<font color="cyan">Ok, I watched Planet of the Apes a couple of days ago, and I just had a question.

As I understood it, the planet that he lands on is Earth in the future....easy bit to follow. But why when he returns back to earth, in his own time (run by the apes)....is the planet run by the apes, and why is General Thade on the statue, if he was from the future...I struggled to get this bit...

Please help!</font>

LOTSO SPOILERS!
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It was extremely hard to follow, but here is what I thought. I just think it would have been a lot better if Burton had stuck to the original... but that might be just me. I think that after he goes throw the time warp thing the ship goes through it, but comes out significantly earlier. They both come out at a pre-history kind of time, i.e. they are taken back not forward, unlike the original film. The apes start and develop a civilisation, then he lands and starts all sorts of problems. When it reaches a climax finally the first monkey to go through the warp thingy lands. So when you go in the hole doesn't really mean much as to when you come out. So when he goes back in I don't really know when and where he comes out, but it is safe to assume it is the same planet and in the future. So somehow Thade got out of the bridge and regained control of the civilisation. Weird, not the best film around, but still ok in my mind.

<font color="cyan">Ok, I've just watched it again...and I disagree with what you have said Barry...

If you watch the date clock as he shoots through the storm, it goes to 4073. This means he has gone 2070 yrs in the future...

Now, he lands on a Baron planet (in the main)

This can be explained by referring to the original, and assuming that their was a nuclear apocolypse and EVERYTHING was destroyed.

So how are there apes/humans on the planet when he lands? The Oberon travelled through the storm also, but crashed after the apocolypse....and from then, the apes bred (as did the humans)

I still dnt get the end, as the clock shows him go back to 2001. That bit still confuses me....what do you think?</font>

How about this.....
The space station follows him through, but instead of landing at the same time it lands closer to the time that they encountered the storm....

The crash has survivors, and they evolve into the present day apes that are ruling the planet.....now the(Charlton Heston) ape knows of the crash, and is able to salvage one of the pods and sends a rouge ape back to the early 90's, and they brytally take over the world.........

Now, when he goes back, he goes to the new present day....ruled by apes....

Maybe it's like that season of "Dallas" that really sucked. He'll wake up at the beginning of PotA II, and realize returning to Earth will have only been a dream he had in the shower....

:eek:

<font color="cyan">Nice to know people can still piss about when I'm trying to get a proper answer....

But what about the nuclear apocolypse in the originals, that was excluded in the newer versions?
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<font color="cyan">The crash obviously has survivors, to make the people be on the planet....after consulting people in Media Studies at college, they agree with my ideas....but they don't know either how Thade came to be on the statue.</font>

One explanation: Alternate timelines and parallel universes.