Warning: this editorial contains spoilers for Rise of the Planet of the Apes (and, for that matter, the original Planet of the Apes). Consider yourself warned, you maniacs! The original Planet of the Apes lends itself quite readily to allegory. 1968, the year of the film’s release, was the peak of one of the most tumultuous eras in American social history. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in April of that year, and Robert F. Kennedy’s death followed a mere two months later. Student resistance and campus demonstrations grew increasingly violent in their opposition to the Vietnam War, the Chicago DNC broke into an all-out war, and racial discord mounted. Of course, none of this had happened yet when Planet of the Apes went into production, but the intersections of intent and circumstance that permit the film to be read so heavily, so variously, and so often in allegorical terms enrich the original film and its sequels with resonance that outlives whatever else may date it. Beyond entertainment value, the Planet of the Apes series has lingered in the popular imagination not because of any strong connection to a specific associative meaning, but because of the many possible allegorical readings it is capable of containing. One of several reasons that Rise of the Planet of the Apes succeeds where previous reincarnations of the series did not is its reclaimed capacity for allegory.

About a week or so ago, it was announced that the last remaining member of the Kennedy family serving in Congress, Patrick Kennedy, would not be running for re-election in the coming election. And for the first time in decades, there will not be a Kennedy in Congress. But the Kennedy legacy, as you might imagine, isn’t going anywhere. Mike Fleming at Deadline is reporting that Matt Damon is now attached to a biopic of Robert F. Kennedy.

Thurston Clarke wrote a book about Robert Kennedy’s ill fated presidential run in “The Last Campaign”. The book received great reviews and now is poised to become a film, with director Chris Columbus now attached to the project.