The Humanoid Ape Morphology

The Power of the Emperor Ape

A description of the mutant nature and faculties of Caesar, the 'Simian Messiah'.

Ability name: Physiological Enhancement

Description: enhanced strength, agility, reflexes, stamina. Slowed-down process of aging (longevity).

Induction: many sequences in CONQUEST, as well as in BATTLE, support the evidence.

Ability name: Simian Morphic Resonance

Description: the unconscious access to the simian morphogenetic field and the related ability of manipulative interface with it lead to the transfer of cultural "patterns" to all simian forms of life the subject interacts with, augmenting their cognitive and intellectual evolution.

Scientific back-up: a 'morphogenetic field' (a subset of 'morphic field') is a hypothetical biological (and potentially social) field that contains the necessary information to shape the form of a living thing, as part of its epigenetics, and may also shape its behaviour and coordination with other beings. 'Morphic resonance' is a term coined by Rupert Sheldrake for what he thinks is "the basis of memory in nature.... the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species".

Induction: as evidenced by either CONQUEST and BATTLE, Caesar stimulated the Humanoid Apes, made them more "receptive" to language and culture and persuaded them to revolt. He was the morphic catalyst that "accelerated" their evolution. That's why the Apes acquired power of speech in a "gap" of merely 30 years (they were already provided with capable vocal boxes, however).

Ability name: Prenatal Mnemonic Extrapolation

Description: the superhuman intellectual ability to "absorb" memories, images and concepts from the maternal neuronic system during the fetal phase. The memories are stored indefinitely, and later rearranged under the form of conscious intuitions or dream-like visions/hallucinations, once triggered by a related element that works as "reminder". As side-effect of this enhancement, long and short term memory capacities are also amplified.

Scientific back-up: helped by the presence of a detail which acts as catalyst (almost a password giving access), Caesar can unconsciously tap into Zira's mnemonic images and "suggestions" encoded in his brain. His neuronic system thus introduces them as spontaneous extrapolations to his conscious mind.

Induction: in ESCAPE, a newborn Milo/Caesar was able to pronunce some words under human stimulation. In-between CONQUEST and BATTLE, inspired by the design of his Cornelius-type circus clothes as 'Salomon', Caesar was able to recreate the Orang/Gorillas uniforms from a scratch. He also reproduced many other estethical details of the PLANET/BENEATH Ape civilization when he built and shaped Ape City. In BATTLE, after he supervised the tapes containing his parents's interviews, he became suddenly "aknowledged" about the details of the last days of Apeline Alpha.

Special features in the Humanoid Apes

The few bloopers in the Ape make-up could be easily 'unflubbed' by rationalizing them as physical characteristics of the Humanoid Apes. We provide you with the best "truth" possible for these unnoticeable, irrilevant sacks.

PLANET: we can often see that Cornelius's neck is lacking hair, being almost naked.

Unflubbing: the Humanoid Apes are slowly loosing hair. Humans, before they were what they are now were covered with hair. Some people, especially men still have dark hair over their bodies. Some men shave others don't. Girls and women shave their legs because hair starts to become noticeable. I don't think a chimp would react the same way to hair, seeing as they're covered with a noticeable supply of it. However, the hair on a human is little because evolution in his greater wisdom saw no reason for it other then to annoy and please female humans like myself, so he got rid of it. It is thought that the hair was there to keep us warm and to attract mates. Since humans gained a brain (if you'd call it that) they have lost the need for the hair as they now use "layers" to keep themselves warm or "clothes" and they don't need all that hair to attract a mate because guys have found various other things attractive in girls, thanks to evolution. Back to lack of hair on Apes... As you may have noticed Cornelius is wearing clothes and therefore doesn't need his hair to keep him warm, so that's one less reason to have it. You may also have noticed that he is also attached. Though as humans, obviously we fail to see the attraction but seeing as they're pretty much like humans and they're pretty much clever, lets assume that he is with Zira for her brains as well as looks. Therefore a pretty set of hair on their heads... arms... everywhere, while a good pointer, like with humans there are other things to take into account. Therefore, my point being, the amount of hair the Humanoid Apes have is slowly being eliminated.

Unflubber: Sophie Ball.

ESCAPE: during the interrogation scene, the lips of Kim Hunter's "real mouth" are briefly seen. Besides, when she's lying on her couch, you can see where the make-up appliance starts on her face.

Unflubbing: 1- Caesar's specific mouth-type is the result of a slightly-diverged genetic branch. It's actually a characteristic of his genome. The fact that also Zira presents this trait is somewhat of an added bonus. Hypothetically, when Zira is panicked or angry, she opens the mouth wide enough, you can see the "soft pulp" in her mouth. 2- She has a double chin. Quite a few primitive chimpanzees are the same from a young age (as young as 10). So it's not really anything to be worried about, as it can be related back to the "normal" chimpanzees of our universe.

Unflubbers: Tiziano Caliendo and Sophie Ball.

ESCAPE: Milo Jr. resembles a de-evoluted, conventional chimp, whenever Cornelius Jr. in BATTLE shows that an Humanoid Ape's infant version is way similar to the growed-up "adult".

Unflubbing: Cornelius Jr. is presumibly 8 years old, even if not stated anywhere. Milo Jr. is a newborn at the time depicted in ESCAPE. According to Ernst Haeckel's well-renowed 'Theory of Recapitulation' (first exposed in 1866), the development of the embryo of every species repeats the evolutionary development of that species fully. Or otherwise put: each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history. As Haeckel summed-up: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Thus, the Humanoid Apes phenotype is designed to present a variant of the 'Biogenetic Law', where the "physical reminiscences" are concentrated and stretched to the first month of life.

Technical tidbits:

Rory/Haristas: "The actor's union in Hollywood at the time wouldn't allow them to glue appliances and hair to a human baby. They couldn't have even put the makeup on the infant's skin. John Chambers said it wouldn't harm the infant, but the union wouldn't allow it, so they had to go with a real chimp".

Hotscheetz: "... but, they did allow them to put make-up on the baby chimp, to make it resemble the make-up of Cornelius and Zira more".

In memory of Rory Monteith a.k.a. Haristas.

CONQUEST: according to IMDB, the apes have human-shaped feet, while in the earlier movies they have ape-like feet.

Unflubbing: Humanoid Apes can wear boots.

Bruce: "In the first 3 films the Humanoid Apes do wear "Ape shoes" shaped like their feet with a toe sticking out on one side. Even thought the Sideshow Caesar (action figure) is wearing them, the apes in Conquest wear "deck shoes" the same color as their coveralls".

Tiziano Caliendo: "As a side note, 'ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW' (TV series episode) shows that the "Ape shoes" really work like slippers; in a sequence where Councillor Zaius is taken hostage by Virdon & Burke, the Orang wears his "slippers" (ape-shaped feet) indoors... then, the two astronauts let him change into his boots before they left to rescue Galen (all happens off-screen)".

CONQUEST: Frank presents a different colour of hands. They are sort of brown, opposite to each other gorilla's hands which are black.

Unflubbing: at the Ape Management Center of Century City, they tortured Humanoid Apes in order to tame them. Frank's hands were treated with some burning acid when he refused to perform a trick. The incident caused his hands to get a different colour, many months after the recovering.

Unflubber: Tiziano Caliendo.

CONQUEST: when Caesar, naked, gets in the cage with the Orangs, they have large flaps of skin on the sides of their faces, like our present-day primates do. In the next scene, when Roddy is dressed in standard green coveralls, there are two Orangs – one on either side of him – who are also dressed and getting processed. If we assume they are same ones that were with him in the cage (and even if they're not) the flaps of skin are missing! Where did they go?

Unflubbing: they belong to an Indonesian branch of Humanoid Orangs featuring a different facial trait, closer to the Primitive Apes (or Small Apes). The cheek-flaps can be considered like an ancestral character in the genome.

Patrick Tilton: "Between the time when Caesar sneaked into that cage and the moment when the guards led the chained Apes down into the Ape Management complex, there had to be a moment - a "scene" not included, and jumped-over with a "jump cut" - when the human guards shackled the wrists of the newly-arriving Apes so that they could lead them down that stairway into Ape Management in chains. I propose that after the truck bringing Caesar and those 3 Orangutans to the Management left the loading dock, it brought that last truckload to a holding pen where all the other Orangutans from the full shipment had been waiting. It wasn't until ALL of the shipment cages had arrived that they THEN chained up the apes and brought them down into Ape Management, their arrival being announced by the Announcer/Tannoy guy".

BATTLE: even if quicky re-edited, one of the edges of Roddy McDowall's "real mouth" is spotted during the "Fight like Apes!" scene.

Unflubbing: the Apes in POTA are humanoid, not the regular ones we are confortable with. They can speak; they walk up right and are basically human-like. They are even supposed to get a more "carnivorous"-oriented facial conformation, and that implies their teeth aren’t similar to those of monkeys or ordinary apes. Therefore, one could argue that Caesar's specific mouth-type is the result of a slightly-diverged genetic branch. By this, it is meant that the "soft pulp" of his dental apparatus is genetically designed to be more prominent in comparison with other Humanoid Apes. It's actually a characteristic of his genome. Hypothetically, when Caesar is panicked or angry, he opens the mouth wide enough that you can see the "soft pulp" in his mouth.

Sophie Ball: "In earlier versions of BATTLE they blurred where Roddy McDowell's mouth could be seen. This can be seen in the original version and TV viewings in the 80's in the UK. This is 'cause I first watched BATTLE on video from a recording my dad had taken off air. However VHS and DVD releases recently seem to have gone back and removed the blur and made the face appear darker around were his mouth used to be, to make it appear like the inside of an ape's mouth rather then Roddy's".