I saw it and thought that it was awesome, baby! (A little Austin Powers lingo there). I know many of you didn't like or understand the ending, but I think I do. Now I don't know if this is what Burton had intended, but here's MY take on things. (Again, if you haven't seen it yet, STOP READING!)
The astronauts at the beginning are investigating this anomaly in space and decide to send the first monkey into it for a closer look. Wahlberg goes after the chimp into the time warp, and also disappears. Obviously, the whole crew follows them in an attempted rescue.
But then, towards the middle, the crew turns out to have arrived on the planet BEFORE Wahlberg. Leo arrives after they do (some 3000 years later), and the chimp arrives after Leo. This is the exact REVERSE order they went into the time warp. (Still, this does not explain the horses, so I guess that does go as a goof!)
Later, when Thade is trapped in the spaceship and is not killed off, I saw EXACTLY what Burton was going to do! I thought he was going to show us that in the second movie, but he teased us with it in THIS movie: Thade somehow escapes the ship, gets his band of Apes together, comes back to the ship, and escapes in it with his apes to Earth, probably in a period post American Civil War (after Lincoln). They fight the world, take it over, deface the Lincoln memorial, and put General Thade's face on it. Many years later, Mark arrives back on Earth, and finds that Apes rule! Again, note that Leo leaves the planet before Thade, but arrives on Earth AFTER Thade, the exact same thing that happened before.
This is the only logical and obvious explanation of what happened. Anything else would make for a bad sequel. (Hope I haven't given away the sequel :))
The astronauts at the beginning are investigating this anomaly in space and decide to send the first monkey into it for a closer look. Wahlberg goes after the chimp into the time warp, and also disappears. Obviously, the whole crew follows them in an attempted rescue.
But then, towards the middle, the crew turns out to have arrived on the planet BEFORE Wahlberg. Leo arrives after they do (some 3000 years later), and the chimp arrives after Leo. This is the exact REVERSE order they went into the time warp. (Still, this does not explain the horses, so I guess that does go as a goof!)
Later, when Thade is trapped in the spaceship and is not killed off, I saw EXACTLY what Burton was going to do! I thought he was going to show us that in the second movie, but he teased us with it in THIS movie: Thade somehow escapes the ship, gets his band of Apes together, comes back to the ship, and escapes in it with his apes to Earth, probably in a period post American Civil War (after Lincoln). They fight the world, take it over, deface the Lincoln memorial, and put General Thade's face on it. Many years later, Mark arrives back on Earth, and finds that Apes rule! Again, note that Leo leaves the planet before Thade, but arrives on Earth AFTER Thade, the exact same thing that happened before.
This is the only logical and obvious explanation of what happened. Anything else would make for a bad sequel. (Hope I haven't given away the sequel :))