Revealing mistake: Most of the posed, fake displays in the ape's Museum of Natural History contain real people who are slightly moving if one pays careful attention. Especially noticeable are those posing with objects held in - or above - their hands.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Starring: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans
Continuity mistake: When the spaceship first springs a leak and begins to sink, the interior shots show it tilting to starboard; Taylor falls against the starboard bulkhead and the other two survivors need to brace themselves from slipping. All of the exterior shots of the ship show it level from port to starboard.
Continuity mistake: The first exterior shots of the spacecraft in the desert lake show the spaceship's hatch door already gone... before the astronauts blow it off with an explosive charge minutes later in the movie.
Trivia: Taylor's first name, George, is never mentioned in the film. He is referred to only as "Taylor."
Trivia: During breaks, the ape makeup couldn't be removed. It is interesting to note that the chimps naturally hung out with other chimps during breaks, the gorillas natually hung out with other gorillas, and the orangutans naturally hung out with other orangutans.
Dr. Zaius: Don't go looking for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.
George Taylor: Take your stinkin' paws off me, ya damn dirty ape.
George Taylor: You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
Question: Since World War 3 was the cause of the nuclear devastation, as evidenced in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, how is it that Dr. Zaius doesn't know the full story of the rise of the apes over the humans? Wouldn't the story be passed down?
Chosen answer: Dr. Zaius did know the true history of man and ape, but he deliberately hid the truth from the other apes. For Zaius (and other high-ranking apes who were guarding the secret), it would be shameful and demoralizing to ever admit that humans were far superior to apes in the past and that they could, potentially, conquer the apes. In more than one scene (such as the paper airplane scene in the first film), we see Zaius obviously frustrated that Taylor's very existence threatens to expose the truth.
Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?
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.
Chosen answer: World War III.
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Answer: He's in the same location as Ellis Island. Thousands of years have resulted in significant changes geographically.