Planet of the Expo

OK, picture this. We all know that Hollywood is totally into remakes of prior successful films. It’s so much easier to do this than actually coming out with new and/or clever ideas.

So, here’s the concept. Let’s remake Planet of the Apes. Yes I’m well aware of the film by the same name that starred Mark Wahlberg. Let’s face it, just about everyone hated it and for good reason. It sucked. MY idea of a remake is to take the original film with Chuck Heston and use some digital magic to redo some of the locations. This makes it all so much cheaper since a good portion of the principles are dead by now (no disrespect intended, but they ARE dead and most likely don’t care what we say about them), so no big salaries to put out.

You al know the basic story: A group of Astronauts travel to a nearby star, but even this will take hundreds of years so it’s into some sleep chambers for the long ride. Probably give them an intravenous drip of Nytol or something to keep them out. As they enter orbit of an alien planet something goes horribly wrong with the ship and they somewhat conveniently splash down in some small lake. Fortunately the ship doesn’t sink into the depths until the sleep chambers are opened and the three surviving Astronauts are able to escape. I won’t even go into the logic of having three males and one female aboard a mission that will take hundreds of years. I guess they planned on the one woman to be VERY accommodating or perhaps the three males have an alternative lifestyle as is politically correct these days. Of course since she’s dead at this point and had been for hundreds of years in her little sleep chamber it really doesn’t matter. So then they meet apes who conveniently speak English even though they are supposedly on a planet light years away from Earth and they run the whole show and hilarity ensues.

Flash forward to the end and Chuck and some nearly mute babe with access to makeup and a very carefully constructed dress that showed enough cleavage to be hot but not enough to give it an “R” rating. They ride a horse along a beach until Chuck seems something sticking out of the sand at which point he calls everyone bastards and damns them to hell a few times. Are we clear on the original concept? Good! Moving on.

So pretty much all the same stuff happens except the apes now live in an oddly familiar very hilly section. The apes are still jerks and treat the humans like crap which as things work out is no less than we deserve. The BIG difference is that now as Chuck and his squeeze are riding along the beach instead of seeing the Statue of Liberty sticking up in the sand they see one of the pillars of the Moscone Convention Center sticking up and maybe one of the supports from the Golden Gate to give it some more identifiable flavor for San Francisco.

As he jumps off the horse, we add a scene where a piece of paper that somehow through the magic of Hollywood has survived hundreds of years next to the ocean that says that Macworld has been cancelled due to a lack of vendor support and Apple dropping out. Chucky briefly holds the paper before letting it drop unceremoniously to the sand before bellowing, “You bastards. You let it be cancelled. You let it BE CANCELLED! DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS! DAMN YOU TO HELL!”