Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984)

Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen: Directed by Werner Herzog. With Bruce Spence, Wandjuk Marika, Roy Marika, Ray Barrett. A geologist employed by an Australian mining company finds himself disputing the rights of some aborigines who believe their land to be sacred.

“A point raised by Caesaru0026#39;s enemy, Kolp (Darden in a mustache-twirling snidely elegant turn at maddened villainy), in this 5th and final Apes film. But a king usually has more than one enemy, as Caesar finds, to his grief. A predictable and mostly logical follow-up to the previous u0026quot;Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,u0026quot; this one, like u0026quot;Beneath the Planet of the Apes,u0026quot; stresses sci-fi action rather than any deep themes related to slavery or culture shock. Several years after a nuclear war, we find a surprisingly peaceful yet primitive village occupied by both apes and humans, governed by chimp Caesar (McDowall), who began a revolution in the previous film, as a young radical. Now much older – either about 10 or 30 years older, depending on various sources – he projects a benign fatherly personality. Itu0026#39;s not quite paradise: though not the slaves as apes were previously, humans have shifted to 2nd-class citizens, despite an image of equality, and tension escalates due to local bully gorilla Aldo (Akins – u0026#39;call me by my proper rank, General, huh!u0026#39;). Then Caesar himself opens the door to other possible problems by visiting a nearby nuked city (obviously the same one from the previous film). There, the human governor from u0026quot;Conquest…u0026quot; has been replaced by his security chief, Kolp, who was bad enough as 2nd in command – now heu0026#39;s bored just sifting through the rubble with his few mutated followers – time to work off the doldrums and teach a clever ape how to show respect.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis entry is generally regarded as the worst of the 5 films, if most fans had to pick one, but itu0026#39;s not a complete waste by comparison. There really is a battle at the end, a mini-war between the invading mutants and the village – but then the final confrontation between Caesar u0026amp; Aldo is slow going. This film is almost like a precursor to all of those post holocaust sci-fi pieces in the eighties (u0026quot;Steel Dawn,u0026quot; etc.). The biggest weakness is that nothing really new is added to the saga. The new character, Virgil (Williams), for example, is a genius orangutan, but heu0026#39;s a retread of the genius chimp from u0026quot;Escape…u0026quot; What this film does, really, is bring things full circle for the 5-film saga, though not in a very creative way. As with the previous film, u0026quot;Conquest…u0026quot;, events that should occur over the course of decades or centuries are depicted in the span of days. The filmmakers got all the old costumes from the first 3 films out of mothballs and outfitted the apes here the same way, against logic. The mutated humans from the bombed out city are the ancestors of the mutants weu0026#39;ve seen in u0026quot;Beneath…u0026quot; – they even show the alpha-omega bomb which, though almost detonated here, remains as is until it supposedly destroys everything in two millennium. However, a prologue and epilogue set about 600 years from now with the orangutan Lawgiver (Huston) shows that the future is not set, so now weu0026#39;re left guessing. This movie was followed by the short lived TV series, which took place about a thousand years in the future.”