Synopsis:

In this the final chapter of the apes saga, Caesar has been elected leader of all the apes. Essentially ruling over a band of Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutans and humans in a field of lush greenery. Desperately seeking his deceased parent's wishes regarding how he should rule and proceed, Caesar, Virgil (Paul Williams) and a human, travel to the irradiated "forbidden city" in hopes of finding a videotape of his parent's interrogation during the presidential hearings of that time. Caesar's desire is to learn from his parents, the kind of information needed to make his reign a compassionate and successful one.

Unbeknownst to them, the city is inhabited by radiologically mutated humans who are both mentally and physically scarred as a result of the last "great War". Resigned to cowering in the shadows, these "mutants" are eeking out an existence in the moldy, filth of the remaining bowels of the city's many buildings. None too pleased with the apes'arrival; the humans attack Caesar and company forcing them out of the city and back to their encampment.

The Gorillas, who aren't too happy with Caesar anyway, plan a preemptive strike on the human encampment without the leadership of Caesar and go out looking to pick a fight. Only to realize much too late that, they are outgunned and er um…out simianed or out monkeyed, take your pick.

Audio/Video:

Not very aggressive 5.1 platform that kicks in every now and then. It's mostly dialogue with some stingers. When the fighting begins, the resulting sounds are more ringing and tinny than rich and full. Essentially, all of the discs, save the first film,suffer from this lack of fullness in the audio department. The dialogue/center however is clean and the sub/rears/fronts when given something to do perform quite adequately.

As you may know, with each subsequent film, the amount available to make sequels for this particular franchise dwindled and dwindled until, there was nothing left to produce a film with. Looking at the sets, beginning with the opening shot of the film, you are under whelmed by the utter lack of "sets" and the abysmal set design (what little of it there was) and very poor wardrobe design decisions. The transfer however does show more than its share of flecking. It's a nice widescreen image but it's nowhere near as sharp and attractive as the first entry in the saga. There was also a fair amount of pixellation in the darker scenes of the film as well. Overall, this is the worst rendered of the batch but, it's not terrible!

Extras:

Trailers for all the films as well as the Fox interactive planet of the ape's video game are the only extras for this disc.

Overall:

When it comes to making a bad movie with guys who look like they're wearing monkey suits, this is the benchmark. Of the whole series this is easily the worst entry. You could say that they ended the saga on a thud instead of a bang. Really, you could say that. The lack of funding for the feature really hurt this production. No money meant 90% of the film was shot outdoors on really rickety looking sets. The "forbidden city" was obviously a matte painting in the distance and as they got closer, the makeshift nuclear-damaged locale looked surprisingly less like a city destroyed and more like melted Styrofoam and rubber. What kind of way is that to proclaim the swan song for a such a landmark and successful series of films? In any event, the storyline was bad, the execution was bad and the cinematography, set design, and wardrobe & prop departments must have been closed when they decided to put this mistake to film. One of the most annoying segments is toward the end when an obviously looped audio track of "ape has never killed ape" is droned out for a good 5 minutes. It's almost enough to make you advance the disc to the next chapter, it's so bad! Anyway, this was a mistake from the very beginning when it was decided to make this film on a shoestring budget of $75! For the fans, Battle for the Planet of the Apes was just not a fair fight. Rental property