Apes in Movies and TV – Laser Time

With the War for the Planet of the Apes finally waging, we dive deep into some of the most memorable monkeys, simians, orangutans, and other banana-loving creatures that have been in popular movies and TV shows!


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22 thoughts on “Apes in Movies and TV – Laser Time

  1. Comedy films with apes became a cheesy comedy cliche over the years, but there is something about the movies Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can that I fucking love. Seeing such a badass western star in such a goofy comedy is charming. Ruth Gordon of Harold and Maude plays the hilarious mother in the film. The soundtrack featured some very notable country artists of the time. The Every Which But Loose soundtrack is the only vinyl album that I’ve ordered off the internet. Go give them a watch, you can probably find them at Wal-Mart bundled for 5 bucks.

  2. Almost done w/ this episode…no mention of The Ghost Busters/Filmation’s Ghost Busters’ Ape, Tracy?

    Went from a man in an ape suit to a cartoon character.

    1. It amuses me to hear people always calling chimps and gorillas monkeys. It’s more fun to say monkey than ape, for some reason. It’s like always saying Marky Mark instead of Mark Wahlburg, it’s just more fun. And it seems like we see fewer monkeys than various apes.

      1. What’s ironic with your last point, there are way more monkey species than ape species. Like 7 total Apes and much more monkey species.

        1. Other than Raiders and Friends, I can’t think of too many monkeys on screen, chimps seem the most common in my memory, probably due to ease of training.

    2. Yeah it drives me crazy when this happens. To put it in LT terms they can understand, it’s like calling Shrek or minions a disney movie. Would that shit fly? NO.

      There are Old world and New world monkeys and then apes are a separate group. Apes have separate means of locomotion and different dentition (teeth).

      Lemurs are ALSO not monkeys but lemurs.

      If you want a catch-all term, say primate. PRIMATE. PRIMATE. PRIMATE. NOT MONKEY.

      I teach Zoology so pardon me for taking such umbrage.

      1. This all day. People using specifically defined scientific terms interchangeably with other words that mean different things is a pet peeve of mine. It’s the same as calling dolphins and whales fish or crocodiles lizards.

  3. Kong: Skull Island was a great B movie and all I’ve ever wanted from a King Kong movie, fuck the Peter Jackson and 1970s versions. With Kong’s increased height and fighting prowess, I’m actually down to see him fight Godzilla (again). I will gladly watch this again.

    HUGE fan of the Planet of the Apes, both the old series and the new reboot/prequel madness trilogy. At the time of writing I haven’t seen War, but Rise and Dawn (despite their awful, generic titles) are some of the best films of the 2010s IMO. Eagerly looking forward to seeing War tomorrow, and I would be interested in some sort of re-visitation of the original film for the fourth entry in this series.

    Gorilla Grodd is a damn awesome super villain, and the fact that he’s in some pretty great episode of the Flash tv series, as well as showing up in Injustice 2, is wild.

    Great, fun episode guys. MONKEY BUSINESS!

  4. Only touched lightly on Planet of the Apes being an adaptation of a French novel but the movies have all been vastly different from the original novel. Obviously the twist at the end of the original movie is the most well known spoiler in the world and as has been pointed out many times, they stick ending to the movie on the box. But the original novel is quite interesting as well, and also has a twist ending, which is completely different from what any of the movie series have done. Its a pretty quick read and definitely worth checking out for anyone that is a fan of the Apes movie franchises.

    One has to wonder, with Spider-man and Legally Blond, and Evil Dead getting turned into stage musicals, if the reason why Planet of the Apes has never been adapted for stage has to do with the great Simpsons episode.

  5. OMG a whole show about apes and no mention of TCC: The Chimp Channel?! It was a show on TBS based on these bumps of movie parodies using chimps. It was actually really funny, but TBS seems to want to hide it from the internet cause it’s barely on YouTube.

  6. The original Kong is great, love it. I know people like to praise it for pioneering special effects but it’s use of audio/soundtrack in conjunction with on screen action was also revolutionary. As for the gender and racial stuff, oh yeah it’s there alright but who the hell am I yelling at now? Long dead people from the 30s? Pointless now, as long as we don’t repeat it obviously. King Kong is so much fun even to this day, love the small wild touches Kong himself does (like playing with the T-Rex corpse).

    Peter Jackson’s version is fun at times and clearly loving to the original… but in fact is actually TOO loving, it’s soooo bloated. I’m afraid to revisit it.

    As for Kong: Skull Island, viewing it as a big budget version of those 70-60s pulp adventure B-movies, it’s pretty damn great, FAR better than the 2014 Godzilla. I’m down for a crossover still.

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