Third sequels three! Time travel films (#SFWApro)

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES (1971), which I mentioned earlier this week, has Cornelius and Zira (Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter)  escape the apocalypse of the previous film by rebuilding Taylor’s crashed space ship and retracing his path to the 20th century. They become celebrities but also trigger government fears that they’re the seed from which the future ruling race will spring. This is very much a role-reversal of the original film with the chimps in Charlton Heston’s situation (and a lot of emphasis that the apes don’t treat humans any worse than we treat them) and some racial subtext (the Germanic Eric Braeden insisting Our Race Must Remain In Control). As this was the first Ape film I ever saw, I’m pleased to say it holds up well, but it does have flaws—are we really supposed to believe nobody questions that Cornelius and Zira are ordinary, but well-trained chimps? And where Planet had man’s former dominion of Earth as the ultimate secret of ape civilization, here it’s presented as everyday knowledge. I like it anyway. “If it is man’s destiny one day to be dominated, please God let him be dominated by such as you.”

MEN IN BLACK 3 (2012) was surprisingly good given I didn’t care that much for II (and I figured this would be as flabby as Shrek Forever After). An alien psycho Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) once jailed breaks free from the MiB’s lunar prison and goes back in time to kill off Young K (Josh Brolin, doing an excellent Jones impersonation), thereby opening Earth to an alien invasion. J (Will Smith) heads back to stop him (by a rather hazardous time-travel method) and teams up with his partner’s one self. This was great fun, though the time-travel has one cheat: at a crucial moment J leaps back into his own body when all previous uses show it’s a physical time-transfer. With Emma Thompson as the new agency head. “Tell her that I’m filming this man eating a hamburger—it’s transcendant.”

By contrast, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III (1993) is a by-the-numbers sequel and not very good numbers as April (Paige Turco) gets flung back to medieval Japan, forcing the heroes on a half-shell to travel after her. This would have made an okay cartoon episode, but not a film, and lord they waste a lot of film time dancing. “How did you get in April’s pants?”