In Short:	It's deeper than you might think.
Recommended:	Hell, yes!

TAYLOR:	Doctor, I'd like to kiss you goodbye.
DR. ZIRA:	Alright, but you're so damned ugly.

Planet of the Apes works as a time travel movie precisely because it’s not trying to work as a time travel movie. Not at first anyway. The trip through time is just the messenger, a way of delivering the message about the evolution of culture, the nature of violence, and the close-minded narcissism of which the human animal has proved so disturbingly capable.

Most movies of the time travel sub-genre focus on the moral dilemma of changing the past or on the paradox of time travel (Terminator, 12 Monkeys, Deja Vu). They sometimes function as a metaphor for the choices we make in life (Groundhog Day, The Butterfly Effect). They serve us with visions of utopian or dystopian societies of the future (The Time Machine), speculate on historical social perspectives (Star Trek IV, Back to the Future), poke fun at the genre itself (Austin Powers) or simply treat us to a means of re-enacting old legends (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court).

Traveling into the future, in Planet of the Apes anyway, serves to expose the truths and the misperceptions of the past. The film relocates us more in mind-set than in time. Most time travel movies involve our ability to change the future. This one addresses our ability in the future to change ourselves in the present. With deft humor and wry style, it satirizes our prejudices, our fears, our customs and social hierarchies, our perceptions of intelligence and beauty, our twisted Kafkaesque bureaucracies, and our violent, animal nature. But it does it without sarcasm, scorn, or gratuitous derision. Instead we see ourselves as we were, as we are, and as we might yet become. The Latin term is de te fabula: “The story is about you.”

At the final revelation, when Taylor screams, “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!” he’s not talking to the apes; he’s talking to us. In a bit of mind-bending movie craftsmanship, it’s a salient message sent to us in the past from the future by a fictional character in the future who knows us better than we know ourselves.

With legendary makeup effects (John Chambers won an honorary Academy Award) and spot-on performances by Roddy McDowell as Cornelius and Kim Hunter as Dr. Zira, Planet of the Apes offers us a fantastic, unbelievable world that we can’t help but recognize. Charlton Heston as Taylor, the arrogant victim on the planet and ultimate ancestor of the apes, plays it to the hilt with furious machismo. He’s not subtle, but he doesn’t need to be. His natural bravado lends itself perfectly to the character’s intellectual conflict and emotional turmoil. He’s a lost man, it turns out, in the right place just at the wrong time.

Planet of the Apes touches on a few established staples of time travel, but it delves beyond all and adheres to none. This is an iconic movie franchise unto itself, one that should be admired, studied, and never duplicated, and as soon as I finish writing this, I fully plan on traveling back in time and telling that to Tim Burton.