????

Revealing mistake: As Lucius tackles the guard and yells "Grab him!" to Taylor, Lucius then strikes the guard over the head, knocking him unconscious. When Lucius begins pushing the guard over to Taylor's cell, you can see the guard is already unconscious before he gets struck. (01:18:45)

Continuity mistake: When Taylor is trying to describe where he came from to Zira and Cornelius, he has Cornelius hold up a map. Cornelius holds the left side and Taylor holds up the right. As Zira says "You fell into the water here?", the map is slanted to the side. In the next shot, Taylor suddenly isn't holding the right side of the map and the map is more levelled out. (00:48:20)

Casual Person

Other mistake: Taylor believes he is on a planet 300 light-years from earth for most of the movie. However, after spending months there, he would have seen the moon at night a number of times, letting him know where he really was before seeing the Statue of Liberty.

Mike Lynch

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Not necessarily; any astronaut knows that many, many planets have moons, so Taylor could have easily thought that it was simply an odd coincidence that the "other" planet's moon closely resembled Earth's moon.

zendaddy621

Continuity mistake: Towards the end when Taylor is shaving, they show a shot of him when he is nearly finished; only a small dab of the shave cream left on his chin. Cut to a shot of Lucius and Cornelius looking at him from behind and his face is completely lathered once again.

BocaDavie

Continuity mistake: When Taylor and Nova approach the Statue of Liberty, there is a slow panning shot looking down on them from behind the statue's crown. All of the spikes on the crown are completely straight when seen from this angle. When the camera angle changes and we're looking up at the statue, there is a spike on the left side of the crown bent outward. The bend starts a little more than half-way up the spike; it would have been visible in the shot from behind.

BocaDavie

Revealing mistake: When Taylor approaches Miss Liberty, there should be horse tracks in the sand extending to the end of the frame. About 1/3 of the frame shows smooth sand preceding some horse tracks.

Continuity mistake: When Taylor discovers Stewart's corpse his hand is on his chest but a shot later it's by his side.

Sacha

Audio problem: After Taylor's been hit Dr. Galen says "he's lost a lot of blood", but his mouth is not moving.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: While during the trial Honorius says Zira and Galen experimented on Taylor his right-hand swaps between being by his side or resting on the chair.

Sacha

Revealing mistake: During the trial Honorius walks around the room and stops to deliver his words. Watch his feet and you'll notice a dark spot right where his feet are, which serves as the marker.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: Zira visits the cages and asks Taylor if it still hurts. Taylor holds the iron bars with both hands parallel to each other. A shot later his right hand is positioned higher.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Zaius warns Taylor not to go to the Forbidden Zone, Taylor turns the horse to face Cornelius. In the closeup after Zaius tells Taylor "You may not like what you find", he turns the horse around again.

Movie Nut

George Taylor: Take your stinkin' paws off me, ya damn dirty ape.

More quotes from Planet of the Apes

Trivia: To help keep Heston from hurting his feet when running, he was fitted with rubber soles molded to look like bare feet.

Nicki

More trivia for Planet of the Apes

Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?

Socks1000

Answer: I think that this is meant to be a mystery. Taylor/Charlton Heston, an astronaut, leaves a world set somewhat in the future after 1968 (when the movie was made) but still recognisable to cinema-goers at the time, to travel through a "time vortex" to arrive in a world in a distant future, which has changed beyond recognition. Taylor meets the orangutan Zaius/Maurice Evans, and Zaius hints that he has some idea of what had happened, but Zaius' knowledge is either limited, or else Zaius is not going to tell Taylor (or his fellow apes) the full story. At the end of the movie Taylor discovers that, at some point between his leaving his own time and arriving in the "Planet Of The Apes", the world had been devastated by a nuclear war, but I think that the exact time, causes of, and course of this nuclear war are deliberately left as a mystery. Sometimes I think a bit of unresolved mystery actually improves a story, and I think this is the case here.

Rob Halliday

Chosen answer: World War III.

Grumpy Scot

More questions & answers from Planet of the Apes

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