The original Planet of the Apes movie was a film that launched four sequels, a television series and even an animated show. The movie begins with four astronauts traveling in space. They crash land on a planet many centuries in the future. George Taylor, as played by Charlton Heston leads the group into this strange world.
Taylor notices how similar the planet is to Earth. It supports life and appears a bountiful garden full of life. It becomes evident that the planet is ruled by apes. Non-human primates run everything. Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Orangutans can speak and walk upright. Human beings are treated like cattle. Gorilla soldiers use humans for target practice and round up those they don't shoot to be put in hut-like prisons. Taylor is seen as a threat by the council of Ape City. Lawgiver Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), an orangutan knows full well the history of man's former dominance but defends and furthers the lie that apes have always been dominant over man.
All of Taylor's companions are lost except for his new found primitive female mate Nova (Linda Harrison); only with the help of chimpanzee doctors is Taylor able to escape his captors. As the movie ends, Taylor learns something startling. In the horizon by the shoreline he sees the head of the Statue of Liberty. It becomes apparent that his travels in space led him back to Earth and in fact this planet was his home. He deduces that nuclear war ruined the planet and allowed the apes to take control.
Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) is an archaelogist who has explored the Forbidden Zone of the Ape World. There, he has found evidence of a culture much older than any ape culture known to exist. Orangutan, Dr. Zaius, condemns his research as heresy although Zaius knows that Cornelius has stumbled onto artifacts from man's previous dominant culture on the planet before the ascendency of the apes. Cornelius theorizes that his artifact discoveries prove a higher culture existed before the current ape one. A missing link perhaps half-way between man and apes led up to the creation of modern day apes. His theory that ape's evolved from men is ridiculed by Dr. Zaius and other religious officials as heresy. When Taylor, a talking human arrives on the scene, his wife, Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) convinces him that they have to help him escape ape authorities. Cornelius becomes the reluctant hero.