Focus Features

“If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it,” presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in his June, 2007 Republican debate dismissal of evolution, but on February 8, 1968, it was the primates who dissed us when Planet of the Apes opened in theaters. It told the story of three astronauts who land on a planet populated by intelligent apes and where humans are considered the animals. One of the most popular science fiction films of all time, and spawning a 2001 remake by Tim Burton, Planet of the Apes delivered its biggest kick in the final minutes when it radically recast our conventional notions of evolution. The astronauts learn that rather humans descending from the primates that man’s warlike ways have caused his own de-evolution. When they stumble on a ruined Statue of Liberty, they realize that they are actually back on a future Earth and that apes are now the superior creatures.

“If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it,” presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in his June, 2007 Republican debate dismissal of evolution, but on February 8, 1968, it was the primates who dissed us when Planet of the Apes opened in theaters. It told the story of three astronauts who land on a planet populated by intelligent apes and where humans are considered the animals. One of the most popular science fiction films of all time, and spawning a 2001 remake by Tim Burton, Planet of the Apes delivered its biggest kick in the final minutes when it radically recast our conventional notions of evolution. The astronauts learn that rather humans descending from the primates that man’s warlike ways have caused his own de-evolution. When they stumble on a ruined Statue of Liberty, they realize that they are actually back on a future Earth and that apes are now the superior creatures.