Script To Screen: “Planet of the Apes” (1968)

The famous ending of the original version of the movie Planet of the Apes, screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, based on a novel by Pierre Boulle.

Setup: Taylor has escaped on horseback with Nova.

Here is the final scene as written in the Michael Wilson draft from 1967.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

The script is similar, but different compared to the movie. The growing realization that what Taylor is seeing is the Statue of Liberty? That’s right there. But the dialogue is substantially changed. In the movie, Taylor says:

“My God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time… we finally, really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”

I don’t know the oral history, but it feels like a combination of a studio note and an actor’s notes. The studio for the first part — to make sure the audience got that, yes, this is Earth. The second part so Charlton Heston could go full-on dramatic with his lines.

Note, too, that the reveal is framed through Nova’s POV. After Taylor’s sides, the movie cuts to Nova who peers up and that’s when the Big Twist is revealed.

Now if you really want to blow your mind, here is the ending from an earlier draft dated December 23, 1964.

The eventual ending is much better. Less is more.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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