Planet of the Apes
“Get your paws off me, you damned dirty apes!”
In the year 3978, astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) and his crew crash-land on a desolate, hostile planet where intelligent apes rule and humans are kept as primitive animals. Upon landing, the crew is hunted down, captured, caged, and collared by ape soldiers, treated no differently than wild beasts. After escaping with help from sympathetic chimpanzee scientists Zira and Cornelius, Taylor discovers that he wasn’t as far from home as he previously thought. The film ends on a lonely coastline with one of cinema’s most famous images: the half-buried Statue of Liberty. The planet is Earth, destroyed by a nuclear holocaust of humanity’s own making.
Planet of the Apes (1968) is a powerful entry point for exploring the Anthropocene, the geological era defined by human impact on Earth’s ecosystem and the long-term consequences of human exceptionalism, the belief that humanity stands apart from and above the natural world. Although the film was written as a Cold War parable about nuclear environmental collapse and civilization’s fragility, teachers can use it to invite students to draw parallels between scenes in the film and what we see today in our world.
One of the film’s most teachable moments is its introspection on speciesism: by literally placing humans in cages and collars, the same conditions in which humans confine animals, the film challenges the logic that one species has inherent moral superiority justifying its domination of others. Students who might wince at Taylor being collared and caged are invited to consider what it feels like to be on the other side of the human/animal divide. This opens the door to conversations about habitat destruction, animal rights, and what animals need to survive and thrive by revealing humans as one species among many, but capable of tremendous harm.
Dr. Zaius, the apes’ Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, adds another dimension, functioning as a study in climate denialism. He is not ignorant; he knows the truth about humanity’s history, but he actively suppresses scientific evidence to preserve social stability and religious authority. The film can thus provoke students to think about who benefits from keeping the public in the dark about existential threats, and what it costs a society to prioritize comfort over truth. The visual language of the film deepens these themes. The Forbidden Zone, with cracked earth, dead silence, and an absence of living creatures, offers a haunting image of desertification.
The final image of Taylor on his knees before the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, understanding too late what has been lost, offers one of cinema’s great gut-punches and most teachable moments. It challenges students to view the legacy of humankind through the lens of deep time. The film is an invitation to think about legacy, extinction, and the kind of tragedy that comes from a civilization smart enough to build wonders and careless enough to destroy everything else in the process.
©2026 ClimateLit (Ahmed Bootaan)
Publisher: 20th Century Fox, 1968
Audience: Ages 14+
ISBN: N/A
Pages: 112 minutes
Format: Films
Topics: Animal Rights, Anthropocene, Climate Change Denial, Deep Time, Human Exceptionalism, Speciesism


