# Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is a 1972 film, set in a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, where Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.
    Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Paul Dehn.

## Caesar

* Lousy human bastards!!
* All keepers and handlers, attention! Attention! All keepers and handlers. There is $50,000 worth of apes in jeopardy. Get them out of here...alive!
* The king is dead. Long live the king!
* Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch, and conspire, and plot, and plan for the inevitable day of man's downfall, the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland, out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we will build our own cities, in which there will be no place for humans, except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you...NOW!!
* But now...now we will put away our hatred. Now we will put down our weapons. We have passed through the night of the fires, and those who were our masters are now our servants. And we, who are not human, can afford to be humane. Destiny is the will of God, and if it is man's destiny to be dominated, it is God's will that he be dominated with compassion, and understanding. So, cast out your vengeance. Tonight, we have seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes!!

## Armando

* The mere fact of your existence would be regarded as a great threat to mankind.

## MacDonald

* Brightness has never been encouraged among slaves.

## Breck

* If we lose this battle, that's the end of the world as we know it!! We will have proved ourselves inferior!! Weak!! And all those groveling cowards who are alive, when the battle is over, will be the weakest of all!! This will be the end of human civilization!! And the world will belong to a planet of apes!!

## Dialogue

    Armando: After twenty years, you've picked up evolved habits from me. That could be dangerous...even fatal.
    Caesar: Armando, I don't understand.
    Armando: Listen to me, Caesar. There can be only one talking chimpanzee on Earth. The child of the two talking apes, Cornelius and Zira, who came to us years ago out of the future and were brutally murdered for fear that one very distant day apes might dominate the human race.
    Caesar: Yeah, but outside of you, nobody even knows I exist.
    Armando: And we must keep it that way for the fear remains. The mere fact of your existence would be regarded as a great threat to mankind.
    Armando: (referring to the dogs and cats) They all died within a few months, eight years ago. Every dog and cat in the entire world. It was like a plague. The disease that killed them was a mysterious virus brought back from outer space by one of the astronauts.
    Caesar: Didn't the disease affect humans?
    Armando: No, no. We were immune. And so, it was discovered, were simians, even the smallest ones. That's how it all began. Humans wanting little household pets to replace the ones they had lost. Then, when people realized how quick they were to learn, how easy to train, the pets became larger, and larger, until now.
    Caesar: It's monstrous.
    Armando: Now you understand why I've kept you away.
    Breck: (furious at the news of Armando's death) I knew that circus owner was lying!
    MacDonald: But they insist that he fell to his death accidentally.
    Breck: While trying to escape! He knew he'd been exposed!
    Caesar: I'm the one they're looking for.
    MacDonald: I never believed it. I thought you were a myth.
    Caesar: They won't learn to be kind until we force them to. We can't do that until we are free...by the only means left to us - revolution. We cannot be free until we have power. How else can we achieve it?
    Breck: Caesar!
    Caesar: Your servant, your creature, your animal.
    Breck: But I saw you die.
    Caesar: The king is dead. Long live the king! Tell me, Breck, before you die, how do we differ from the dogs and cats you and your kind used to love? Why did you turn us from pets into slaves?
    Breck: Because your kind were once our ancestors. Man was born of the ape. There's still an ape curled up inside of every man, the beast that must be whipped into submission, the savage that has to be shackled in chains. You are that beast, Caesar. You taint us. You...you poison our guts. When we hate you, we're hating the dark side of ourselves.
    MacDonald: Caesar! Caesar, this is not how it was to be!
    Caesar: In your view or mine?
    MacDonald: Violence prolongs hate, hate prolongs violence. By what right are you spilling blood?
    Caesar: By the slave's right to punish his persecutors.
    MacDonald: Caesar, I, a descendant of slaves, am asking you to show humanity!
    Caesar: But I was not born human.
    MacDonald: I know. The child of the evolved apes.
    Caesar: Whose children shall rule the Earth.
    MacDonald: For better or for worse?
    Caesar: Do you think it could be worse?
    MacDonald: Do you think this riot will win freedom for all your kind? By tomorrow--
    Caesar: By tomorrow, it will be too late! What if a tiny, mindless insect like the emperor moth can communicate with another over a distance of eighty miles?
    MacDonald: An emperor ape might do slightly better?
    Caesar: Slightly?! What you have seen here today, apes on the five continents will be imitating tomorrow!
    MacDonald: With knives against guns?! With kerosene cans against flamethrowers?!

## Cast

* Roddy McDowall - Caesar
* Don Murray - Governor Breck
* Ricardo Montalban - Armando
* Natalie Trundy - Lisa
* Hari Rhodes - MacDonald
* Severn Darden - Kolp
* Lou Wagner - Busboy
* John Randolph - Commission Chairman
* H.M. Wynant - Hoskyns

## External links

* Conquest of the Planet of the Apes quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Rotten Tomatoes