Beneath the Planet of the Apes

Michael Avallone begins his novelization of Beneath the Planet of the Apes with a dedication to Pierre Boulle, whose novel inspired the first film. While the original film hewed fairly close to the original novel, the second went in a vastly different direction. The original Planet of the Apes took time to set up ideas and explore the world so that its anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons message would make sense. Beneath the Planet of the Apes forgoes this subtlety, introducing a second astronaut who has traveled to the future in search of Taylor. The two discover an underground society of mutated humans who worship the ultimate atom bomb in the ruins of New York City in the Forbidden Zone. The mutated humans speak in a double-talk that show more would make Orwell proud, praising the peace promised by the atom bomb. Meanwhile, the Apes plan an assault on the Forbidden Zone when several of their scouts go missing and one returns with stories of walls of fire and earthquakes. As the Apes march off to war, a group of chimpanzee students block their paths in protest. This was likely intended to continue the anti-war metaphor, but its overt nature more resembles a farce than anything else. As if this were not bad enough, Avallone's portrayal of his female characters is demeaning at best and outright sexist at many points. I've always felt this was the weirdest and most out-of-sorts of the Planet of the Apes films and the book, being the first novel in the series after Boulle's masterpiece, does nothing to rectify that. show less