Headscratchers / Beneath the Planet of the Apes

• Why was there a rescue mission in the first place? In the first movie, Taylor’s narration makes it clear they will never return to Earth by design, so why is Brent on a rescue mission? And how could Earth possibly know they needed help in the first place? Not to mention Taylor's expedition intended to go to a different planet, not Earth in the future, so how would they even know where to look?
  • In the novel "Death of the Planet of the Apes," Earth received a Ominous Message from the Future coming from Taylor's mission precise trajectory and they wanted to know if time travel was possible, so they sent Brent to see if they could find its source.
    • Fairly flimsy in that they knew about time dilation beforehand, as revealed by Taylor. But as a retcon? At least they tried, but it still doesn’t make sense, especially adding in info from Brent.
  • While it doesn't address the former points, the point around them going to a different planet was specifically addressed. The film specifically mentions that they followed Taylor's trajectory and whatever happened to Taylor must have happened to them. The fact that they believed Taylor's trajectory would lead to another planet (as Taylor must have originally) whereas in fact it led back to Earth, doesn't change anything. They simply had to follow the trajectory and look wherever it ended to find Taylor there.
• The mutant humans. How'd they manage to survive all that time living with radiation? We did see what it did to their skin, but we also know that radiation causes thyroid cancer, sterility, birth defects...seems to me they're lucky not to have died out after a few generations.
  • In the novelization for War for the Planet of the Apes, it mentions that they take pills that ward off the worst of radiation, but have their own side-effects - like insanity.
• Taylor blows the whole planet up, due at least in part to the apes and the mutated men. But he's only seen a small portion of the planet! How does he know the rest of the world is like the area around what used to be New York City? (Bear in mind I'm bugged by the film; the original book establishes very well that the entire world is a planet of apes, not just a small area.)
  • He was dying. It was his last act of defiance to Dr. Zaius.
    • Charlton Heston has said that Taylor was merely reaching for Zaius and his dying hand fell on the trigger by coincidence. It's supposed to be ambiguous, but given Taylor's apparent death wish following Nova's death, it can seem like he did it on purpose. Either way, the filmmakers' message that an endless cycle of war will lead to mankind's destruction is proven right whether we deliberately wipe ourselves out or do so inadvertently.
  • Also remember, Nova had just been killed by an ape, so what's the point?
    • So Zira or the other apes who helped him in the first film didn't mean anything?
  • Remember, The Wild Bunch had just come out the previous year. Ending the movie with a badass but ultimately pointless bloodbath was a recurring theme during that period in film.
  • How did Taylor and Brent know the bomb would destroy the world? It is clear they left Earth in the 1970's, a time when humanity clearly did not have the technology to build bombs that could destroy a whole planet, and as such would not recognize a bomb that could.
    • Brent says that it was "above his paygrade" to know about such a bomb, but not above Taylor's. So Taylor heard about such a bomb in development.
    • The bomb would still wipe out an important part of humanity's remnants, as well as the local ape civilization. As it's implied that the world is already seriously messed up from previous wars, this definitely insures things would go From Bad to Worse.
    • Actually, one of the properties of a thermonuclear weapon is that you can build one of arbitrarily large size with enough materials. Lithium deuteride and depleted uranium are completely stable unless and until they are exposed to the conditions of a nuclear explosion: 100 million degree temperatures combined with an enormous neutron flux. Once you trigger the secondary by detonating the pure fission device in the primary, the secondary will continue to burn until it either runs out of fuel or the pressure blows it apart. Tsar Bomba was built at over 50 megatons, and Tsar Bomba Class nuclear weapons can go as high as 100 megatons. If we can build a 100 megaton bomb, we can build a bomb of any size given enough material.
    • Humanity didn't (and still doesn't) have the technology to build functioning cryogenic chambers or spacecraft capable of relativistic speeds either, yet Taylor (and Brent, and later Burke and Virdon) began their missions in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The Apes universe appears to be an alternate timeline with more advanced technology, so who's to say what their weapons technology is or isn't capable of?
• Did it ever occur to the mutant humans living in the ruins of New York that instead of trying to scare the invading army away with horrific illusions, they could have just used their powers to hide their city behind an illusion? Just make New York look like an uncrossable chasm and they'd match around it! Or just more desert? Or if that's too much work, they could have at least used illusions to 'erase' the entrances to their underground lair so the apes would be searching and finding only blank walls in an empty city forever until they left. Also none of the mutants decided to use their powers to defend themselves even when attacked? I imagine they could have just skipped illusion and caused the apes to turn on each other, or just flail on the ground in agony, like they did to Brent.
  • They do state the Apes are resistant to their mental attacks, so trying to make the soldiers turn on each other in the heat of battle probably wasn't a viable option. Though admittedly, the plot-point is a little nebulous.