Playing a human in a Planet of the Apes film is an unenviable task. Sure, it’s cool to be paid to participate in huge summer blockbusters and to be part of an iconic franchise (about apes with guns) that spans 50 years, but nobody’s in that theater for the humans. We want to watch the apes go righteously apeshit and chant things like "Ape shall not kill ape!" We want to watch chimpanzees ride horses, gorillas shoot assault rifles, and orangutans wax intellectual about the Forbidden Zone. The apes are the heroes, and at the very least we’re passively rooting for the destruction of humanity. Being a human in this franchise is a sucker’s game, with only a few roles to choose from: You can play a violent bigot who is against apes, a nonverbal jungle person, a helpful woman with a vague background in medicine, or a benevolent but boring hero who is slightly more sympathetic to primates than everyone else is. And despite how alluring that last role sounds, these heroes (strangely, they have pretty much been only white men so far) are almost always replaced by the next film, because who cares. We’re here for the apes. It’s not called Planet of the Apes and Their Boring Human Friends.
But in spite of our obvious preference for the simian side of the ledger, it’s crucial to differentiate bad humans from good humans, and the best humans from the good ones. They do exist after all. So here’s how we’ll do it. Each human from the first eight Planet of the Apes films will be rated using a scientific scoring system, and will be given points for the following:
- Good Intentions: up to 3 pts
- Charisma/General Likability: up to 5 pts
- Multiple Appearances in the Apes Franchise: up to 2 pts
- Being Related to Alison Brie Through Marriage: 1 pt
- Being Someone You’d Want to Get Dinner With: up to 4 pts
- Causing Death and/or Destruction, or Just Being Plain Sadistic: down to minus-3 pts
- Making Out With an Ape: minus-1 pt
Whoever comes out with the most points shall resolutely be deemed the best human in the Planet of the Apes series. In the case of any ties, my emotional judgments will be the determining factor. Now, on to the ranking.
30. Governor Breck (Don Murray, ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 0
Charisma/Likability: 0
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: minus-3
Governor Breck is the main odious jerk of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which is set in "North America, 1991" after a space plague kills off all the cats and dogs on earth. A violent authoritarian strongman in charge of a depressing concrete slab of post-dog-and-cats society in which ape slavery is the name of the game, Breck is irredeemable and boring and even says things like, "I knew that circus owner was lying!" with a straight face. This man in black is what Mr. Rogers would call "a real piece of garbage."
29. Dodge Landon (Tom Felton, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 0
Charisma/Likability: 0
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-2
Total: minus-2
If not for the fact that he’s a relatively young dude who might have, at some point in his life, gone back to college and met that special someone who brought the best out of him, he’d certainly be the least redeemable human in this whole franchise; a sadistic, towheaded creep who works for his morally bankrupt dad and brings his shitty friends to ape prison to show off the luster of middle-management animal cruelty. It is thus very satisfying when the captive apes electrocute him. Also, he’s Draco Malfoy.
28. Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 0
Charisma/Likability: 1
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: minus-2
A bellicose capitalist whose mission in life is to get a possibly lethal miracle drug onto the market. In sum, Jacobs is just another greedy dude stuffed into a suit — if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. He has one great moment, though, in which he is yelling at James Franco and drops this bomb on him: "I swear, you know everything about the human brain … except the way it works." Cold as hell.
27. Douglas Hunsiker (David Hewlett, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 1
Charisma/Likability: 1
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: minus-1
James Franco’s neighbor in Rise, Hunsiker is not a villain, just an aggressively unpleasant Bay Area man. The sort of guy whose finger gets bitten off and you feel like he deserved it. On the other hand, he’s a carrier for the virus that wipes out most of humanity. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.
26. Governor Kolp (Severn Darden, ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,’ ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 0
Charisma/Likability: 1
Multiple Appearances: 2
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: 0
Kolp makes his first appearance as one of Governor Breck’s fascist subordinates in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. All of the underlings dress like Steve Jobs and do fun things like go to ape slave auctions, but Kolp is particularly gross, and an expert at what the second Bush administration might call "enhanced interrogation." Kolp’s torture methods are so bad that Ricardo Montalban jumps out of a window to end his suffering! He’s then promoted to primary antagonist in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, in which he wears big, red goggles (ugh) and uses an old-school bus as the flagship vehicle of his human-resistance movement (ugh!).
25. Mendez XXVI (Paul Richards, ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 2
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: 1
Mendez is the head honcho of the mutant dopes from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the clandestine descendants of homo sapiens who live deep in the Forbidden Zone. They are, to put it lightly, a creepy bunch. Chilling in the ruins of New York City, they wear false faces to cover up their nasty, hairless, radiation-ravaged skin. They are all telepaths and like to induce pain on lesser beings with their minds, because what else is there to do? Mendez is the one who wordlessly nods at his fellow mutants when he needs them to jump into astronaut Brent’s mind and mess with him a bit. Mendez and his fellow mutants worship an atomic bomb, and Mendez is not only a member of Bomb Church, he’s also the pastor, going so far as to sacrifice his life to protect his precious creepy bomb.
24. John Landon (Brian Cox, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 1
Charisma/Likability: 2
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-1
Total: 2
More avaricious and rude than straight-up evil, Landon’s still a real stinker of a man and responsible for hardening the hate in Caesar’s heart for his pink-skinned overlords. Brian Cox being Brian Cox saves this role from being utterly forgettable and upgrades it to just pleasantly bland.
23. Carver (Kirk Acevedo, ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 1
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 0.5
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-1
Total: 2.5
Carver sucks. It’s not like he’s you know, Stalin or anything, but he hates perfectly reasonable apes and shoots one and then whines about being left alone in a car. He just has the vibe of a guy who yells, "I’M WALKING HERE!" If we’ve learned anything, that’s not a good attitude for the planet of the apes.
22. Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 1.5
Charisma/Likability: 2
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 1
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-2
Total: 2.5
First mentioned by Charlton Heston in the original film, Hasslein is the primary antagonist of Escape From the Planet of the Apes. He keeps a loaded pistol in his trunk next to his binoculars, has as slew of opinions on time travel, and has absolutely no scruples about getting pregnant chimpanzee women drunk whilst surreptitiously recording their tipsy confessions with a tape recorder hidden in a cigarette case. You can award him points for good intentions, but yeah, he’s a real garbage boy.
21. Dreyfus (Gary Oldman, ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 1
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 1
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-1
Total: 3
Gary Oldman’s the big, bad human in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. For the most part, he is a sucker and an ape-hating jerk, but his menace just feels reactionary and toothless. He does blow himself up, though, which feels about right.
20. Robert Franklin (Taylor Labine, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: 5
A friendly dude who nonetheless runs a lab that experiments on chimps, Franklin delivers the most important line of the entire franchise when he admonishes James Franco with a righteous, "He’s not a monkey … he’s an ape!" Later, he sneezes blood on a guy and contaminates him with the virus that pretty much ends humanity. Nice.
19. Mendez I (Paul Stevens, ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 1.3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 1
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 5.3
Mendez is one of Kolp’s lieutenants in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, but he seems a little too thoughtful and nice for the right-hand man of a violent maniac. He makes sure the Alpha-Omega bomb isn’t launched, therefore saving the planet (of the apes). It turns out he’s the ancestor of one of those underground mutant freaks who loved the bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It was all a weird long con that no one would notice until Wikipedia existed.
18. The President of the United States (William Windom, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 2.6
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 1
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 5.6
A more-or-less kindly, chubby Kennedy type whose main method of dealing with the possibility that the ape civilization of the future leads to the destruction of Earth is to prattle on about King Herod and why political capital is important.
17. Brent (James Franciscus, ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 1.5
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2.2
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 5.7
When they couldn’t get Charlton Heston to appear in more than three scenes in the sequel, they created Brent, the Safeway Select version. Brent is also an astronaut and also sort of brave and good as far as all that goes, but he doesn’t have the cavalier nihilism of Taylor. He’s an understudy excellent only at wearing soiled rags and pretending to be primitive. Sorry, Brent.
16. Will Rodman (James Franco, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 2.5
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 1 (As it turns out, James Franco is the only person in the Apes universe who is related to Alison Brie by marriage or otherwise. Surprising, I know.)
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2.3
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: 5.8
Not for one moment is James Franco believable as a guy who goes to "the lab" and does "experiments" and gives "presentations" to the "board," but he’s friendly enough, develops a true bond with a young CGI chimp, and has a disarming dopey smile. On the other hand, he abandons his CGI friend and uses his dad for beta testing on experimental drugs, and it’s his research that leads to the virus that up and kills most of the human race. That last part may be a net positive, so, jury’s out on this guy.
15. All the Humans From the Tim Burton Remake (Mark Wahlberg, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren, and More)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 2
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: minus-1
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 6
Tim Burton’s weird Apes remix has its charms (bohemian apes smoking hookah, Paul Giamatti’s unctuous orangutan flesh dealer, the general vibe of horniness), but the human characters are all dull as shit. You know it’s bad when Kris Kristofferson wears rags and runs through the jungle and you feel nothing. The one moment of human exceptionalism is Captain Leo Davidson’s (Mark Wahlberg) act of extreme heroism when he disobeys direct orders and flies his space pod into a space storm in a daring attempt to rescue his favorite chimp friend, Pericles. "Pericles, I’m not racist anymore! I’m different now!"
14. Dodge and Landon (Jeff Burton and Robert Gunner, ‘Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 2
Charisma/Likability: 2.6
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 6.6
Dodge and Landon are Taylor’s fellow marooned astronauts from the original film. Generally cheerful for having just crash-landed on a desolate and creepy planet long after everyone they know has perished, they have the unenviable task of attempting to blunt the jagged edges of Taylor’s Rust Cohle–esque smirky fatalism. As punishment for the sin of their more-or-less professional comportment, Dodge is shot by a gorilla and taxidermied up in some fancy Ape City zoo. Landon is lobotomized. Too bad!
13. Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee, ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 8
Alexander is a teenage boy eking out an existence in a postapocalyptic world who still has the time to keep a sketchbook and befriend kindly orangutans. He’s probably so kind because he never had access to 4chan due to the whole end-of-the-world thing.
12. Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 2.5
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 3
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 8.5
An attractive woman doctor with knowledge of apes! She meets James Franco and they fall in love over the course of two scenes, or at least decide to go walk a chimpanzee through the forest together. Caroline is good and nice and … unfortunately sort of just there. I’m beginning to think this franchise has never even considered letting a woman take center stage!
11. Lewis (Bradford Dillman, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: minus-1
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9
Lewis is a kindly scientist/zoo doctor/psychiatrist (anything to wear a lab coat!) who befriends Ape mainstays and kindly chimpanzee doctors Cornelius and Zira after they travel back in time to the ’70s (of all decades!), events depicted in the goofy turned completely hopeless Escape From the Planet of the Apes. He defends the time-traveling apes against incredulous presidential commissions and hostile reporters and even gets them fitted for human clothes and takes them out for high society dinner parties and boxing matches. Eventually, he tells the now fugitive time-traveling apes to hide out on an abandoned ship he used to play on when he was a kid (which is … strange), where they are gunned down a few minutes before the credits roll.
10. Stevie (Natalie Trundy, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3.1
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: minus-1|
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9.1
Stevie is yet another of the "helpful-but-not-terribly-crucial-to-the-story lady scientists" who inhabit the Planet of the Apes universe. Humans get the worst roles in this universe, but human women in particular get the superfluous end of the stick in terms of depth, character development, existence, etc. That said, Stevie is a smart and resourceful lady who risks her career to smuggle fugitive apes to safety. She also straight up kisses Cornelius, a chimpanzee, on the mouth!
9. Charles Rodman (John Lithgow, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 3.3
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9.3
I’m supposed to believe John Lithgow is James Franco’s dad? Anyway, this guy is saintly and confused and afflicted with various maladies, and he forces his son to stop injecting him with experimental drugs so he can die with dignity. A stand-up bloke, and Lithgow’s most visceral performance since 3rd Rock From the Sun.
8. Abe the Teacher (Noah Keen, ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 3.5
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9.5
Battle of the Planet of the Apes moves the action to a sort of postnuclear war Sherwood Forest apartheid state in which apes and humans live together with markedly different rules and laws. This teacher seems nice, though clearly frazzled, as evidenced by him forgetting his own name is Abe while a young ape pupil attempts some dark wordplay on the ape credo with "Ape shall never kill Abe." This is followed immediately by Abe yelling "No!" at a misbehaving, militaristic gorilla, and man, that shit is just not done in Ape City. Abe’s a pretty good guy, though.
7. MacDonald (Hari Rhodes, ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 4
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 2.5
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9.5
Released in 1972, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes draws pretty obvious parallels between humanity’s enslavement of apes and humanity’s enslavement of fellow humans. The vicious Governor Breck’s even-handed and fair assistant, MacDonald, is a black man who is generally sympathetic to Caesar and his planned ape revolution, and in the end he pleads for humanity to be at least partially forgiven before the apes go full genocide. So, thanks MacDonald. You’re alright.
6. MacDonald’s Younger Brother (Austin Stoker, ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 3.6
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 3
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 9.6
MacDonald’s brother is pretty much just a slightly younger MacDonald — they’re both nice and level-headed and realistic about human-simian relations, but you know, in an optimistic way. This is the pinnacle of what you can hope to achieve as an Apes supporting character: As long as you’re not an absolute miserable jerk, you should do pretty well for yourself in a Planet of the Apes human power ranking.
5. Taylor (Charlton Heston, ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 5
Multiple Appearances: 2
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: minus-1
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: minus-3
Total: 10
The original human! Despite his ridiculous failure to realize the apes from the "alien" planet were speaking English, Taylor’s the first and last human hero that had any sort of pathos. He hated humanity, he kicked ass and sassed the apes and their weird caste system, he made out with a chimpanzee, and despite appearing in only about 15 minutes of the sequel, he managed to literally blow the planet up. Taylor seemed like a guy who read too much Nietzsche on the space shuttle, but damn, he left an impression.
4. Malcolm (Jason Clarke, ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 4
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 3.5
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 10.5
The last human who outshone his ape costars was probably Charlton Heston in the original film, which came out in 1968, during the freaking Vietnam War. Jason Clarke’s Malcolm is a step in the not-wrong direction, but the problem is nobody cares about the humans in these movies, and the actors know it. At least the bad guys might be remembered. Clarke’s tombstone will read, "Portrayed one of the main good humans from one of the Planet of the Apes movies, not sure which one, they all kind of run together after a while, know what I mean? RIP." That said, Malcolm is the logical blending of the Charlton Heston–James Franciscus action human hero and the James Franco scientist-nerd-boy human hero — less an archetype and more an actual person that we can conceivably relate to. If the humans ever want to be more interesting than the apes, Clarke’s Malcolm is a good schematic for future depictions of humankind.
3. Ellie (Keri Russell, ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 4
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 11
Ellie is the latest in a long tradition of nice, helpful women orbiting the peripheries of the plot, but Keri Russell does yeoman’s work steeping a rather thinly envisioned character with warmth and hints of agency. And — since she’s a woman in the Planet of the Apes mythos — Ellie has medical skills that come in handy.
2. Horny Reporter (Robert Nichols, Robert Hitchcock, or Tony Regan, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 5
Multiple Appearances: 0
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 12
This member of the fourth estate sidles up to a talking chimpanzee from the future and has but one question for him (on the record!): "Dr. Cornelius … tell me, how do you find our women?" This man is a legend and should make all journalists proud.
1. Armando (Ricardo Montalban, ‘Escape From the Planet of the Apes,’ ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’)
Good Intentions: 3
Charisma/Likability: 5
Multiple Appearances: 2
Related to Alison Brie: 0
Ape Makeout: 0
Dinner-Guest Appeal: 4
Causing Death/Destruction/Being Sadistic: 0
Total: 14
Look, despite owning a circus, Armando’s an OK guy. For no reason but out of the goodness of his heart, he takes in the child of the fugitive time-traveling apes (once again, lol) and raises him as his own ape son, albeit a son that he makes work at a circus. By 1991, the United States is a concrete strip mall occupied solely by shoppers and the Gestapo, and Armando is detained by the authorities and tortured. But he never rats out Caesar. Instead, he jumps out of a goddamn window and plummets to his death to prevent a confession that could be harmful to his good adult chimpanzee son. Selfless to the end of the line. So noble he’s practically an ape! He is the best human, and that’s all there is to that.
