Shot in Century City: 'Conquest of the Planet of the Apes'

Friday, the Marvel superhero movie Thor officially launched the summer 2011 popcorn movie season. Blockbusters Green Lantern, Captain America: First Avenger, a new Transformers flick, sequels to Cars and Kung Fu Panda, and the final installment of the Harry Potter series will follow in the weeks to come.

One of the most hotly anticipated big-budget films arrives Aug. 5, when 20th Century Fox releases the big-budget science fiction epic Rise of the Apes, starring James Franco.

You've probably already seen the Rise trailer and noticed that this hotly anticipated blockbuster’s ancestor is, in fact, not the original Planet of the Apes but that classic movie’s third sequel, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), a movie that was famously shot in Century City.

In the 1970s, a sweeping sci-fi movie saga from 20th Century Fox ruled the box office, spawning sequels, toys and merchandise, comics and magazines, and capturing the imagination of millions of children around the globe. We're not talking about Star Wars here. Planet of the Apes was Hollywood's original blockbuster science fiction franchise.

After the success of the original 1968 film and two sequels, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Escape From the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, directed by J. Lee Thompson, starred Roddy McDowall as Caesar, the surviving chimpanzee offspring of scientists Zira and Cornelius (McDowall also played Cornelius in the previous movies), and Ricardo Montalban. 

Conquest picks up where 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes left off. In this installment of the future shock saga, the United States of America has become a fascist government dependent on simian slave labor.

The scenes of imprisoned apes, dressed in orange jump suits and subject to horrible experiments by their human oppressors, take place in futuristic Century City (representing the far-flung year of 1991!). When Caesar leads an ape revolt among his enslaved brethren against riot police deployed by Governor Breck (Don Murray), the front line of the battle between ape and mankind takes place along the steps of the Century City Mall.

Opened in 1964, the mall, one of L.A.’s oldest, was originally anchored by a Broadway department store. In the fiery ape revolt scenes leading up to the film’s climax, the buildings along Century Park East can be seen in the background. (No, those "twin towers" do not make a cameo. The film was released three years before the Century Plaza Towers were completed.) In 1976, Century City Mall was expanded, and renovated again in 1986. In 2002 (well past the 1991 year of ape revolution, it should be noted), the Westfield Group acquired the mall, investing $127 million to turn it into today’s Westfield Century City mall.

The cheapest of the five Apes movies to produce, Conquest, with a budget of $1,700,000 (compare that to the original’s astronomical $5,800,000) went on to gross $9,700,000. Although it was the first Apes movie to gross less than $10 million (the original Planet made more than $33 million), Conquest was successful enough to inspire one more movie: 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes. A short-lived television show also followed.

Back in Conquest land, the revolt ultimately works, and as Caesar leads Governor Breck out to be executed, one of Breck’s men appeals to Caesar’s humanity. His plea rouses Caesar, the new messiah of apekind, to declare in a pique of rage: "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…And that day is upon you NOW!"

And that downfall was shot smack dab in the center of Century City.