“It was screw you material”: the nonsensical ending Tim Burton didn’t even try to explain
Sticking the landing is one of the most important aspects of any movie, because it doesn’t matter what unfolded beforehand, the most recent events to unfold on-screen are the ones that are going to be freshest in the memory when the credits come up. Tim Burton dropped a clanger on one of his films, but he didn’t even try and make sense of it.
Ever since his 1985 debut feature Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Burton has always toed the line between being an auteur and a studio hand-for-hire, often in the same production. While the vast majority of his filmography is entirely reflective of his stylistic and aesthetic sensibilities, it’s easy to see when he’s being motivated more by the paycheque than the creativity.
Alice in Wonderland cleared a billion dollars at the box office, but ironically, for the first major 3D release to follow in the wake of James Cameron’s Avatar, it was as flat as they come. Visually, it was a Burton movie without a shadow of a doubt, but his subsequent re-teaming with the Mouse House on the forgettable Dumbo showed why they were never a match made in cinematic heaven.
Batman reinvented blockbuster cinema, and it was evident in every frame that Burton had a huge passion for the character and the world he inhabited. Mars Attacks! was a big-budget sci-fi but carried the anarchic spirit of his finest works, while Sleepy Hollow was a box office hit that allowed the filmmaker to indulge his gothic side with complete uninhibitedness.
The point is that there’s a happy medium to be found when Burton is handed a large amount of money, and Planet of the Apes doesn’t find it. Obviously, the production design and makeup effects were second to none, but at no point did the remake of the sci-fi classic manage to justify its existence, not least of all with a head-scratching ending that seems to exist solely to try and match the jaw-dropping revelation that ended Charlton Heston’s initial adventure in such iconic fashion.
Cameron is adamant that Burton was completely miscast as director, and it’s the only one of his films that the Terminator creator doesn’t like. After returning to his home world—or so he thinks—Mark Wahlberg’s Leo Davidson is shocked to discover that he’s arrived in a different timeline where the apes have already established dominance at the top of the food chain.
It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and when asked by the BBC if he could either explain or justify the finale, Burton opted to answer in the negative. “No, I’m not going to because one of the things I liked about the material was that it was screw you material,” he said.
“There is an unknown quality to it, the whole ape versus man, Darwinism versus religious beliefs; those are things that I personally can’t answer and the ending puts a weird image to the weird, unanswerable questions of life.”
It was a twist for the express purpose of including a twist, then, and if Burton was unwilling to offer even the slightest inclination of what it was supposed to mean—with “I’m not giving you an answer” literally being the explanation he gave—then it’s clear it didn’t have a reason to exist beyond shock value.
