Planet of the Apes/Recap

Original film (1968)
A team of astronauts flies into space at near light speed. They are influenced by time dilation: eighteen months for them is over two thousand years for the Earth. They crash onto a mysterious, seemingly desolate planet (losing the sole female on the crew in the process), specifically into a dead lake; this loses them their spacecraft and most of their supplies.

At first, it appears that the planet is completely desolate, but they look for signs of life anyway. They discover that it has life when they see a small plant growing in the desert. They pull it up -- go figure. "Where there's one, there must be more!" so, hope renewed, they keep looking. And, indeed, more hardy plants and grasses do appear and become larger and more numerous.

Eventually, they run into a line of "scarecrows" set on the top of a cliff. They climb to investigate, but their leader, Taylor (played by Charlton Heston), sees something much more interesting at the top -- life! In abundance! They find fresh water, go skinny dipping, and get their clothes stolen by wild, naked, mute humans, whom they chase after. The mute humans toss aside the remaining supplies, wrecking them.

Our crew is still mingling with the humans when a band of apes -- clothed, armed, and on horseback -- hunts and captures them. Neither they nor we can see who is attacking at first. One of the astronauts is killed; Taylor is shot in the throat, which renders him mute and bleeding profusely. He is among the captured, and taken back to the apes' mostly pre-industrial city.

He becomes a research subject for a "chimpanzee" animal behaviorist, Dr Zira, who calls him "Bright Eyes" and approaches him with an "Aww, isn't he cute! And so intelligent for a human!" attitude; other apes, such as "gorilla" guard Julius and "orang-utan" Chief Scientist & Defender of the Faith Dr. Zaius, are more dismissive, saying he merely has a gift for mimicry. As the apes speak English (note that the apes had their own language in the original novel), he keeps trying unsuccessfully to communicate with them. He also falls for a mute human whom he names Nova, whom Zira gave him to breed with.

At one point, he's in an exercise pen with the other experimental humans. He writes in the dirt with a stick, hoping Zira will see -- Nova, interested but knowing nothing about writing, erases it. Taylor starts to show the writing, realizes it's partly gone, and loses his temper. A large-scale brawl ensues. Afterwards, Dr. Zaius does see the writing, but he finishes erasing it without comment.

Taylor finally succeeds in communicating when he snatches a pencil and paper from Zira. Julius brutally snatches it back, but somehow the paper gets "My name is Taylor" written on it.

Although she is not supposed to do this kind of research, for various reasons, Zira nonetheless brings Taylor to her home and keeps communicating with him, amazed at what he seems to know. There, Taylor also meets her fiance Dr. Cornelius, a chimpanzee archaeologist who has become disgraced for venturing into the "Forbidden Zone" (the desert the astronauts crossed at the beginning); however, while there, Cornelius found evidence of a pre-ape civilization in a cave on a beach and has formulated a theory that apes evolved from men. Neither Zira nor Cornelius believe that Taylor is an astronaut from another planet, but Zira suggests that Taylor is Cornelius's "missing link" between men and apes -- Cornelius, who is distrustful of Taylor and wary of being tried for scientific heresy, refuses to hear it.

Dr. Zaius drops in at that moment and sees Taylor there in the home, along with a paper aeroplane Taylor made to demonstrate the possibility of flight -- he orders Taylor taken back to his cage and crushes the aeroplane. Back at the lab, Taylor overhears that he's to be gelded on Dr. Zaius's orders. He escapes and attempts to flee, but eventually is recaptured. When a gorilla guard touches him, Taylor cries out in front of everyone, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"

This leads to a trial for heresy that Taylor, Zira, and Cornelius cannot win. Taylor is placed in Dr. Zaius's custody and is threatened with emasculation and lobotomy unless he tells Zaius where his "tribe" is -- Zaius says he believes that Taylor is some kind of mutant, and also believes there are many more like him beyond the Forbidden Zone and that they pose a threat to ape civilisation; Taylor, naturally, can't tell him anything.

Eventually, Zira's nephew Lucius breaks him out. At his insistence, Nova is broken out as well. Taylor, Zira, Cornelius, Nova, and Lucius head back into the Forbidden Zone to Cornelius's forbidden archaeological site, in the hopes of finding something that will clear their names (they know Taylor's landing site, but nobody sees any point in going there).

They are followed by Dr. Zaius and a contingent of gorillas. After disputes involving gunfire, the five of them plus Dr. Zaius go into the cave and examine Cornelius's archaeological evidence -- among it is a human doll that can talk. It is decided that Taylor and Nova will be allowed to go and look for civilization or the rumored second forest on the other side of the Forbidden Zone. Dr. Zaius tells Taylor that he's always known about man's former civilization in his capacity as Defender of the Faith, and has dreaded its second coming: "The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago." After Taylor and Nova leave, Dr. Zaius orders that the cave be sealed and all the archaeological evidence concealed; he also says that Zira and Cornelius will be placed on trial for heresy and can expect up to two years in prison.

Taylor rides through the wilderness with Nova, and eventually spots the second jungle in the distance... only to discover a large blackened ruin in front of them on the beach. It drives him to despair, for reasons Nova can't understand and that those who somehow don't know the ending will take a moment to figure out. .