PLANET OF THE APES (1968)

“Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. The film tells the story of an astronaut crew who crash-land on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute creatures wearing animal skins.”-Wikipedia
A group of  4 astronauts Taylor, Landon , Dodge ,Stewart are fast asleep when their spaceship crash-lands in a lake on an unknown planet, after a 2006-year voyage . The astronauts wake up to find Stewart dead and their ship sinking. So they use a raft to reach shore. They take a soil test and it pronounces that the soil is not capable of sustaining life.
But despite of  this they start trekking in that unknown land and gradually encounter plant life. Suddenly,  gorillas wearing clothes on horseback charge through the cornfield, brandishing firearms. They throw nets to capture whatever humans they can and kill those they cannot. While fleeing, Dodge is killed, Landon is knocked unconscious, and Taylor is shot in the throat. The gorillas take Taylor to Ape City, where his life is saved by two chimpanzee scientists. Taylor wakes up to find himself housed in a cage with a girl, Nova.
Taylor discovers that the apes, who can talk, were in control of the entire city.  They were divided into a caste system where the gorillas were mostly the military, hunters and workers, the orangutans  politicians, lawyers and the chimpanzees were scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, were generally hunted for sport and either killed or used for scientific experimentation. He was astonished to find a planet that was an exact contrary of ours.
Two apes alone develop an interest in Taylor and his intelligence. One day Taylor manages to escape and during his flight through Ape City he finds himself in a museum, where Dodge's corpse has been stuffed and put on display. But he again gets recaptured by gorillas.
The apes hold a tribunal to determine Taylor's origins run by the President of the Assembly , Dr. Zaius and few others .Dr. Zaius privately threatens to lobotomize Taylor if he doesn't tell the truth about where he came from. Later with the help of those two apes Taylor and Nova are freed ,  and are taken to the Forbidden Zone, a region outside of Ape City subject to an ancient taboo that has remained isolated for centuries.
When they arrive at the cave, they are intercepted by Dr. Zaius who then agrees to enter the cave just so he could disprove their theories and also to avoid any physical harm to the apes accompanying them. Taylor identifies a pair of prescription glasses, a heart valve and to the apes' astonishment, a talking children's doll.
Dr. Zaius admits that he has always known that human civilization existed long before apes ruled the planet. He explains that  the Forbidden Zone was once a paradise, man made a desert of it ages ago. Once Taylor and Nova have ridden away on horseback, Dr. Zaius orders the gorillas to set explosives to seal off the cave and destroy the remaining evidence of the human society.
Taylor and Nova follow the shoreline and eventually discover the charred remains of the Statue of Liberty. It then strikes them that this "alien" planet, that previously had a human civilization long before apes ruled, was actually post-apocalyptic Earth.
My view : Man usually disrupts the peace of the fauna around him for his own selfish purposes, caging animals, conducting scientific experiments on them , hunting them down as a sport thus eventually posing a threat to their existence on the planet. This film is a wild imagination of how man would be in a hapless state if nature strikes back at him. The apes take control of the planet and humans are housed in cages and made to experience the agony that humans generally put them through. This film delivers an indirect message to mankind to treat mother nature with more respect.