Dr. Hasslein the real hero of this movie
He sacrificed his life to save humanity from those damn dirty apes.
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I think the protagonists are damn dirty apes only if Hasslein allowed himself to be scared of them!
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MovieChat Forums > Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) Discussion > Dr. Hasslein the real hero of this movie
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He was, but he should have factored in his actions to destroy the baby might have caused issues, where if he had just had the baby neutered during a physical exam, man still would have remained in charge of the planet, unless of course, we destroyed ourselves.
shareHeroes and villains are inverted a lot in these movies, I mean at the end of the previous one there's a relatively minor skirmish going on and Taylor and I-Can't-Believe-It-Isn't-Taylor decide the best response is to destroy the entire world. "I believe in peace so much I'm going to kill everybody!" Yikes. Taylor becomes the ultimate suicide bomber.
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Reason is a pursuit, not a conclusion.
In "Beneath", Taylor also comes full circle as a character, returning to the spiteful misanthropic Taylor of the beginning of the first film. The bad apes pursue him, the bad mutants imprison him, and bad warfare kills Nova, and Taylor's inherent contempt resurfaces and he has no problem in destroying the planet and its bad apes, bad mutants and bad wars. He went to the stars looking for something better than man only to find more of the same old garbage - only this time he lost the only thing he ever cared for.
shareDr Hasslein died trying to save Earth. A REAL American Hero!
shareHe was a cock!
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Dr. Hasslein made for a great movie villain, much MUCH better than the hammy Governor Breck in Conquest. Hasslein was cold and calculating, willing to do whatever it took to accomplish his goals. The thing is that we are allowed to understand what drives Hasslein. He truly sees the apes as a threat to humanity and will do anything to prevent the future that they have described. This makes for the best villains of all, as we actually can understand and maybe even agree with them even though we don't want them to succeed.
But as far as calling him an American hero...no. A paranoid fear-monger? Yes. All he really managed to do was to set into motion the mistrust and hatred between apes and humans that would end up spelling doom for the humans. The future may have been very different had the apes been allowed to co-exist with the humans without treating them as threats. I think Hasslein's actions inadvertently resulted in the way apes were treated in Conquest, as slaves that had to be whipped into submission to ensure they never revolted.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
Well, Breck may well have been over the top and hammy, but check out (Nazi) Hasslein's accent. He's obviously German (probably a scientist taken to America after WW2). How cartoonish is that? A stereotypical Hollywood bad guy with a foreign accent.
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Thank you.
shareThanks ingke86. It's weird, but the Planet of the Apes series does indeed cause me to place a lot of thought into the hows and whys of various things. I don't usually feel the need to try and make connections or form explanations for the shortcomings of the writers, but for some odd reason I am willing to do so for these films. They are just so layered and worthy of thought! I think Dr. Hasslein may well be my favorite villain of the film series, simply because of the fact that his motives make sense from a logical standpoint, even though we don't want him to succeed. He isn't a bad person, per se, but rather the one man who has a clear picture of what he must do in order to preserve humanity's dominance in the world...no matter what it takes.
I also like the fact that Armando, the circus owner who takes the apes in, seems to be the yin to Hasslein's yang. Armando is more than willing to accept a future where apes are the dominant species and that man has no control over what will be in the grand scheme of things. Armando accepts the idea easily, where as the very thought scares Hasslein. Otto thinks that he can control or manipulate the future, whereas Armando thinks that whatever is ordained to happen will indeed happen. As it turns out, Armando is right. No matter what time line one follows, it seems that they will all pursue a similar path even if the details along the way are different.
Even though Battle For the Planet of the Apes shows peace winning out and Caesar and his tribe prevailing, I would still say that this alternate timeline will eventually end in the same fashion that the other one did...with the detonation of the Alpha-Omega bomb. Again, different details and incidents along the way, but the same basic structure of the flow of time reveals itself when one takes a step back to "observe the artists who is painting the picture, who again takes a step back to observe the artists painting a picture of the artist painting a picture." I think that is why the statue of Caesar seen in the future is shedding a tear. Of course, that can be interpreted different ways, but that is my thoughts on the matter.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
Excellent analysis.
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I'm a bit surprised there are so many who think Hasslein is the hero.
He is the classic example of scared human who kills because of fear or ignorance. Now, he was not really ignorant, he was just scared. Scared that other people, like him acting on fear or ignorance, would piss the apes off and start the whole war.
There is a chance that both species could have lived in peace together, but of course on Earth there can only be one ruler, Man, so everybody else either has to die or be locked up.
The heroes are Cornelius and Zira, who meant no harm, ever, once they discovered Taylor's species.
As for Earth ending, is it really up for debate? Look at where we're going. Sooner or later some idiot country leader is going to use mass destruction weapons on such a scale that he will not be able to contain it.
Am I the only one who things that a future like Planet Of The Apes (not particularly the apes part) is not such an absurd reality?
He didn´t sacrafice his life. He wanted to kill (rather) innocent beings for fear of what might MIGHT happen in hundreds and thousands of years. His dead was not part of his plan - just the way it turned out. A ruthless man without ethic values that are preached to be so human and define the worth of mankind.
I mean hey, they could just have concluded to destroy all nuclear weapons and the respective plans - but no, Americans in action. Old story repeated again.
Good point. Hasslein wasn't trying to sacrifice himself. But if you go back to the scene in the President's office he doesn't see Cornelius and Zira as innocent. He believes that they lied to the Commission. He also believes that if they and their baby survives it will lead to the destruction of the earth by apes.
Also in that scene he wonders of he is God's enemy or his instrument. By the end of the film it seems pretty clear that the sees himself as God's instrument.
Oh, they lied to a commission. A warrant for death penalty?
Again, the bomb was made by the humans - exactly this weapon was already made and belonging to the US. And it was activated by humans. Like they said it´s like murdering Hitler as a child (which I can fully understand and, thanks to hindsight, more or less support) or even killing his ancestors (which is nearer to the situation in the movie and completely *beep* Ethic values. Means you can´t just kill all Austrians in the medieval age because one of those will become a great idiot several hundred years later.
And instrument of god, please. No one doing harm to others can be an instrument to the god he means. Lame excuse - see crusades. God as cover for own power. History repeated itself like so often.
The bomb was made by man, correct. But your definition is like blaming the person who invented the gun for all gun related incidents. As far as the (good) doctor is concerned the Apes have lied, so what else are they not telling about. Perhaps the (Attempted) genocide of the human race. We as viewers are in a position to know that Cornelius and Zira are good Apes, the doctor is not and sees them as a threat to all mankind. Funnily enough (even though I think of him as a prick) he was right.
How does the man who drives the Snowplough get to work?
And instrument of god, please. No one doing harm to others can be an instrument to the god he means. Lame excuse - see crusades. God as cover for own power. History repeated itself like so often. >>> Yes, and instrument of God. That is what Hasslein says in the film and it is what he is really thinking. He is in the unique position of knowing more about the situation than any other person...or at least that is how he sees it. It is easy to go there since humans have this irritating capacity for figuring something out in their own minds and then galvanizing it out of a need to be right and therefore rejecting anything else to the contrary. We as a species have a tendency to box ourselves in and cut ourselves off from any other possibilities. He has logically looked at all of the evidence and has come to a conclusion.
As a man of faith, it would be easy to see this as a test put before him by God. Why not when said belief is filled with stories where God does indeed do these things, working his wonders through the hands of his servants. Religion has man as the center of the universe, made in God's image. That alone would lead some believers to be against the intelligent apes and worry about their threatening Mans domination. I don't see why you take issue with this. It isn't an issue of what you believe, but a story about the human mind and what the character believes. Hasslein was right in a way and was willing to do the dirty work required, but as I said earlier in the thread, he was also guilty of thinking he had the final answer and thinking that there was no other way to avoid this. Who knows what the result of befriending Zira and Cornelius could have been, but that possibility never crossed his mind because he had already "figured it out" and his logic was not open to interpretation. People act like this all of the time, every day.
I love Hasslein as a villain because he isn't evil. We get inside his mind and understand his motivation, even if we do not agree with it.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
Excellent points!
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Arnando turning out to be a heroic character is amusing, considering he's played by Khan Noonien Singh!
shareOf course, Hasslein feels like the natural villain in this story... but actually, he is somewhat sympathetic as well, in that he means well to try and save the human race. And Armando seems to love animals ahead of people..
Either way, this is part of the reason why I love these Apes movies and know that there is so much more to them than just "silly kiddie movies"... a lot of social commentary, essays on prejudices, and so forth. These sequels are all so much more interesting, adult, and meaningful than their unknowing detractors ever give them credit for.
Number of reasons made me come to the point where I am watching the Planet of the Apes franchise. Being a sci-fi enthusiast, never saw (or at least remembered) anything more but the very end of the 1968 flick, Dawn... hitting the theatres and the possibillity of watching them all in 1080p made it impossible not to start this series.
Where I thought the original was very intelligent in having the apes do what humans have done for years (decades, maybe even centuries), making them the villains so to speak, while in fact being a mirror.
'Beneath' was looking for a continuation on that story, and in the end, to me, Man was the greater villain again.
Now this one, again, shows Man as the uncomprimising species. It is as the President said in this movie: Are we allowed to make life or death decisions now, to prevent a future that MAY happen in 2000 years? And Hasslein decided on that.
Anywway, on to the next one..!
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