'Battle for the Planet of the Apes' is the last film in the original 'Planet of the Apes' franchise. My first re-watch of the thing since the late 1990's, this works better as a finale to the series then I had remembered. I long thought that a 6th film would have been needed to really round out the tragic time paradox of the film, but this movie ends on a hopefully note, implying that the march to the apocalyptical final of the 2nd 'Apes' film may now have been avoided. This is certainly a more enjoyable film then it's kind of angry and too often tedious immediate predecessor 'Conquest of the Planet of the Apes'.
I like how this movie returns to a more agarin setting, like the first two 'Apes' film, and homages the mutants from the 2nd film, and deals pretty consistently with events in the 3rd and 4th. The nuclear war referenced in the earlier films happens off camera, I suspect largely as a budgetary matter, and here a group of humans and apes lead by Caesar (Roddy McDowell) are attempting to make interspecies cooperation work and preserve the good parts of civilization. For those who nerd out a little about chronology like me, in this movie the nuclear war is said to have taken place 15 years after the events of the last film, which was set in 1991, so the action in this movie is set in at least 2006 or possibly a few years thereafter.
Like the other movies there is plenty that just doesn't add up, but the characters and story narrative are strong enough, for me at least, to enable suspension of disbelief without too many problems. I particularly appreciated the casting of great old time actors like Lew Ayers and John Huston in Ape parts. **1/2
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