Plot hole: The "video history" of the crashed USAF ship makes it very clear that the planet is uninhabited when they "landed". I can understand how a race of apes develops - they had a bunch of them on board. I can understand how a race of humans develops - they are descendants of the original crew. What I don't understand is...where the heck did all the horses come from?
Planet of the Apes (2001)
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Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Paul Giamatti, Michael Clarke Duncan, Estella Warren
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Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Humans refer to parts of their own planet as uninhabited even though they are crawling with animals - vast areas of the Arctic are "uninhabited" even though polar bears and seals are found there. Were we to find a planet with nothing but primitive horses on it, we would label it as uninhabited. Apes and humans came from the crashed spaceship, horses were always there.
Which still makes no sense whatsoever.
I agree with you Charles. Horses are native to Earth but, the Oberon lands on a planet light years from Earth so it's a big plot hole how horses from one planet could end up on another when the planet was not only uninhabited but, the Oberon was believed to be lost.
Again, the Oberon was a massive space station, genetically experimenting with many earthly lifeforms, including horses, apparently. The time/space-rift was very near Earth (Mark Wahlberg made the journey in about 25 seconds at the end of the film. Not years but seconds). The implication is that the Oberon passed through the rift, and much of the crew survived to continue their genetic research on what later became the Ape Planet. So, the Oberon initially arrived on a barren planet and introduced all of the biological and botanical species, including apes, horses, and everything else.
Suggested correction: According to the backstory, the space station Oberon was dedicated to genetic modification sciences. They were actually experimenting with animal genes in the safety of space (which kind of makes sense). Given that the Oberon was a truly gigantic space station, it's not too much of a speculation that they were experimenting on many different types of animals (not just apes). When the Oberon crashed on Ashlar, half its crew was killed, but half survived with a number of ship's systems still functional, and they continued their genetic research, possibly producing a number of Earthly species on the otherwise uninhabited planet.
I think this should've been posted as a question, rather than a plot hole.
That's just a wild guess. There hasn't been a single mention of horses on board the Oberon. Even if there were, why only horses?
Wild guess? The Oberon was experimenting in genetic modification, which implies a broad range of research...and not just on great apes. The Oberon was gigantic enough to be an Ark.
So where are all the other animals?
Exactly. Where are the birds, lions, lizards, etc?
Trivia: Makeup artist Rick Baker has a cameo appearance in this movie. He appears as one of the apes in the city who is seen smoking from a water pipe.
Question: To prevent spoilers/plot leaking to the public, Tim Burton made five endings to keep people guessing. Is there anywhere I can see any of the other four?
Answer: There were five different endings to the movie and late actor Michael Clarke Duncan saw them all. So far, no website seems to have all five endings. Just the one we're familiar with.
Answer: You might be mistaken, there was only ever one ending shot for this film: the ending we all saw at the Lincoln Memorial. There were different planned endings (one was a similar ending to the theatrical but set at Yankee stadium with apes playing baseball) that were each rejected for various reasons. The ending we see is the one that is in the script.
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